Toxicity, mutagenicity and transport in Saccharomyces cerevisiae of three popular DNA intercalating fluorescent dyes.

We have compared the toxicity, mutagenicity and transport in Saccharomyces cerevisiae of three DNA-intercalating fluorescent dyes widely used to stain DNA in gels. Safety data about ethidium bromide (EtBr) are contradictory, and two compounds of undisclosed structure (Redsafe and Gelred) have been proposed as safe alternatives. Our results indicate that all three compounds inhibit yeast growth, with Gelred being the most inhibitory and also the only one causing cell death.

Paintomics: a web based tool for the joint visualization of transcriptomics and metabolomics data.

Motivation: The development of the omics technologies such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics has made possible the realization of systems biology studies where biological systems are interrogated at different levels of biochemical activity (gene expression, protein activity and/or metabolite concentration). An effective approach to the analysis of these complex datasets is the joined visualization of the disparate biomolecular data on the framework of known biological pathways.

Results: We have developed the Paintomics web server as an easy-to-use bioinformatics resource that facilitates the integrated visual analysis of experiments where transcriptomics and metabolomics data have been measured on different conditions for the same samples.