All Laboratory Notes Are Kept in an Electronic Notebook
Scientists perform experimental bench research using gels, columns, PCR, etc. on DNAs they are interested in studying. Notes are taken in a lab notebook. Often the same sequences are being studied in a sequence analysis package that may allow the user to save analysis results one window at a time. This often leads to collections of paper output from the analysis program that are cut and pasted into the paper lab notebook or else stored separately. This is not the best way for researchers to work. In the Gene Inspector, all laboratory notes are kept in an electronic notebook, which also serves as the site for all the sequence analysis results. Thus, the entire project – both sequence analyses and experimental results -- are stored in a single location. There is no artificial separation of analyses and discussion of experimental results.

Track Projects Using Bookmarks, Appendices and Aliases
Bookmarks, appendices and aliases provide a convenient way to track different aspects of the same project and navigate within the GI notebook. Bookmarks can take a user to any location in the GI notebook instantly -- such as different experiments, a specific date, a page of buffer recipes, etc. Appendices are like appendices in a book and are accessible through a menu item. An appendix is opened in its own window (which is still part of the notebook) and can display often used information -- like an annotated sequence, a restriction map, experimental protocols, etc. Aliases function like aliases in the Macintosh Finder. An alias can be created to any object (including an appendix) and then the alias can be moved to any location, even to a different notebook. When the alias is double-clicked, the user is taken to the object pointed to by the alias; if the alias points to an object in a closed notebook, that notebook is opened and scrolled to the appropriate location. These enhanced and very natural navigation tools provide the user with a significantly more effective research notebook environment than their current paper notebooks.

Use the Gene Inspector Notebook as a Presentation Tool
The Gene Inspector notebook is designed to serve as more than just a repository for information. Because the Gene Inspector notebook can be resized and the layout easily changed, the Gene Inspector notebook can be used directly to generate posters, slides, and other illustrations for seminars and lectures. The background Gene Inspector notebook text can be "styled" as conditional text and then either shown or hidden. Thus, only the text you want to see will be shown when making the illustration. This enables the Gene Inspector notebook to serve as a daily workbook and also to be used as a presentation tool.

Hotlink an Analysis to a Sequence
Often a researcher will be working on a sequence that is constantly being refined. As new information about the sequence comes to light, there is a need to repeat all the analyses based on that sequence. The Gene Inspector has the ability to hotlink an analysis to a sequence. This means that when a sequence is changed, all dependent analyses can be updated automatically. There is no need to go back and define parameters and start the analysis again.

Define and Save an Entire Suite of Analyses
By changing the parameters used to run an analysis it is possible to get very different results. Thus, different researchers in the same lab might get results that cannot be compared realistically -- and they might not even realize the problem. The Gene Inspector allows users to define and save an entire suite of analyses with all associated parameters. Any user in a group can then choose the suite from a menu and perform analyses on new sequences and obtain directly comparable results. Therefore, the Gene Inspector's analysis suites can provide a consistency never before available -- making for more meaningful sequence analyses.