Sekisui XenoTech have announced the addition of Rodent Hepatocytes to their patented CryostaX® product line.

The CryostaX® in vitro drug discovery and preclinical drug development test system is continuously expanding with these new pooled Sprague-Dawley rat hepatocytes  released in July, and pooled CD-1 mouse hepatocytes soon to be launched.

CryostaX® hepatocytes are liver cells that are prepared using a patented process that produces unique cryopreserved cell pellets. This single-freeze preparation process provides greater convenience to researchers, versatile pooling options, and minimizes freeze-thaw injury to the cells, which promotes high viability, cell yield and enzymatic activity for longer-term, consistent test results. What else makes Cryostax a popular choice for researchers?

With their polycationic properties, polyamine organic compounds are involved in various biological functions (DNA-RNA interaction, gene expression…), and can also be considered as cancer marker.

In this post, I’m pleased to introduce the first intra-cellular polyamine imaging reagent which works without any pre-treatment or cell lysis. This innovative reagent can be used for live cells, thus making it suitable for detection or semi-quantitative analysis of intra-cellular polyamines.

As with this painted representation of (surrealist!) DNA, to a certain extent, molecular cloning is an art.

Unfortunately for newcomers, or fortunately for experts, it’s required for many downstream applications including protein production and cell engineering to develop cell-based assays. ORF expression is also a major tool for understanding a protein function via overexpression study.

In short, to develop the potential of cell biology research, it’s often a question of adopting a “smart molecular biology” approach. Along the way though, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to avoid using cloning vectors and other related molecular cloning tools.

However… luckily, fast and simple cloning is possible! Mainly thanks to the smart kits and systems that I’ll explain more about in this post. And for your complete peace of mind, there are also ORF expression clones…

The innate immune system is the body’s crucial first defense against viral infections and it is dependent upon a group of pattern recognition receptors. cGMP-AMP Synthase (cGAS) responds to the presence of DNA in the cytosol by producing 2’,3’cGAMP. Cyclic GAMP in turn binds to STING leading to TBK1-mediated IRF3 activation and the production of type 1 IFN.

Understanding the STING cell signalling pathway and the role cGAMP plays in a number of important areas, such as infection, cancer, inflammation & senescence, relies on cGAMP measurement. Good news – Arbor Assays have just released a new cGAMP EIA kit, read on to learn more!