MoBEES: a facility for Molecular Studies in Biodiversity, Ecology, and Environmental Sciences

了解基因如何影响生物的形态、功能和适合性是进化遗传学的一个基本目标。因此，基因表达分析对研究进展至关重要，但这种分析往往受到传统实时PCR的统计分辨率和能力的限制。这一限制往往掩盖了基因表达的重要生物学变异，阻碍了对适应性复杂特征的功能基因组基础的全面和准确的探索。然而，允许超精确测量基因表达的新技术绕过了这一缺点。这项创新是由“数字液滴”聚合酶链式反应(DdPCR)技术实现的，它提供了比传统基因表达技术高出数量级的精确度和灵敏度。分子生物学的这一突破类似于像素数量和数字图像分辨率之间的关系，使生物学家能够以前所未有的方式‘看到’基因的功能。

Understanding how genes influence the form, function and fitness of living organisms is a fundamental goal of evolutionary genetics. Gene expression analysis is therefore vital to research progress, yet this analysis is often constrained by limits to the statistical resolution and power of conventional real-time PCR. This limit frequently masks biologically important variation in gene expression and prevents a comprehensive and accurate exploration of the functional genomic underpinning of adaptively complex traits. This shortcoming is circumvented, however, by new technology that allows for the ultra-precise measurement of gene expression. This innovation, made possible by 'digital droplet' polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) technology provides orders of magnitude more precision and sensitivity than conventional gene expression technology. This break-through for molecular biology is analogous to the relationship between the number of pixels and the resolution of a digital image, allowing biologists to 'see' what genes are doing like never before.