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Incredible Scientific Animation
:: Posted by American Biotechnologist on 04-22-2013
Alternative Splicing Thought to be an Important Target for Cancer Therapy
:: Posted by American Biotechnologist on 04-19-2013Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that alternative splicing – a process that allows a single gene to code for multiple proteins – appears to be a new potential target for anti-telomerase cancer therapy.
The enzyme telomerase is overexpressed in almost all cancer cells, and previous research efforts have failed to identify good telomerase inhibitors. The study by Dr. Woodring Wright and UT Southwestern colleagues in the April 4 issue of Cell Reports identifies a new approach for inhibiting telomerase, which is an enzyme that drives uncontrolled division and replication of cancer cells.
Bio-Rad Launches New ddPCR Library Quantification Kit to Optimize Performance of Illumina NGS Platforms
:: Posted by American Biotechnologist on 04-17-2013
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., today announced the availability of its new ddPCR library quantification kit for Illumina TruSeq sample preparation protocols. Used with Bio-Rad’s QX100™ Droplet Digital™ PCR system, the new kit offers researchers a way to precisely and directly measure amplifiable library concentrations.
The TruSeq sample preparation method is the technique behind Illumina’s MiSeq and HiSeq next-generation sequencing (NGS)platforms. Using the ddPCR library quantification kit to quantify TruSeq DNA libraries maximizes the number of useable reads, enables consistent loading, and optimizes the utilization of every sequencing run. The resulting data provide additional measures of library quality not provided by other methods, including the percentage of nonamplifiable species such as adaptor dimers as well as the size range of library inserts.
Additional key benefits of the ddPCR library quantification kit include:
- Superior performance — reduces PCR bias due to sample partitioning during quantification
- Simple workflow — easily incorporated into the TruSeq library construction workflow
- Efficient utilization of sequencing runs — provides fluorescence amplitude data, a metric for library quality
Kits for other NGS platforms are also in development. For more information on the ddPCR library quantification kit, please visit http://bit.ly/ddPCR_QKL.
Why are lottery winners as happy as paraplegics?
:: Posted by American Biotechnologist on 04-16-2013Turning skin cells into brain cells
:: Posted by American Biotechnologist on 04-15-2013Researchers at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine have discovered a technique that directly converts skin cells to the type of brain cells destroyed in patients with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and other so-called myelin disorders.
This discovery appears today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
This breakthrough now enables “on demand” production of myelinating cells, which provide a vital sheath of insulation that protects neurons and enables the delivery of brain impulses to the rest of the body. In patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), cerebral palsy (CP), and rare genetic disorders called leukodystrophies, myelinating cells are destroyed and cannot be replaced.
The new technique involves directly converting fibroblasts – an abundant structural cell present in the skin and most organs – into oligodendrocytes, the type of cell responsible for myelinating the neurons of the brain.