Author Archives: Chris

Designing primers and documenting In-Fusion Cloning with MacVector

The In-Fusion Cloning kits from Takara allow you to perform ligase free cloning of PCR products into vectors in as little as 15 minutes. You can use MacVector’s Gibson Cloning/Ligase Independent tool to design primers for In-Fusion cloning workflows. The In-Fusion kits need a 15nt overlap between the ends of a fragment and the ends […]

Posted in Techniques | Tagged | Comments closed

MacVectorTip: Using tabbed sequence windows in MacVector

One of the lesser known features of macOS is the ability to store all open documents of an application in tabs. Tabs were initially introduced for the Finder, but macOS Mavericks saw them apply to supported application document windows too. MacVector has supported tabs since their introduction, however, by default the Tab Bar is turned […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments closed

MacVector Tip: a complex subsequence pattern example.

MacVector’s Subsequence tools allows you to search for motifs in both protein and DNA sequences. As well as a library of existing subsequence files, such as promotors and transcription factor binding sites, you can keep a library of your own subsequence matches. Subsequences libraries are multiple patterns kept in a single file. A search will […]

Posted in Tips | Tagged , | Comments closed

Working from home and Roaming Network licenses

The pandemic brought a sudden change to usual working routines and it is probable that home working will remain part of the working week for some time to come. Most scientific research needs physical lab time, but that’s just “pipetting”! The real science also happens when you think.. and that can be done easily at […]

Posted in General | Tagged , | Comments closed

MacVectorTip: Identifying, Selecting and Assembling NGS reads with a variant genotype

When analyzing/assembling/aligning NGS data, there are many scenarios where you might want to separate out the reads representing different genotypes or variant sequences. MacVector makes this very easy. Take a reference sequence and choose Analyze->Align to Reference. Now click the Add Seqs button and select and add your NGS data files. NOTE: if your reference […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments closed

MacVectorTip: Identifying, Selecting and Assembling NGS reads with a variant genotype

When analyzing/assembling/aligning NGS data, there are many scenarios where you might want to separate out the reads representing different genotypes or variant sequences. MacVector makes this very easy. Take a reference sequence and choose Analyze->Align to Reference. Now click the Add Seqs button and select and add your NGS data files. NOTE: if your reference […]

Posted in Techniques | Tagged , | Comments closed

MacVectorTip: Filtering NGS Data to retrieve reads matching a known sequence

So you just got your NGS reads back from that sequencing experiment and, wow, what a HUGE amount of data. Wouldn’t it be easier to handle if you could pare that down to just the gene/plasmid/sequence(s) you are interested in? MacVector to the rescue as it can read and filter fast/q files, even if they […]

Posted in Techniques | Tagged , | Comments closed

MacVectorTip: Use Bowtie to remove contaminating reads prior to NGS Assembly

MacVector with Assembler can use Velvet and/or SPAdes for fast and memory efficient de novo NGS assembly of modest sized genomes (typically up to 40 Mbp or so) even on a laptop. One common task is to assemble NGS data from BAC clones.However, one problem that often arises is that the BAC DNA preparations may […]

Posted in Techniques | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Applescript: batch translation of CDS features

Apple’s AppleScript (along with Javascript for Automation) is an easy to write and easy to understand language that allows you to easily automate tasks in supported applications. Many Apple applications have a AppleScript Dictionary that defines what functions you can automate. MacVector has many such functions in its AppleScript Dictionary. You can auto annotate multiple […]

Posted in Techniques, Tips | Tagged , , | Comments closed

MacVector 18.1 and the new InterProScan functional domain analysis tool

MacVector allows you to do functional domain analysis on your protein sequence using the InterProScan service. InterPro contains multiple databases of protein families, domains and motifs and InterProScan will submit a protein sequence to a search of these databases. It will also do extra analysis such as transmembrane region analysis using TMHMM and other tools.MacVector […]

Posted in Releases | Tagged , | Comments closed