Join Us
Sign up for our feature-packed newsletter today to ensure you get the latest expert help and advice to level up your lab work.
When heterologous gene expression goes wrong it can be a real headache. Here’s my checklist for the steps to take when you encounter problems with this dark art. 1. Check the construct by sequencing the expression cassette to make sure that everything is as you expect. A lack of expression could result from a stray…
Of all the competent E. coli cell strains available (including both chemically competent or electrocompetent E. coli), which one should you choose? The choice of strain to use in a given experiment is determined in large part by the nature of the experiment and the set of traits that best fit it. In this article…
Buying competent cells from commercial suppliers is convenient, provides a guarantee of quality, and gives access to strains with a variety of in-built traits that assist with things like maintenance of plasmid integrity (more on these traits later). However, this can be an expensive business. Alternatively, competent cells of any strain, including the specially-constructed commercial…
Isn’t it a pain digesting, purifying and dephosphorylating your cloning vector prep to eliminate prevent high background in your ligation/transformation? A new generation of positive selection cloning vectors promises to eliminate all of that hassle by killing off any vector that has not taken up the insert you are trying to clone. Positive selection cloning…
Artificial gene synthesis was first reported in 1972 when a group of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology synthesized a complete yeast alanine tRNA gene. Synthesis of the first peptide- and protein-encoding genes ensued in the following decade. Since then, synthetic biology has advanced in leaps and bounds, and custom gene synthesis, a one-time expensive option for…
Get awesome pictures of your DNA gels with a standard digital camera and an orange filter. Here’s how.
The eBook with top tips from our Researcher community.