Articles by Marilee Ogren

Clockwise from top left: images courtesy of Affymetrix, Illumina, Sequenom and Illumina Take any two individuals, sequence and compare their genomic DNA, and you'll find that the vast majority (about 99.9%) of the sequences are identical. In the remaining 0.1% lie differences in disease susceptibility, environmental response, and drug metabolism. Researchers are understandably keen to dissect these variations, most of which take the form of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A SNP (pron

Somewhere on the campus of a northeastern US university, a set of epoxy footprints across a concrete walkway marks the path of an investigator who left the laboratory after spilling and then stepping in radioisotope phosphorous-32. He had failed to perform a closedown survey before leaving the lab. Radiation officers conducting a routine survey tracked the spill through the lab, down the stairs, and across the campus to the parking lot. Though the hard, polished surfaces inside the building c

Rapidly evolving genomic technologies have spawned the Tm/Luminex Universal Array Platform, capable of reading 10,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) per hour. Distributed by Luminex of Austin, Texas, the system is the product of a partnership between Luminex and Tm Bioscience of Toronto. Luminex pioneered multiplexed, bead-based genotyping with LabMAP™ (now called xMAP™).1 Tm Biosciences recently developed the Universal Array, an arbitrary set of nucleotide sequences for an

Image: Courtesy of Ambion Coupled transcription and translation systems transcribe RNA from a DNA template, and then translate that RNA directly, without intervening purification steps. Cell-free, in vitro protein expression is a welcome alternative to time-consuming cell-based systems and appeals to scientists interested in toxic, insoluble, or rapidly degraded proteins incompatible with in vivo systems.1 Until recently though, inadequate protein yields from in vitro translation systems