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My Handbook of Fluorescent Probes and Research Products, now in its ninth edition, has undergone several changes since publication of the most recent print edition in November of 1996. First, the name of the series has changed from "... Research Chemicals" to "... Research Products" to better reflect Molecular Probes' expanding activity in the biosciences. Use of color throughout greatly enhances our ability to illustrate the applications of our detection reagents. The number of products, of course, has also increased, resulting in a book of about 1000 pages — a marked increase from the 680 pages of the sixth edition.
Since publication of the sixth edition, Molecular Probes has developed some particularly important detection technologies. One of the leading new technologies is our Alexa Fluor series of dyes, which we use extensively for core technologies in antibody and nucleic acid labeling, receptor and organelle stains and neuronal tracers. Combining the Alexa Fluor dyes with tyramide signal amplification provides superior sensitivity for the detection of low-abundance targets in cells and tissues and in fluorescence in situ hybridization. Our brand new Zenon antibody labeling technology is likely to become the dominant method for labeling primary antibodies and for immunolabeling tissues.
Updating and production of this Handbook has involved considerable work on the part of many people at Molecular Probes. The content is available and continuously updated at our Web site (http://www.probes.com), but converting the thousands of electronic links to print format would not have been possible without the outstanding efforts of Erik Miller. Jay Gregory served as Editor for this edition of the Handbook, and Michelle Spence, who was Editor of the sixth edition, served as Continuity Editor for the ninth edition. Iain Johnson again was Technical Information Coordinator, with responsibility for all data tables and spectra. Kathleen Free, Jill Hendrickson, Iain Johnson and Chip Walker assisted in providing and editing the content of various chapters. The physical production of this Handbook was the work of our graphic artists (Rakar West, Isamu Sato, Lynn Soderberg and Joanna deFelice) and our pre-production digital file conversion specialists (Cindi Brown, Kathleen Simpson and Miriam Sisson, led by Lynda Gansel), with editorial assistance from Aaron Basey, Melody Ouellet and Mary Wisegarver. Last, but not least, this Handbook is the product of the scientists at Molecular Probes who helped to develop the technology, many of whom contributed directly to the publication (especially in the areas of data collection and photomicrography). Without the input and support of all these people, this Handbook would never have been possible.
Finally, I wish to thank all of the loyal customers from around the world who have supported Molecular Probes and continue to use our detection reagents. This has been a period of outstanding growth, both for Molecular Probes and for scientific research that makes use of fluorescence technology.
Sincerely,
Richard P. Haugland, Ph.D.
President, Molecular Probes, Inc.
Molecular Probes, Inc.
