My gels each have two or more identical reference lanes which I use to align with the active reference system. Do I need to create a new database entry for each reference lane?
No, you don’t. It is true that you cannot link multiple experiments from one experiment type to the same database entry; the relation is 'one to one'. However, BioNumerics and GelCompar II allow the creation of duplicate entries, i.e. entries that each contain another experiment generated from the same strain, organism or sample, for example, in reproducibility tests. These duplicate entries have the same key as the original entry, with an extension /#1, /#2, etc.
You can have the program create duplicate entries as follows. Drag an experiment, for example a gel lane (purple arrow), to a database entry that already contains an experiment of this type (green dot is shown). The program now asks to confirm to create a duplicate key for the entry. Answer Yes to create a duplicate of the entry.
When no information is filled in for a duplicate entry, the information of the original entry is automatically taken over and shown in gray. If you change a field in a duplicate entry, the change is preserved and the field is shown in black.