Methods and Protocols, Volume 3, Issue 2

Several microwave-assisted digestion methods were tested at the Centro de Estudios Aplicados en Química laboratory in Quito, Ecuador, to determine the accuracy and performance efficiency of the mineralization process for the determination of t...

Precise creation, maintenance, and monitoring of neuronal circuits would facilitate the investigation of subjects such as neuronal development or synaptic plasticity, or assist in the development of neuronal prosthetics. Here we present a method to p...

The problem of illicit drug use and addiction is an escalating issue worldwide. As such, fast and precise detection methods are needed to help combat the problem. Herein, the synthesis method for an anti-methamphetamine Quenchbody (Q-body), a promisi...

Characterized by their covalently closed structure and thus an elevated stability compared to linear RNA molecules, circular RNAs (circRNAs) form a novel class of mainly non-coding RNAs. Although the biological functions of naturally occurring circRN...

A simple and fast manual centrifuge was developed to spin down solutions in 96-well polymerase chain reaction (PCR) plates. A commercially available salad spinner was utilized for this purpose. Acceleration and deceleration of the centrifuge were fas...

In transfection experiments with mammalian cells aiming to overexpress a specific protein, it is often necessary to correctly quantify the level of the recombinant and the corresponding endogenous mRNA. In our case, mouse calvarial osteoblasts were t...

Culture-independent molecular techniques have advanced the characterization of environmental and human samples including the human milk (HM) bacteriome. However, extraction of high-quality genomic DNA that is representative of the bacterial populatio...

Due to their high bioreactivity, the in-vitro analysis of bioactive glasses (BGs) can be challenging when it comes to maintaining a physiological pH. To improve BG biocompatibility, a heterogenic spectrum of preconditioning approaches, such as &ldquo...

A method for the positive selection of specific antibodies for target proteins expressed as fusion proteins for the production of antiserum is presented. As proof of concept, the fusion protein FLAG::His::GFP::His::FLAG was expressed in Escherichia c...

Fatty acids (FAs) represent an important class of metabolites, impacting on membrane building blocks and signaling compounds in cellular regulatory networks. In nature, prokaryotes are characterized with the most impressing FA structural diversity an...