I’m giving a talk as part of a forum on blogging for science publishers later this month and have been digging through the usage numbers for this blog. I was surprised at what I found. From my subjective point of view, I would have assumed that the various posts I’ve done on publishing and Web 2.0 were by far the most read on the site, as those are the ones that have spurred nearly all the discussion here and nearly all the incoming links. The numbers tell a different story. While yes, a few Web 2.0 posts have gotten a lot of attention (they rank 2 and 4 in page hits over the history of this blog), the rest of the top 10 are all science and protocol related (one exception–a post on the 25th anniversary of Molecular Cloning). The most read post on this blog is one about Keller explants (are there really that many Xenopus development labs out there?), number 3 is about BLAST and number 5 is about DNA/RNA Delivery. This was both surprising and gratifying–the main reason we created this blog was to help expose our protocol articles and to help researchers find the material they need to get their experiments done. People are using the blog as a discovery tool. Presumably the entries in this blog turn up in Google searches and are leading readers to CSH Protocols.

—article continues—
Read the rest of this entry »

The May issue of CSH Protocols is now live, and in it you’ll find featured articles on classic techniques for the analysis of chromosomes. With the leaps and bounds being made in epigenetics these days, knowing your way around chromatin becomes even more valuable. This month’s freely accessible articles give you methods for chromosome analysis in Drosophila and in Mouse.

Mapping Protein Distributions on Polytene Chromosomes by Immunostaining takes advantage of the formidable size and structure of the large polytene chromosomes found in Drosophila salivary glands. These easily dissected chromosomes allow mapping of chromosomal protein distributions at very high resolution. May’s issue also contains a protocol for the Dissection of Larval Salivary Glands and Polytene Chromosome Preparation.

The second featured method for May, Karyotyping Mouse Cells, is drawn from the widely used laboratory manual Manipulating the Mouse Embryo. A karyotype is a visual presentation of a cell’s chromosomes, and can be used as a test for quickly identifying chromosomal abnormalities.