by Suzanne on September 30, 2009

The problem of amplification of DNA templates containing high GC content continues to annoy researchers despite the many strategies developed to overcome this issue. Betaine is the most common additive used to enhance (read on...)

by John on September 14, 2009

It's the molecular biologist's version of 'I have good news. . and bad news'. The good news is that I amplified the DNA band of interest. The bad news is that I amplified these other bands as well! Oh, and this smear. What to (read on...)

by Shoba on September 4, 2009

Hydrolysis probes, commonly also referred to as TaqmanTM is a very popular chemistry for real-time PCR. In this article I will compare hydrolysis probes with PlexorTM. But first, a quick overview of hydrolysis probes. Hydrolysis (read on...)

by Andrew on September 2, 2009

In part I, I answered the question, "How do proteins in thermophiles survive under high temperatures?" In this part, I'll look look at how nucleic acids survive -thrive, even- in conditions that are too hot for most of us, but (read on...)

by Suzanne on August 25, 2009

Each winter, the flu season peaks in January as new strains of virus emerge and spread among school age children, elderly and immunocompromised members of the population. Diagnosis of flu, and other infectious diseases, puts (read on...)

by Shoba on August 24, 2009

In my last article I introduced you to the Plexor System. And from that we already know that while in reactions that user SYBR Green for detection, fluorescence increases with accumulation of PCR product, with Plexor the (read on...)

by Shoba on August 20, 2009

In real-time PCR, there are two primary ways to detect amplicons using fluorescent monitoring. One is intercalator-based dyes such as SYBR Green, and the other is probe-based techniques (hydrolysis or hybridization probes). All (read on...)

by Suzanne on August 10, 2009

Formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues are valuable samples that typically come from human specimens collected for examination of the histology of biopsies for the detection of cancer. But each sample contains much more (read on...)

by Suzanne on August 4, 2009

So you have some blood stored in the -20C or -80C and you want to isolate RNA from the samples. If you wanted DNA, you would have many products to choose from. But for RNA, your choices are more limited. Obtaining RNA from (read on...)

by Nick on July 31, 2009

The following question was emailed to Bitesize Bio by Beheroze Sattha and I gladly took up the challenge, and I immediately knew the answer. Or so I thought. After delving extensively into Pubmed, Genes V (I know, I need a new (read on...)