MacVectorTip: Grayed out graphics indicate Missing Features

If the graphics in a nucleic acid sequence Map tab appear somewhat “washed out” it is because the graphic items represent common features that MacVector has found that are not annotated on the sequence. For example, here are the Map and Feature tabs of an unannotated cloning vector. You can see a number of features […]

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MacVectorTip: Changing the font used in the Editor, Results and other windows

MacVector is very customizable in how you can produce graphical maps of sequences, assemblies, alignments and more. You can also change the default appearance of MacVector itself. The font used in the Editor and Results window can be changed and increased in size. You are limited to using fixed width fonts (such as Andale Mono […]

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Show or hide the RE Picker and the Graphics Palette from the toolbar

MacVector 17’s brand new Restriction Enzyme Picker gives you an interactive way to quickly show what enzymes will digest your sequence. You can dynamically filter what sites are displayed. For example to show just 3’ overhang cutters or use other criteria. What’s more is that you can take a set of cut sites from one […]

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Use the Replica Button For Synchronized Views

Most primary MacVector windows (Nucleic Acid Sequence, Protein Sequence, Multiple Sequence Alignment, Align To Reference, Contig Assembly etc.) have a Replica toolbar button. If you click that button, a second window will open, potentially set to a different tab. The key to this functionality is that the two windows are linked – any selections you […]

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Controlling Automatic ORF Display

MacVector 15.5 automatically scans every DNA sequence window for open reading frames and displays the results in the Map tab. The setting for this are controlled by the MacVector | Preferences | DNA Map pane, along with the automatic Show restriction sites settings. The Minimum Number of Codons setting is fairly obvious. 5’ ends are […]

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How to change the default appearance of RE sites

MacVector is extremely customizable. If you don’t like the defaults we supply, its very easy to change them. Lets look at restriction enzyme sites. By default we show unique sites in small red letters and sites that cut more than once in small blue letters. But suppose you want something bigger, bolder and, well, more […]

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How to increase the number of graphics levels to stop features overlapping.

MacVector tries to optimize the Map graphics layout using a trade-off between performance and minimizing unnecessary white space. Sometimes the default settings we have chosen are not ideal, particularly if you are looking at the Map tab of an Align To Reference window where you have a large number of reads overlapping the same region. […]

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Designing and documenting cloning strategies

Designing cloning strategies is easy with the Cloning Clipboard. You can perform quite complex ligations by simply dragging compatible ends together. However, when you open this construct a year later, you don’t want to have to look back in your lab book to know how you generated it. Neither do you need to! MacVector fully […]

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Editing the appearance of your sequence maps

Although we think that the default appearance of sequence maps in MacVector is very pretty, sometimes the defaults are not to everybody’s taste! If you think this way, then changing how maps look is very easy. As usual with MacVector, there are many ways to quickly edit the appearance of a feature or multiple features. […]

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The Importance of Topology

MacVector understands the difference between circular DNA molecules and linear DNA molecules. Not just from the standpoint of how the molecule is displayed on the screen, but also in regard to how the analysis algorithms handle the junction at the ends of the circle. The Topology button controls the underlying linear versus circular state of […]

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