Category: Tips
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de novo assembly with Velvet
Velvet is a short read aligner that works very well on a wide variety of reads. Velvet excels at de novo assembly of sequencing reads from second and newer generation sequencers. In our latest release, MacVector 13, we’ve added Velvet to Assembler. This joins the existing tools, Phrap for Sanger sequencing reads and Bowtie for…
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Calculating the melting temperature of PCR primers
Calculating an accurate melting temperature of your oligos, your template and of the predicted product is important to set the cycling parameters of your PCR machine. The Tm calculations in MacVector were updated in MacVector 12.6 to use a more modern algorithm. MacVector has always used thermodynamic “nearest neighbor” calculations, but there were two changes…
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Troubleshooting: Resetting MacVector’s preferences
MacVector generally just works. However, even the most well behaved of applications sometime have problems. If you have restarted the application and restarted your Mac then a good troubleshooting step to perform next is to reset your preferences. For Mountain Lion and earlier deleting the preferences meant opening up Finder, navigating to your ~/Library folder…
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Importing sequences from ENSEMBL
There’s a few different ways to import annotation from the ENSEMBL database browser, as well as other databases. Using Genbank The easiest way to export from ENSEMBL and keep all annotation is to use the Genbank format. The default format will be FASTA which has no annotation. With Genbank all the annotation is stored in…
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Implementing a new activation code for network license users
When you’ve got a lot of licenses and a lot of computers to manage, a network license is the most effective way of letting your users access their favourite sequence analysis app for the Mac! MacVector network license use the KeyServer network license software from Sassafras. However, in addition to the KeyServer setup MacVector also…
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Testing primers with MacVector 13
New to MacVector 13 is the ability to quickly test a pair of primers. Previously to test a pair of primers with the Primer3 tool you needed to modify the expected product and reduce the stringency of all parameters so that your primers would be accepted. Now when you enter a pair of primers into…
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MacVector and Applescript
Up to MacVector 13 MacVector has had limited Applescript support. The current release (12.7.5) is able to open sequences, print them and that’s about it! We’ve had frequent requests for MacVector to batch process files. So with the new release (coming very soon) you can batch process files. No analysis can be undertaken just yet…
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MacVector 12.7 Training Workshop, LMB, Cambridge
When: Thursday 19th September, 2013, 2:00 – 4:00, Where: Max Perutz Lecture Theatre, LMB Chris Lindley of MacVector, Inc. will be giving a workshop for both novice and advanced users of MacVector, reviewing both basic and advanced functions in MacVector. In particular, he will highlight the new functionality introduced over the past two years to MacVector.…
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Using Blast and Entrez in MacVector with a proxy server
Blast and Entrez connect to the NCBI server using the normal “http” ports (exactly the same as if it was a web browser). If a web browser can access the NCBI’s server then MacVector should be able to. The address for the Blast server is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/blast/Blast.cgi However, if you get the following error message then…
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Removing a restriction site by linearising and religating a plasmid
Being able to remove a restriction site by digesting to linearise a plasmid, Klenow treating then religating the linear fragment is a very useful trick and an often requested feature. This is now possible with the new Cloning Clipboard in MacVector 12.7. select the enzyme recognition site you want to remove Click DIGEST to linearize…