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A new base caller for the Illumina Genome Analyzer uses machine learning to compensate for noise factors and improves accuracy for up to 78-base-pair sequencing reads.
The complete set of coding sequences, including all splice isoforms, is not known for any metazoan organism. Combination of a normalized pooling scheme and a new assembly algorithm with 454 sequencing yields a methodological pipeline for isoform discovery. The validated pipeline may now be applied genome-wide.
Conventional techniques for generating transgenic mice are quite costly, require substantial resources and necessitate killing the mouse. In contrast, in vivo electroporation of repopulating spermatogonial cells in the mouse testis can produce male mice for siring multiple distinctive transgenic founders for over a year.
Current approaches for live imaging of cellular actin dynamics have several drawbacks. Now the use of Lifeact, a 17-aa actin-binding peptide from yeast that is not present in higher eukaryotes, allows imaging of actin dynamics in live mammalian cells without disruption of function and without competition with endogenous binding proteins.
A combination of improved in vitro embryo culture and optical projection tomography allows development of the mouse limb bud to be monitored over time. Developmental changes seen in vitro are benchmarked against in vivo development, and tissue movements are quantitatively described.
To date, the only way to array proteins with high density and high content has been to print purified proteins on a microarray surface. The next generation of nucleic acid programmable protein arrays (NAPPA) now allows thousands of proteins to be produced in situ on a microarray.
The ability to image thick volumes with invariant high axial and lateral resolution is a challenge for existing super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques. The combination of a double-plane detection scheme with fluorescence photoactivation microscopy (FPALM) allows three-dimensional sub-diffraction resolution imaging of samples as thick as whole cells.
Caenorhabditis elegans is an ideal model organism for studying nerve regrowth and functional recovery after in vivo axotomy, but its high mobility makes such experiments challenging. A microfluidic device capable of transient immobilization of individual worms for high-resolution imaging and laser-based nanoaxotomy is described.