September’s issue of CSH Protocols is upon us (my, that was a quick summer–Kurt Weill sure knew what he was talking about). We’re featuring two protocols this month, both available freely to non-subscribers (as are all of our sample protocols). The first is for generating mouse models for squamous cell carcinoma and the second is for the Oligonucleotide Ligation Assay (OLA), used for finding Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP’s).

Michael Girardi’s group at Yale Medical School have written up their protocol for Cutaneous Two-Stage Chemical Carcinogenesis, which they use to generate animal models for studying the local, systemic and environmental factors that influence tumor susceptibility, growth and progression. Girardi’s lab focuses on the role of the immune system in oncogenesis, particularly T cell subsets.

Stuart MacDonald from the University of Kansas provides our second featured protocol this month, Genotyping by Oligonucleotide Ligation Assay (OLA). His lab uses a combination of genetic and molecular tools with computational and bioinformatic methods to examine genetic variation in Drosophila. This protocol uses a set of oligonucleotide probes to discriminate SNP alleles.