Use Clover

What can Clover do?

The services provided by Clover can be easily seen at the "Home" page.

However, before you could do anything, you need data in the Clover database. Please see:

• How to import data to Clover?
• How to input, edit, delete, and check a record?

Stocks

Stocks provide service to view, search, and edit stocks such as "Argobacterium Stock", "Primer Stock", and "Seed Stock". Choose the database you want in the dropdown menu to view and search.
For searching, you can do three things which can be combined, too:

• Type the keyword in the main search box at the right-up corner of the table. Clover will search this keyword in all searchable fields and return the result in real time. Please be noticed that complex queries will not work. For instance, typing "Yeast and Plasmid" will not obtain records that contains both "Yeast" and "Plasmid".
• Type the keyword in the foot search box to search for records contain this keyword in this field.
• Check the "Lookup Jargons during search". This will ask Clover to lookup Jargons database to find interchangeable terms for the keyword and use these terms for searching too. Please note that only the first 10 words in the input text separated by space, comma, semicolon, colon, slash, backslash, and vertical bar will be checked for interchangeable terms in Jargons and only the first 10 terms (including the input text) will be used.

Jargons

Jargons are commonly used in daily research and may be also used in lab notes. However, jargon information can be easily lost if not properly maintained. For instance, "TC4" was first used as a gene name during research, and in the final publication, you decided to use "Ran" as the gene name. Then, "TC4" used in all lab records and tube labels may be unknown to other lab members. The "Jargons" function is to solve this problem.

For the official term "Ran", its jargon will be "TC4", and the comments will be "ras-related nuclear protein; small GTPase". If you search in the Stocks databases, checked the "Lookup Jargons during search", and typed in Ran, Clover will check the "Jargons" database and find "TC4" as an interchangeable term. Then, both "Ran" and "TC4" will be used in your search.

It does not matter to Clover if you put "TC4" as a term and "Ran" as a jargon, but this matters to other lab members for understanding which one is the official name. However, please do not put the long description like "ras-related nuclear protein; small GTPase" in either of these two fields. Doing so will affect the Jargon-enabled stock search.

Catalogs

Catalogs hold catalog information and facilitate ordering. If there is a key person in charge of ordering, this is especially useful. Lab members can search and submit order request using "Catalogs", and the person who is in charge of ordering can check the "Orders" tab to take care of ordering.

To add an order, find the item you want, click , edit quantity, and click OK. You will see your order in the Orders tab.

Orders

Orders stores and handle the ordering information. Have you ever been annoyed by old lab members who did not leave order information of the reagents commonly used in your lab? "Orders" is to avoid this, since you can easily find old order requests, check whether it has been ordered or received, or easily submit same order request again.

How to use "Orders"?

• Choose the time period you want to search in the datetime pickup box.
• You can search previous orders by typing in keywords.
• Items have not been ordered will have an icon, and click it to mark this item as ordered, a date will automatically fill in that field indicating when it is ordered.
• Items have not been received will have an icon, and click it to mark it as arrived. A date will automatically fill in that field indicating when it is arrived.

Sniper

Sniper is a very useful tool to find the primers in the database that can align on your input DNA sequence. To use it, click the "Sniper a DNA sequence" button, a dialog will show up. Paste the DNA sequence in the text box, make some changes in the settings if you want, and click OK. The result will be in a table showing the primers that can align on the DNA and where they align. Please be noted that one primer may have multiple aligning sites on a DNA sequence, please check the result thoroughly before using it for PCR.

Please be noted that, for each primer, Clover only use its 3' fragment that equal or above the set Tm to match your input DNA sequence. Therefore, the result primers may not perfectly align on your input DNA sequence.

Roster

In Raster you can see all the users in the system. On the row of your name, click to change your password. To edit your account information, or if you are an admin, you can also click to edit a user. For example, you want to change the identity of an user, you should click on the row of that user, choose the identity you want, and click OK. If you do not see any of these icons, it means that you do not have rights to do it.

For detailed information of account management please see here. (sourceforge.net)