If you have computers in the lab that you would like to access from home, this might be for you.
LogMeIn.com offers a free remote desktop service that allows you to take control of a remote computer. Perfect if, while relaxing after dinner, you remember that you forgot to turn off the HPLC at work (yes, I did that tonight). Read more »
To (hopefully) make the life of molecular biologists everywhere a little easier, I have put together a Molecular Biologist’s tool-bar for Firefox/IE, which you can download here.
It’s main feature is the multi-search box from which you can search Google, Pubmed, Scirus, Wikipedia, SwissProt and others directly, saving you from navigating to the individual sites every time you want to make a search.
It also contains drop-down menus with links to commonly used sequence manipulation and analysis tools, bio-databases, literature tools and some other stuff I hope you will find useful.
This is the only the first version of the toolbar and I intend to add more features over time so I’d love to hear your input into which tools and features you would like to see added (or removed!). Please leave your suggestions either in a comment, by e-mail or by hitting the “suggest” button on the toolbar itself.
If you are looking for some free plasmid manipulation and analysis software, then you need look no further than PlasMa DNA. It’s packed with features, user friendly and looks great. Best of all, it is a cross-platform application - it works on both PC and Mac, and the files produced on one operating system can be opened and used on the other. Read more »
Mind mapping is an extremely useful technique for note-taking, brainstorming and learning. In the past I often tried to use mind-mapping but the neat-freak in me was never satisfied with the messy maps I would create. However, now there is an alternative to scribbling out mind maps on paper with the availability FreeMind, a great piece of free, cross-platform mind mapping software, allowing even the most artistically-challenged to create neat, functional mind-maps.
I just came across an extremely nice piece of plasmid mapping and annotation software that I’d like to share with you. PlasMapper is a web-based application, created by staff from the University of Alberta, that automatically generates fully annotated plasmid maps from your raw sequence input.
Using a database containing the sequences of hundreds of features (replication origins, antibiotic resistance cassettes etc), as well as restriction enzymes, the program identifies each of the features in your inputted plasmid and renders them in a publication quality graphical or text map. The image on the right shows some examples of the output of the application - click the image to view a larger version. Read more »
Firefox is the most popular browser on the web. This in large part due to the vast array of free add-ons that allow you to customize the browser and add features that will help your everyday work. And molecular and cell biologists are not left out. In this article I have compiled a list of Firefox add-ons for bioscientists. Some specifically help with things like bioinformatics and information searches, while others provide more general support with PDF downloading and unit conversion and the like. Here they are: Read more »
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