This is a really simple little thing, but
could save you lots
of time and effort. First of all, you need
to understand that
I like to think of 96 well plates in terms of
rows and columns.
If we were to put numbers on the wells, A1 = 1 B1 = 2 C1 = 3 etc.
When I want to run every sample from a plate on
a gell, I use
a multi-chanel pipette to load my gel.
It would be an enormous
chore to load each well individually. However,
the wells are
spaced such that when I load with the multi-channel,
every
other well is loaded. So, the sample in
A1 of my plate is the
first sample on the gel, with A2 being the second,
B1 being
the third, B2 the fourth, and so on.
Now, when I set up my PCRs, I use a plate grid,
and then enter
this into Excel. This gives me a worksheet
like this:
| Well | Sample | Genotype |
| A1 | S1 | ? |
| B1 | S2 | ? |
| C1 | S3 | ? |
| D1 | S4 | ? |
In order to facilitate reading from the gel, this
macro will change
the order of the samples, to be that of the way
they were loaded:
| Well | Sample | Genotype |
| A1 | S1 | ? |
| A2 | S9 | ? |
| B1 | S2 | ? |
| B2 | S11 | ? |
Then, I just read the gel, filling in the genotype, or whatever!
It is important to note that I have set this up
so that the first row
of information needs to be row number 11.
I use this in conjuction
with another macro to import data from various
sources into my
databases. The TaqManIn macro reads the
finished genotyping
from TaqMan assays, and puts them into my genotype
database,
wich is really just a large spreadsheet.
For more, check out the
TaqManIn macro.
If you need modifications, make them known through the project.
Description of the macro.
Download the macro.
Back to the program list.
This page was last updated on: August 28, 2002 by David G. Cox