Immunofluorescence of monoclonal antibody to SQSTM1 on HeLa cell. [antibody concentration 10 ug/ml] (Cat No. H00008878-M01).

Autophagy was first described in the 60s, and it presents clear differences vs apoptosis. While apoptosis is a mechanism that kills the cells (apoptosis = self-killing), autophagy is more related to the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components (autophagy = self-eating).

I have to admit that I never received the Fields Medal in Mathematics. Therefore, I won’t be able to develop this equation and prove that I’m right. However, what I can prove, is that in cell culture, 2 = 5.  How is this possible?

Visualizing fixed cells and tissues only gives snapshots of cellular processes. To have a better insight into dynamic events ocurring in the cells or to vizualize interactions between various cellular components in real time (e.g., proteins, organelles, second messengers…), powerful microscopic approaches have been developed over the past decade. This post will review the recent live cell imaging probes developed by Goryo Chemicalsand available in Europe through tebu-bio.

The main challenge when choosing a transfection reagent is that we don’t know how it will work with our own cell type of interest. It is also time consuming to find the optimal conditions. Well, here’s the solution:  pre-optimised transfection reagents.

Pre-optimised transfection of pEGFP-N3 plasmid expressing eGFP under CMV promoter

They already cover more than 39 cell types including MEF, Caco-2, MCF-7, HepG2, Primary Macrophages, Huh-7 and many others.

Sharing our feedback on performances

Using a vector expressing the eGFP (pEGFP-N3) under CMV promotor, we assessed the transfection efficiency. Take a look at the example of results below. They will give you a pretty good idea of what you can expect.

Transfection efficiencies with pre-optimised Genjet reagents

Can we compare the pre-optimised Genjet?

Ok, now you can see we got good feedback. Still, will it be a better solution?

The answer is yes. The comparison with Lipofectamines, Fugene HD and Amaxa reveals that pre-optimised Genjet reagents allow high number of positive cells (dark green below).

You can see on right of each picture just above, that performances are even better with 10% serum, that would be much appreciated by the cells.

Furthermore, this quality is associated to low price. Check it for yourself!