Rochester, NY-based Eastman Kodak recently introduced the newest addition to its family of electrophoresis gel-imaging products. The Gel Logic 100 Imaging System combines a 1.4-megapixel digital CCD (charge-coupled device) camera with IEEE 1394 (Firewire) communication technology, a peripheral connectivity standard that allows high-speed data transfer between the computer and camera. "The communication speed with the camera delivers real-time imaging similar to what you would see in a video sy

Viral vectors offer an efficient way to transduce a variety of mammalian cell types, but most can deliver genes only to proliferating cells. Lentiviral vectors, on the other hand, can deliver nucleic acids to both dividing and nondividing cells, thus making them useful for a wide range of cell lines, including those that are difficult to transfect, such as hematopoietic stem cells, lymphocytes, and neural and dendritic cells.1 While other retroviruses can enter a cell only when the nucleus i

Image: Courtesy of Gwenn-AEL Dnaet ©2002 National Academy of Sciences STEM CELL XENOGRAFT: Identification of human hepatocytes in livers from immune-deficient mice transplanted with human adult hematopoietic stem cells. Photomicrographs of NOD/SCID mouse liver sections from mice transplanted with purified human Lin-CD38-CD34-C1qRp+ cells isolated from umbilical cord blood, harvested 8-10 weeks post-transplant. Tissue sections were stained for HSA (hepatocyte-specific antigen) or c-met

A number of recent publications have added to scientists' understanding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) differentiation and adult stem cell plasticity. For example, Ron McKay and coworkers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, demonstrated that they can direct murine ESCs to differentiate into a particular type of dopamine-producing neuron, which could aid in the treatment of Parkinson disease.1 Transplantation of stem cell precursors derived from the fetal midbrain lead

Scientific terms such as "hematopoietic" and "chemokine" are not found in the native spell-check program included with standard word processing software; as a result, red squiggly lines appear throughout scientific documents, drawing the writer's attention away from the task of writing and toward words that were spelled correctly in the first place. While it's certainly possible to add each term individually to the dictionary, to do so would be time-consuming and tedious. To solve this problem

Veterans of scientific conference poster sessions know that poster quality can vary considerably. Colorful, informative, and visually appealing posters mingle with last-minute efforts that consist merely of black-and-white pages pasted to a white board. But the days of ho-hum posters may be over thanks to a new poster design, layout, printing, and electronic archiving service offered by Brewster, NY-based SciFor. Scientists can now "have their poster professionally designed, laid out, and prin

Phosphoinositides are a class of phospholipids that serve a number of membrane-related functions, including vesicle transport, regulation of the actin cytoskeleton, and protein targeting to membranes.1 To facilitate the study of phosphoinositide signaling pathways, Salt Lake City-based Echelon Biosciences has developed PIP Arrays™ and Strips™, a set of tools enabling researchers to examine protein/phosphoinositide interactions. Glenn Prestwich, Echelon's Chief Scientific Officer,

Image: Courtesy of Frank Slack  SMALL, YET POTENT: A new and intriguing class of small RNAs can regulate eukaryotic gene expression. But scientists are trying to understand which signals cause these molecules to repress translation (left), and which cause RNA degradation (right). The answer could pave the way for gene therapy advances, among others. Andrew Fire and colleagues first described RNA interference (RNAi) in Caenorhabditis elegans in 1998.1 Exogenous double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)

Image: Courtesy of Brinkmann Bacterial Economy Westbury, NY-based Brinkmann introduces the Eppendorf® LidBac, a membrane-lid tube that enables cultivation of bacterial cultures at the miniprep scale. An economical, fast alternative to conventional large-scale bacterial cultivation, the LidBac consists of a standard microcentrifuge tube with a polypropylene membrane lid and an integrated hydrophobic membrane. The culture itself grows in the tube; it can then be used for downstream applic

There is always room for improvement, even for products that were good from the start. Take cationic liposome-based reagents, for example. Researchers have widely used such compounds to efficiently introduce nucleic acids into cells for over a decade. Qbiogene of Carlsbad, Calif., recently improved on this technology with the introduction of in vivo and in vitro FluoroFectin™ reagents, developed in the laboratory of Yechezkel Barenholz of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. FluoroFectin

In recent years scientists have exploited the light-generating capability of luciferase in applications ranging from apoptosis detection to DNA quantitation. Now Alameda, Calif.-based Xenogen has taken this useful enzyme one step further, with a luciferase-based system for studying infectious diseases, cancer, and metabolic diseases in living animals in real time. Xenogen has developed Bioware™ animal models, in which pathogens, target genes, or tumor cells are tagged with luciferase, whi

Madison, Wis.-based Novagen now sells KOD HiFi DNA polymerase (manufactured by Toyobo of Japan), a proofreading enzyme for high-fidelity PCR amplification. KOD HiFi DNA polymerase is a recombinant version of Thermococcus kodakaraensis KOD1 DNA polymerase. According to company literature, the enzyme possesses higher accuracy than any other commercially available DNA polymerase, is five times faster than Pfu DNA polymerase, and twice as fast as Taq DNA polymerase. Novagen also sells KOD Hot Start