Author Archives: Kevin

101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #32 – Understanding The Sequence Find Function

We get quite a lot of support requests from users unsure of how to use the Find functionality in MacVector. It has changed somewhat over the years to try to simplify the interface, but there are still a few things to be aware of. You can invoke the Find function by bringing a sequence window […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #31 – Exporting Subsequences To Excel

Many MacVector users like to keep track of primers used in the lab by maintaining them in a MacVector Nucleic Acid Subsequence file. I discussed this in a previous post and later described how to create a primer “database” from a Microsoft Excel file. We recently had a support request asking how to do the […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #30 – Submitting Sequences To GenBank using Sequin

Note: while preparing this blog post we discovered a bug in MacVector 12.7.4 that prevents submission using the exact steps shown here. Be sure you are using MacVector 12.7.5 or later which has the bug fixed. If you are using an earlier version, send an e-mail to support@macvector.com and we’ll send you the details of […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #29 – Option-Click to Close All Windows

If you are like me, you often find yourself with many, many windows open while using MacVector. Sometimes you just want to get rid of everything and start all over again with a different project. You can always just quit MacVector and start again, but there is an easier way: Hold down the option key […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #28 – Identifying Methylation Blocked Restriction Sites

A big thanks to Jeffrey Dvorin at Boston Children’s Hospital for this great suggestion. Most common laboratory strains of E. coli contain a number of methylase enzymes that modify DNA residues, preventing certain restriction enzymes from cutting DNA isolated from those strains. The two most relevant enzymes are the Dam methylase that methylates the A […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #27 – Documenting Gibson Assemblies

We’ve had a few MacVector users ask us recently if MacVector can be used to create constructs using the increasingly popular “Gibson Assembly” method. For those who are not familiar with this method, it was first described in 2009 by Daniel Gibson of the J. Craig Venter Institute. They showed that you can assemble multiple […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #26 – Creating Features Automatically

Following on from my recent posts on manual and semi-manual creation of features, the next approach I want to discuss is a fully automated function for creating features. How often do you get sent plain sequences that have no features annotated, even though you know your favorite gene is on there, along with a few […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #25 – Creating Features from Analysis Results

In my last post I described how you can quickly create and annotate features onto a DNA sequence, although the post was primarily aimed at users who are new to MacVector. In this post I’ll take a look at how you can quickly and easily annotate a DNA sequence with features based on the results […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #24 – Creating Features

This is a tip primarily aimed at new users of MacVector, but may be of interest to anyone who wants better understand the way MacVector handles features. MacVector can create wonderfully detailed graphical maps of a sequence, showing all the points of interest, restriction sites, open reading frames etc. However, each item to be displayed […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #23 – Viewing Publications

If you ever download sequences from Entrez, or open a GenBank formatted sequence file, you will often see PUBMED entries in the Annotations tab with blue colored numeric IDs; The blue color indicates that this is a link that you can use to retrieve an abstract of the publications. If you double-click on the PUBMED […]

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