Thursday, September 6, 2007

Capturing your images from FinchTV: PCs with Windows

As many of you know, FinchTV is wonderful tool for viewing and editing the trace files from your chromatograms.



Naturally, many people would like to be able to generate images from FinchTV for publications and talks.

In this post, I'm going to describe how to capture your images from FinchTV if you're using a PC with Windows. In the next post, I'll write about capturing images on Macs.


If you're using a PC with Windows
  1. Open some kind of program for storing the image - this could be any image editing program or even a program like Microsoft Word.

  2. Open FinchTV and find the part of the trace that you want to capture.

  3. Hold the shift key down, then press the Ctrl key, and the PrintScrn key. This will capture whichever window is active. Since you were just working with FinchTV, you should have captured the FinchTV window.

  4. Open a new document in Word, PowerPoint, or whatever image program you're using.

  5. Click the Ctrl key and the V key to paste the image in the document.

  6. Edit as necessary.


Addendum: I've also been told that Snagit is another really nice screen capture program for PCs.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Got DNA sequencing problems? Who ya gonna call?

Modified from my original post at Discovering Biology in a Digital World.


Why the ABRF of course!

Some DNA samples are more troublesome than others.

Luckily, when you have a group of people with members who sequence 25,000 DNA samples a month, or more, you also have a wealth of experience and knowledge that's invaluable when you encounter that one strange sample.

I think the members of the Association for Biomedical Resource Facilities (ABRF) are well-known for their willingness to help. From poor quality DNA to mixed samples, to mysterious or missing primers, They've seen it all and are willing to share strategies for solving the problem.

One of the really nice things, that the ABRF has developed, is the DNA sequencing Research Group's guide to trouble-shooting sequencing problems.

Are your arrays behaving strangely? Do you have weird things happen after long stretches of the same base? Are your customers asking you to use new techniques for SNP detection?

The ABRF is the place to go.

Welcome to FinchTalk!

We will use this setting to post quick tips that we've found helpful for working with Finch, ideas for getting more from your data, and information about new products.

Enjoy!