User guide

1-1
1. Introduction
1.1 Overview of Quantity One
Quantity One
®
is a powerful, flexible software package for imaging and
analyzing 1-D electrophoresis gels, dot blots and other arrays, and colonies.
The software runs in a Windows or Macintosh environment and has a
graphical interface with standard pull-down menus, toolbars, and keyboard
commands.
Quantity One can image and analyze a wide variety of biological data,
including radioactive, chemiluminescent, fluorescent, and color-stained
samples acquired from densitometers, phosphor imagers, fluorescent
imagers, and gel documentation systems.
An image of a sample is captured using the controls in the imaging device
window and displayed on your computer monitor. Image processing and
analysis operations are performed using commands from the menus and
toolbars.
Images can be magnified, annotated, rotated, and resized. They can be
printed using standard and video printers.
All data in the image can be quickly and accurately quantitated using the
Volume tools.
The lane-based functions can be used to calculate molecular weights,
isoelectric points, VNTRs, Rf values, and other values. The software can
measure total and average quantities, determine relative and actual amounts
of protein, and count colonies in a Petri dish.
The software can cope with distortions in the shape of lanes and bands. Lanes
can be adjusted along their lengths to compensate for any curvature or
smiling of gels.
Data captured by the imaging device are stored in a file under a user-defined
name. Files can be shared among all the Discovery Series™ software, or