KTAxpress system from Amersham Biosciences of Piscat-away, NJ, a subsidiary of GE Healthcare.

-Slides, that enable both culturing and high-resolution microscopy of live cells.

of Hamburg, Germany, has blurred the lines between cDNA and oligonucleotide probes.

islaunching the most inexpensive microarray scanner to date.

Courtesy of Jong-Hoon Kim & Ron McKay, NIHA human embryonic stem cell starter panel that allows for the in vitro expansion of human ESCs is now available from Minneapolis-based R&D Systems http://www.rndsystems.com. The kit contains human FGF basic protein, antibodies to Oct-3/4, stage-specific embryonic antigen (SSEA)-4, and alkaline phosphatase to monitor the cells' differentiation status."The biggest plus as well as the biggest problem with ESCs is that they are multipotential and can

Applied Biosystems www.appliedbiosystems.com, based in Foster City, Calif., has introduced a new family of reagents for multiplexed LC/MS experiments. The iTRAQ reagents enable comparison of protein expression in multiple samples, such as those of normal, diseased, and drug-treated states, and have the ability to detect posttranslational modifications, the company claims. The company has also released Pro QUANT software for automated analysis of LC/MS data collected using the reagents.ICAT reage

Courtesy of http://Neurodatabase.orgCompared to gene and protein data, which involve relatively simple sequences, the diverse nature of data characterizing brain activity is, well, mind-boggling. Data can range from functional magnetic resonance images of brain structures to action potentials. According to the Society for Neuroscience, more than 70 neuroinformatics databases and tools are in development right now; but most of them gather imaging, rather than action potential, data. A select few,

Microarray density continues to climb. In the past year, several companies have compressed the entire protein-coding portion of the human genome onto a single chip – that's some 30,000 to 40,000 unique gene sequences per slide. One company has reduced its arrays to the size of microtiter-plate wells, for use in high-throughput biochip analysis. And arrays to genotype 100,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at once have also come to market."In the next few months, you're going to see

With the ever-increasing density of microarrays comes a need for moresensitive and high-throughput ways to read the resulting data. Arrays contain tens of thousands of 50- to 150-μm-diameter spots per square centimeter, and the vast amount of information they produce has pushed imaging and scanning equipment to its limits.Several recent advances promise to improve the sensitivity, speed, and accuracy of microarray readers. Scanners are becoming more versatile, able to read a broader range o

Microarray technology allows the simultaneous monitoring of expression levels of thousands of genes and even whole genomes. But the experiments themselves represent only the opening act. The grand finale, so to speak, is the data analysis. Sophisticated statistical software and tools exist, but the sheer volume of data, the likes of which are unfamiliar to most biologists (and most statisticians), still represents the primary hurdle in DNA microarray research."Five years ago, there were no stati

ANATOMY OF A HYDROGELReprinted with permissions from Nature MaterialsA top and side view of the crystal lattices of the hydrogel shows the interdigitated biomolecular structure. Grey: carbon; red: oxygen; light blue: nitrogen; dark blue: oxygen of water molecules. The red dashed lines represent hydrogen-bonding networks.Put a piece of DNA on a clean, DNAase-free piece of glass, and it will probably still be there in its original state hours later. Proteins, though, are much less forgiving. They

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