Invitrogen last week announced it has launched BG01v/hOG, a new engineered stem cell line that it said will allow scientists to monitor the pluripotency of human embryonic stem cells without sacrificing the cells. According to the company, BG01v/hOG is the first stem cell line with this characteristic to be made generally available for sale.
The BG01v/hOG line is obtained by engineering the BG01v hESC line with the Oct-4 promoter, a known pluripotency marker, coupled with a green fluorescent protein reporter. The engineered line glows green when the cells are in a pluripotent state, but the cells lose their fluorescence as they start to differentiate.
In addition, the cells can be used as a reporter of the cell culture's response to external stimuli, including media composition and stress. This offers researchers a control to better monitor whether their culture conditions are adequate for keeping the hESCs in an undifferentiated state, the company said.
Eppendorf North America this week introduced Eppendorf Plates Deepwell 96 and 384. The plates feature RecoverMax well design, which maximizes the recovery of valuable samples and minimizes contamination risk, the company said. The product also features OptiTrack alphanumeric coding to ease identification of individual wells and reduce error.
Plates 96/500 µl, 96/1,000 µl, 96/2,000 µl, and 384/200 µl are available in white, yellow, red, green, and blue, in addition to standard, sterile, DNA/RNA LoBind, and Protein LoBind quality formats. 96/2,000 µl plates are available in only the standard and sterile formats.