...constant, or Fc, domain. Sure, we all know that the Fc domain provides structure, determines isotypes, and...does! While the Fc domain’s functions, besides structure and isotype determination, don’t generally affect...sorted into three main effector functions.  Figure 1: Fc effector functions in an immune response ...antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP). Figure adapted from van Erp, et al., 2019.    Antibody-dependent...description with the Fc domain as only providing structure and isotype determination, remember that it can...Ig Constant Region Effects on Variable Region Structure and Function. Frontiers in Microbiology, 7. https...

...through the La Vida Scholars summer program. I was unsure whether or not I wanted to major in biochemistry..., who let me know in March that I successfully secured an internship at Addgene! I was eager to accept...took into consideration just how busy I was and ensured that my decision deadline would be extended. I ...reached out to Amy with exciting news. I managed to secure a virtual summer program, teaching me the basics...each intern to complete and present on.    Figure 1: Addgene's summer interns presenting their capstone...crunch and knew that if we were to restart the procedure we would not have enough time. During the following...from the electrophoresis, my manager and I were unsure if there were any successful clones because the...

...model and a source of sdAbs (Figure 2) (Xu, et al., 2021).      Figure 2: Genetically modified mice...found similar antibodies in llamas and alpacas (Figure 1). At the time, researchers were already on a ...nanobodies (Arbabi-Ghahroudi, 2017)!      Figure 1: Comparison of a heavy-chain only antibody and... for in vivo experiments, due to their simple structure    sdAbs in research These advantages have contributed...Single-Domain Antibodies: Historical Perspective and Future Outlook. Front Immunol 8:1589. https://doi.org/...mice and llamas neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants. Nature 595:278–282. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021...

... a couple of lectures in the undergraduate pharmacology course, like one or two lectures a year. And then.... And make sure to subscribe to the Career Channel of the blog so you don’t miss the future posts in this... the first time. I walk[ed them] through their lecture, giving them advice, [and helped] proctor exams...how to design test questions, and how to design lectures. I really built a course from the ground up.”  ...careers while in grad school And just for good measure, here’s a few other posts about developing transferable...

...techniques with higher efficiency and simpler procedures have been developed. Some of these include, TA...annealed and ligated in vivo. Detailed FastCloning procedure To start the FastCloning process, the insert and...and the resultant products of the reaction in the figure from Chaokun et al., 2011 to the right. After PCR...isolated from methylation competent E. coli for this procedure to work properly. Directly transform chemically...chemically competent cells with the digested mixture. There is no need for further purification before transformation...vector + insert). You should screen 3-4 colonies to ensure that you find the correct product. Once you find...have a better understanding of the step by step procedure of FastCloning, here are some tips for high efficiency...

...been developed around how they replicate (Figure 2). Figure 2: Baltimore replication classes. Image credit...molecular biology tools, a very useful trait. Virus structure While all viruses have a genome inside a protein... with an envelope are called enveloped viruses (Figure 1). Like bacteria, only a tiny fraction of viruses...viruses are pathogenic (Balloux & van Dorp, 2017). Figure 1: A non-enveloped virus (left) and an enveloped...packaged in separate plasmids and expressed via cells cultured with the vectors. This allows the viral vectors...of Viral Vectors 101 posts about each type, so be sure to check our blog, or our Viral Vectors 101 eBook...

...never expected to be in this here and now. Our closure was earlier than most companies. Since the start...around the world mobilized on COVID-19 research, cures, and diagnostics. Almost immediately we began to...receiving packages. So the entire team mobilized to figure out how to deliver when labs finally opened.  I...Addgene’s Technology Transfer Team also moved fast to ensure that the majority of deposited materials to study...the dramatic reduction in distribution, we had to figure out a way to maintain our services during the crisis...accelerating research. Yet this was still not enough to ensure we could keep up with demand and keep new projects...scientific sharing of materials for the foreseeable future. ...

...expression of XFPs is possible by simply introducing a mixture of XFP genes. Stochastic multicolor labeling is...trans-activator Brainbow) (Sakaguchi et al., 2018) (Figure 1). Once introduced, fluorescent proteins were ...AAVs (prepared with Addgene #104110 - #104112) (Figure 2). We’ve also created constructs with containing...Kohl et al., 2014) (Addgene #104106 - #104108) (Figure 3) that can be introduced using in utero electroporation...samples and visualize. For more details on this procedure, find the protocol here.   Tips and troubleshooting... al. "Improved tools for the Brainbow toolbox." Nature methods 10.6 (2013): 540. PubMed PMID: 23817127...of fluorescent proteins in the nervous system." Nature 450.7166 (2007): 56. PubMed PMID: 17972876. Kohl...

...probe for imaging nascent and mature HA-tagged proteins in vivo. Nature Communications, 10(1). PubMed ...fragments (scFvs) (Inbar et al., 1972) are fused to mature fluorophores, and can bind and light up epitope...., 2004). This scFv hybrid provides the probe structure and stability from the scaffold as well as specificity...it is translated quickly by the ribosome. This feature provides HA frankenbody the ability to bind nascent... wide range of protein dynamics in vivo. In the future, this stitching technique could be applied to other...applications: CDR grafting to stable frameworks and structure-based framework engineering. Methods, 34(2), 184...

...carte." Nature Reviews Genetics 12, no. 4 (2011): 231-42. PubMed PMID: 21339765. Methods figures were adapted...purify reprogramming proteins. Table 1: Key Features of Different Methods for Generating iPSCs. One...even after many passages. Ban et al developed a temperature sensitive Sendai virus which is removed by culturing...endogenous pluripotency genes (i.e. Oct4) are other measures of reprogramming. If a retrovirus was used, then...field of induced pluripotency: Recent progress and future challenges." Journal of Cellular Physiology 228...pluripotent mouse stem cells by the piggyBac transposon." Nature Methods 6, no. 5 (2009): 363-69. PubMed PMID: 19337237...minicircle vector for deriving human iPS cells." Nature Methods 7, no. 3 (2010): 197-99. PubMed PMID: 20139967...

...be available from their original sources. Figure 1: Biological repositories that distribute mouse... such example is cell lines. The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) is a private, nonprofit repository... community. Addgene was awarded a Fast Grant to ensure that the scientific community will continue having...have already been requested from Addgene. Figure 2: Total COVID-19 plasmids requested from Addgene...making materials available rapidly to scientists (Nature Biotechnology 2020). The continued success of repositories... repositories, during the pandemic and in the future, depends on support from the scientific community...fundamental part of the scientific research infrastructure. References Chu H, Chan JF-W, Yuen TT-T, ...

...difficult if your work is based in the lab. If you’re unsure what to do during this period, check out these ... Organize data that you already collected into figures for papers or presentations. Learn a new skill ...novel findings. Most Micropublications contain one figure. If you aren’t there yet, write introductions to...while. Getting started early on introductions and literature reviews could make the months leading up to your...about reproducibility best practices Support your future experiments and other researchers by implementing...Also consider using this framework to design your future experiments.  Use Addgene’s AAV Data Hub. You can...can search the AAV Data Hub for tools to use in future experiments. If you’ve used Addgene’s AAV tools...

...make sure to rinse off the surface of the filter membrane with the surrounding solution to ensure excess...concentration to avoid over-diluting, and make sure to remeasure your titer after diluting to confirm. Luke...drastically with lower titers. As you can see in figure 2, the expression from the 5x1011 titer was essentially... in a roughly 6-fold increase in expression [3, Figure 2]. Note how expression increases exponentially...additional best practices. Keep your cells happy - Make sure your cells are as healthy as can be to prepare them...

...proteins and the potential for their work to enable future discoveries. Read on to learn more about Xin and...keep checking back in with the Addgene blog for future award opportunities. Xin Zhou: Fluorescent Light-inducible...active site. In these fusions, ultraviolet light exposure caused oligomerization of the Dronpa domains thereby...active site and shutting off the enzyme. Later exposure to cyan light stopped Dronpa oligomerization and...active site and still block enzyme function upon exposure to ultraviolet light. Previous iterations of FLiPs... needed an efficient and cost-effective way to measure the production of HMOs. Current HPLC-MS and fluorophore-based...ACS meeting. She hopes these biosensors and her future work with HMOs will enable researchers to engineer...

...education for future generations. All suggestions, tips and critiques to improve the educational nature of this...in these courses get plenty of theory in their lectures, but it can be difficult to determine how much...hands-on, it will be “brains-on”! I know that even lectures should be “brains-on”, but as much as I try being...have never experienced 100% student engagement. I figured, an engaging card game could help me get the engagement...students to use concepts learned from previous lectures, articles and books. A game where they would use...spurred by this “gamification” will lead to new cures for disease someday! Accessing and modifying BUILD...

...requires an NGG PAM to recognize the target. Osamu Nureki’s lab engineered SpCas9 (SpCas9-NG) with relaxed... with high precision - a valuable optogenetics feature when studying neuronal activity. The researchers...MerMAIDs plasmids at Addgene Opperman J et al., Nature Communications, 2019. PubMed PMID: 31346176. Using... of loops. These loops not only provide a 3-D structure for packing genomic DNA into nuclei, but are also...that heterodimerizes with CIBN upon blue light exposure (see Fig 1*). When the group targeted the enhancer...system promises to be a better model for the dynamic nature of genomic looping due to it’s briefer time scale...scale and its inducible and reversible nature. Find the LADL plasmids at Addgene Kim et al., Nat Methods...

...Using Existing in silico Algorithm Infrastructure and a Vision for Future Enhancements. Frontiers in drug...immunogenicity score (Mattei et.al., 2022).    Figure 1: Generation of immunogenicity scores by predictive...individually-specific factors, such as previous exposures to that specific antigen, pre-existing conditions...factors that in silico prediction algorithms fail to capture. In vitro evaluation of ‌therapeutic immunogenicity...various components of the immune system. Figure 2: In-vitro models for immunogenicity prediction...and the advancement of precision medicine in the future.   Madhura Acharya is a former co-op and current...

...from last meeting. Use some positive peer pressure to make sure everyone completes their assigned items ... on details that do not yet need to be decided. Figure out what you need to accomplish to get to the next...toward a solution. At the end of the meeting, make sure to thank everyone for their participation and offer... are working on. Building this into the agenda ensures that everyone gets a chance to talk and less vocal... so will the length of your group meetings. Make sure to keep them manageable. At Addgene, teams can add...all-company meetings, monthly still works best. Figure out what works for you for each of your meeting...

...have stable ssDNA secondary structure — for example, the stem-loop structure of transcriptional terminators...higher temperature at which Gibson assembly takes place may limit formation of secondary structures at the...with 5′ overhangs generated either by annealing a mixture of products or from incomplete PCR — although higher...effective with as little as 3 ng of DNA!) Figure 1: Schematic of SLIC. To start the SLIC cloning...successful, but at a lower efficiency (~20%). Figure 2: Schematic of multicomponent assembly with SLIC...

... base-pair editing CRISPR reporters in the near future.  SRIRACCHA (stable, but reversible, integrated...reporter into the genome of mammalian cells.  Figure 1: The SRIRACCHA reporter construct. Image from... for assessing CRISPR/Cas9 activity Guide RNA structure and the site in the genome you are trying to target...Thus it is essential to identify the best sgRNA to ensure success in your CRISPR experiments. But how? There... fluorescence and in-frame fluorescence.  Figure 2: The GEmCherry reporter. Image from Højland Knudsen...FACs sorting, confirming yet again that sgRNA structure and genomic recognition sites play a large role... for editing, regulating and targeting genomes. Nature Biotechnology 32:347–355 . https://doi.org/10.1038...