Svg on Michael’s Domain

Purifying Proteins with Äkta & Unicorn

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Proteins (and other biomolecules) are mostly purified by chromatographic methods. There are a few vendors that have designed dedicated chromatography systems that are optimized for biomolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and viruses. The most well-known systems are BioRad’s NGC and Cytiva’s Äkta lines. Our faculty has recently acquired an Äkta Avant, and we are almost ready with setting it up. It’s already integrated into the reservation system. Only the automated backup system is still missing. I have been using Äkta devices since 1996, when Professor Jorma Keski-Oja bought one of the first Äkta Explorers for the Haartman Institute. The software was and still is Unicorn, but we are at version 7 now, which has a modern look when compared to the Unicorn versions from the last millennium: much less messy and cluttered. However, even after more than 10 years of development, Unicorn 7 is not yet at feature parity with the old versions. Hence, its Evaluation module offers you the option to switch back to Evaluation Classic. E.g., if you want to present personalized and stylish chromatograms in your talks, you still need Evaluation Classic! The new Evaluation module does have quick buttons to import curves into presentation software such as PowerPoint, but it is all pixel-based and therefore not easily editable after export. You want to export your curves into the industry-standard vector graphics file: SVG. You can edit it with any modern vector graphics editor, such as Canva, Adobe Illustrator, or Inkscape. When you right-click inside the chromatogram in Evaluation Classic, you have the option to save the chromatogram as a meta file. However, in the recent Unicorn version, this results in an error on Windows 11. But there is a workaround:

Images for talks and illustrations

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I promised in January to list websites where you can find free images ( free as in beer and free as in speech ). And then I forgot about the promise. Since I mostly use Inkscape to draw illustrations, I normally search for SVG images. Inkscape is an open-source software that generates vector graphics. SVG is not only the web standard for vector graphics but also the native file format for Inkscape. Sometimes, PNG or JPEG images are also acceptable if they can be easily converted into SVG images (e.g., silhouettes). Occasionally, I look for 3D images (“models”), and then I prefer them in Blender format (the only 3D software that I have used more than just a few times).There are two different types of free images on the web: Public Domain and Creative Commons . Public Domain images can be used without restrictions, while Creative Commons images typically come with some restrictions. The most common restriction for CC-licensed images is that you need to credit the creator. Sometimes, there are additional restrictions, such as prohibiting commercial use or modifications.When you do an image search with Google or DuckDuckGo , you can restrict the view to images that conform to a specific license. However, Google and DuckDuckGo cover only a fraction of the internet, and there are search sites that have specialized in searching for specific images.You may also ask AI to generate the perfect image. It typically requires several iterations to get something useful, and you will never be able to get copyrights for the image, even though you spent hours engineering the perfect prompt. You can try e.g., DALL·E 3 , or you can even run some AI image generators on your own computer like Stable Diffusion . The image above was generated with DALL·E 3, using the following prompt: “A person surrounded by images, symbolizing the search for the perfect image.”

Why you should not use BioRender

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

About two years ago, our university started subscribing to an institutional plan for BioRender . BioRender is a browser-based scientific illustration software with a large library of pre-made items, including complex illustrations. It allows you to illustrate scientific concepts quickly or to make flow charts for your experimental setups. And given how easy it is to use, the results look rather slick. It’s like the McDonald’s of scientific illustration. It’s fast and gets the job done. Sure, the food in a 3-star Michelin restaurant tastes much better, but most of us rarely can afford that luxury.Why should you not use it despite all of the advantages mentioned above?

How to convert EMF files into SVG format

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The need for this appeared because the Unicorn software that controls our Äkta Explorer can only export the raw chromatographic curves in EMF format. Pathetic. After trying out various things, I went with OpenOffice. OpenOffice Draw can import EMF files and save as SVG. Other applications capable of opening EMF are FreeHand and CorelDraw (tested on Macintosh). However, FreeHand cannot export as SVG.