...behavior. A fact to consider: Rodents can hear ultrasonic frequencies (> 20 kHz, produced from fluorescent...behind from a preceding animal (ex: urine) can be distracting. If it is not cleaned, animals tested towards...experiment series would behave very differently (distracted) from the ones tested at the beginning. Variability...Variability source Standardization parameters Animal Strain, age, sex, housing conditions (individually versus...genes. A popular method uses Cre recombinase on transgenic flox animals to introduce modifications at the...such modification in other areas. An alternative strategy is to knockdown a gene with RNAi. Here, a short...Both AAV and lentiviral vectors are used for intracerebral injections. AAV particles are smaller and may...

...biosafety cabinet. For ultracentrifugation, heat sealed tubes can be used for extra security. Finally, when... you’ll need to get trained in each new place (and pay attention to the trainings!), even if you know ...looks like the genetic cargo in one plasmid (the transfer plasmid), the envelope (Env) gene on a separate... plasmid). Viral production then proceeds by transfection of all three plasmids into a producer cell line...HEK-293T, production of viral particles, and transduction of a target cell line with those particles. ...Env, Gag, and Pol genes are not encoded in the transfer plasmid, the component that physically integrates...into the host’s genome. However, some adenovirus strains are known to cause respiratory diseases in humans...

...the constraints of antibody labeling. This opens the door to in vivo experiments such as tracking the ... proteins (FPs) traditionally introduced in Caenorhabditis elegans on extrachromosomal arrays can lead... efficient double stranded templates, rather than the more efficient single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotide...3: BaF3 cells were transduced with H2B-FT virus and grown in varying concentrations of IL-3. Cells grown...generally very small, and can contain different neurotransmitters. Using genetically encoded fluorescent proteins...proteins coupled with Fibronectin intrabodies generated with mRNA display (FingRs), Xue Han’s lab has developed... them to localize to the synapse and minimize extraneous fluorescence from other regions of the cell. ...

... the transition felt scary. While I knew two people from graduate school who were at AstraZeneca and could...Laura Desrochers, a postdoctoral scientist at AstraZeneca. Why I chose an industry postdoc I’m currently...doing an industry postdoc in neuroscience at AstraZeneca’s Waltham site after doing a brief academic postdoc... industry postdocs have a set time limit. At AstraZeneca, this is three years. This time limit can feel... to enter academia, it is easier to make that transition from an academic setting—especially if job applications... can be helpful. Publishing: As a postdoc at AstraZeneca, you are expected to publish, but this can vary...team as well as their scientific abilities. At AstraZeneca, scientists who get postdocs and do not support...

...products are then transformed directly into chemically competent E. coli and transformants selected with ... for further purification before transformation. After transforming cells, you should perform colony ...foundational elements of biomedical research. Traditional restriction cloning is one of the oldest of these...consisting of digestion, purification, ligation, and transformation. While restriction cloning is still routinely...+ + Gel Purification + - Ligation + - Transformation + + The FastCloning process in brief In ...for this procedure to work properly. Directly transform chemically competent cells with the digested mixture...-cycle PCR leads to the most colonies after transformation. When a 1:1 vector:insert ratio is used in ...

...permeability Bactericidal 10-100 ug/mL Tetracycline tetracyclin Binds 30S ribosomal subunit; inhibits...light-sensitive antibiotic like Tetracycline is used. Keep in mind that some E. coli strains have natural antibiotic...how much easier it makes our lives. Plasmid transformation into E. coli is a fairly inefficient process...reagents can kill bacteria when used at high concentrations (and vice versa). Looking around the lab, you'll....   Name Class Mode of Action*   Working Concentration** Kanamycin aminoglycoside Binds 30S ribosomal...ribosomal subunit; causes mis-translation Bactericidal 50-100 ug/mL Spectinomycin aminoglycoside Binds...Blocks 50S ribosomal subunit; inhibits aminoacyl translocation Bacteriostatic 50-100 ug/mL in EtOH Polymyxin...

...Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET). Through the non-radiative transfer for energy between neighboring...Whether BiFC constructs are expressed transiently by transfection or stably impacts the success of BiFC...a dose-dependent manner. This is straightforward in easy-to-transfect cell lines where plasmid dosage ..., FRET can be used to detect the inter- and intramolecular interactions that underlie protein function..., kinase signaling, integrin signaling, and transcription factor interactions (Kerppola, 2006). One of...interactions between basic leucine zipper and Rel transcription factors (Hu et al., 2002). This would be more...subcellular localization of the studied PIPs. The straightforward nature of BiFC also makes it easier to generate...

...frankenbody can be effectively used to track single mRNA translation in U2OS cells. HA is small, only 9 amino...Stability improvement of antibodies for extracellular and intracellular applications: CDR grafting to stable...based probes the Stasevich lab used an alternative strategy to develop a genetically encoded antibody based...which contains a 10xHA tag. These experiments demonstrated that the HA frankenbody can be used to amplify...minutes in living cells, meaning that scientists can track the movement and localization of single HA-tagged... amino acids, thus it is translated quickly by the ribosome. This feature provides HA frankenbody the ...researchers used the HA frankenbody to successfully track nuclei in a developing zebrafish embryo over an ...

...ready-to-use viral preps   Improved cell-free transcription/translation system to examine biosynthetic pathways... Gabrielle Clouse Recently, cell-free transcription/translation systems (also referred to as TX-TL systems..., the DNA of interest, and cell extract.    Graphical Abstract: Schematic representation of cell-free...the expression of fluorescent proteins and oxytetracycline enzymes. Next, this system was used to recreate...modifications to edit DNA without requiring a double-stranded break. The Xiao Wang Lab has recently deposited.... These plasmids use “Cas9-mediated adenosine transient reporter for editing enrichment”, or XMAS-TREE...modifications and work with them further. The lab demonstrated that XMAS-TREE can be multiplexed and can be...

...C2c3 are related to Cpf1, but they require both a tracrRNA and crRNA to cleave target DNA (Cpf1 requires ... Cas13a binds and cleaves RNA rather than DNA substrates. In terms of structure, Cas13a shares no homology...PAM (PFS) Cleavage Mechanism Cas9 HNH, RuvC TracrRNA, crRNA DNA 5' NGG Specific blunt ended DSB...endogenous CRISPR/Cas9 system, Cas9 uses both a tracrRNA and crRNA to facilitate binding and cleavage of...the crRNA or presence of a PFS. This is in stark contrast to Cas9, which requires that each DNA target have...Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (RPA) or Reverse-transcription RPA (RT-RPA), respectively. Amplified nucleotides...have utilized dCas13 fusion proteins for imaging, tracking, modulating splicing, and regulating expression...

...cytosol (instead of on the yeast extracellular surface) which enables tracking of protease activity with a ...protease allows a transcription factor to enter the nucleus and modulate transcription of the mCitrine ...affinity variants of TEV. The new system has been demonstrated to work for evolution of other target proteins...structures within cells. HeLa cells were transfected with plasmids encoding FPs tagged with the plasma...biotin-4-fluorescein to be dissolved at a higher concentration, and results in uniform NB biotinylation. Once...expression can vary significantly depending on transgene design and delivery. To overcome these variations...reporter. With this system, they could quantify and track cells expressing both dCas9 and gRNAs. The...

...Healthcare consulting firms that specialize in business strategy tend to be mostly engaged by pharma and biotech...Consultants can help these teams develop communication strategies, or understand, and publish on the health and...need help with the intricate task of designing a strategic vision for a portfolio of candidate drugs. A decision...from previous consulting experiences, educational training, and conferences, and synthesizing this knowledge...have greatly benefited from and appreciated the training I’ve received in concisely and accurately communicating...and work styles (e.g., Myers-Briggs). Staff are trained on how to work best with diverse teams, to leverage...of different personality types, and to devise strategies to be prepared for addressing unexpected situations...

...expression cassettes Traditionally, generating expression cassettes for yeast transformation can take 5 days...covalently joined, scarless DNA – perfect for transforma­­­tion or as a PCR template. Some of the applications...by using NEBuilder which requires only a single-stranded synthetic oligo to generate a single-guide RNA...RNA (sgRNA). Using only one single-stranded oligo, instead of the more typical two oligos, is more cost...annealing step usually used to create a double-stranded oligo. Generating an sgRNA construct becomes as...target region. Assembled plasmids can be directly transformed into E.coli for plating, screening and generation...inserted into a linearized cassette, ready for transformation into yeast that same day.  The field of synthetic...

...repeat region. B) RNase III, the tracrRNA and Cas9, bind to these transcripts and C) cleave them leaving mature...leaving a F) double-strand break. A “gRNA” is a researcher-designed hybrid of the tracrRNA and the crRNA. ...loci. 3. Cleave target DNA resulting in a double-strand break (DSB) Cas9 and its variants have two endonuclease...positions the nuclease domains to cleave opposite strands of the target DNA. Thus, the end result of Cas9...which defines the genomic target for Cas9, and the tracrRNA which acts as a scaffold linking the crRNA to ...for processing pre-crRNA into mature crRNA and tracrRNA binding. The spacer regions, on the other hand..., the “direct repeat region” combined with the tracrRNA forms the scaffold portion of a gRNA and the “...

...fluorescent proteins whose spectra overlap, there are techniques, like spectral unmixing, which can be used...Chroma Spectra Viewer comparing a standard Cy3 or Rhodamine filter set (Chroma #49004) to the spectra of ... the lighter colors; excitation spectra are blue and emission spectra are red. Neither is a perfect match...fluorescent proteins whose excitation and emission spectra differ sufficiently for them to be imaged in distinct...requires knowledge of their excitation and emission spectra, but a good rule of thumb is that both the peak...will want to compare the excitation and emission spectra of your protein with the filter sets or lasers ...emission filters and the excitation and emission spectra of the protein, so that the protein is well excited...

... when supplied with a luciferase substrate, the luciferase transfers energy to the FP, resulting in a ...luminescent substrate is required for imaging, and it is important to verify that this substrate does not...luciferase has a low quantum yield, and when transiently expressed in cells, generates much less signal... principle of bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET). Photons emitted by a Renilla luciferase...excitation light source. Instead, a luciferase substrate like coelenterazine is supplied in the culture...labeled tumors in freely moving mice injected intravenously with coelenterazine, with increased sensitivity... which is limited by depletion of luminescent substrate, they synthesized diacetyl coelenterazine-h. Unlike...

...use of pre-existing transgenic lines, termed BLITZ (Biotin Labeling In Transgenic Zebrafish) (Xiong, et...“single-use” transgenic lines. Instead, researchers can generate and maintain transgenic lines that can...protein by a specific transcription response element (TRE) or kinase translocation reporters (KTRs). Find...interest and, for in vivo work, generate a dedicated transgenic line. Using zebrafish as a model organism, the...protein can then be co-expressed in essentially any transgenic zebrafish line expressing a GFP-tagged version...generational evolution of the AAV capsids (left) and transduction patterns (right).  Both AAV-PHP.eB and the AAV.CAP-B...mutations in mammalian cells. Long sequences traditionally have higher risks of off-target mutations. These...

...Murray’s lab uses cellular extracts to perform transcription and translation in vitro, and the new BioBuilder...handful of local high school teachers receiving training modules in synthetic biology has grown into a ...cutting-edge research projects in synthetic biology and transforms them into modules that students and teachers ...droppers, centrifuge tubes, circuit parts, and lab-strains of bacteria to study — to conduct their hands-on...and test hypotheses. Students then use cellular extracts as a means to rapidly prototype DNA circuits and...resulted in a new BioBuilder book chapter and an illustrated, downloadable classroom poster — with both of...scientist mentors and the BioBuilderClub community. Registration is open through October 19. The BioBuilder Learning...

...increase as the DNA amplicon transitions from single-stranded to double-stranded, and finally, drop once more... by abundant transcripts, leading to falsely lowered levels for less abundant transcripts. However, adding...can even be used to detect a single copy of a transcript. But this sensitivity can sometimes cause as ...preferably weighted towards the ends of the primers. Concentration of primers should be between 100 and 400 nm ...optimal annealing temperature and optimal primer concentration; check for primer dimers; and validate assay...signals are produced by the presence of double-stranded DNA, when temperatures are high, signal intensity...reflecting the presence of primarily denatured (single-stranded) DNA. As the temperature drops, single intensity...

... signaling pathways and the linkage of intra- and extracellular environments. Found on nearly every cell...eight beta subunits. Both subunits have short intracellular ends and large ectodomains containing ligand-binding...the cell membrane, physically connecting the extracellular environment and the cytoskeleton. Most integrins...affinity for ligands. When integrins interact with extracellular ligands, their ectodomains can extend and open...mediating cell adhesion and migration, initiating intracellular signal cascades, and allowing agile responses...The actin cytoskeleton exerts tensile force, transmitted through the integrin, where it is resisted by...by the ligand embedded in the extracellular environment. This further stabilizes the extended open integrin...