Annotate your plasmid maps!

Nothing is truly more frustrating than receiving unannotated plasmid DNA sequence. Before one can contemplate engineering changes it is essential to know exactly what functional elements are present in a plasmid. The Barrick lab at the University of Texas at Austin has devised an elegant solution: pLannotate. This very helpful tool can help make the difference between a project which is successful rather than a downward spiral into oblivion (so many wasted minipreps, so much wasted restriction enzyme).

Full plasmid sequencing

I can recall a time when primer synthesis was $1/nucleotide. Now you can have your entire plasmid (up to 25 Kbp) sequenced for $15. You literally have no excuse to not know every single letter of every single circle with which you are working!

We have a winner!

The Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center was selected by the University of Wisconsin as one of the winners of the Cool Science Images 2020 contest. Our submission was an image taken of Cannabis sativa T1 siblings from what we think are the first transgenic hemp plants in the world. The plants are illuminated such that it is possible to view the red light emitted from one of the transgene products, the fluorescent protein tandem Tomato (localized to the endoplasmic reticulum, to enhance brightness) that was included in the T-DNA of the test binary construct I built in support of this project. Null segregants appear green in the image. Contest results can be seen here (our image is #9): https://lnkd.in/dmZDhx9

Wonderful microtechnique

A picture is worth 1000 words. These micrographs from a variety of plant taxa are simply wonderful.