Novagen and Lab Rats
After waxing lyrical about the NEB Catalogue I’ve found that Novagen have some really useful resources too. In my line of work we try to express proteins that have as little vector sequence as possible, so use an in-house vector that is essentially pBR322 with a T7 promoter, Shine-Dalgarno and TATA boxes and a useful multiple cloning site. NdeI and NcoI are there (CATATG, CCATGG, remember) as well, meaning we can start translating at the first methionine codon without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspacegetting the frame right, minimizing extraneous linker residues, etc., etc.
Of course sometimes it just doesn’t work or there’s binding assays to be done and we need to express something with a tag. Our favourite tool for tags is the pET series of vectors from Novagen. GST, His, S, TRX, in a bewildering variety of combinations, positions and antibiotic resistance. To help the addled researcher through this minefield (I can oft be heard muttering the mantra “pET41 is kan, pEt41 is kan”) Novagen produce a wall poster with all their vectors and their essential features.
I’ve just had to check whether one of my constructs will work in a certain coupled in vitro transcription/translation kit, and went round the corner to find that some bastard has taken down the poster and it’s missing and no one knows where the feck it is.
Grr, I really hate the people I work with, some days. The good news is that I’ve found me coloured stickies! W00t!
Random iTunes Selection: Black Dog, Led Zeppelin
Mood: purple
May 11th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
To be Novagen or not to be….didn’t they get bought out by somebody else?
May 12th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Novagen was bought by EMD Biosciences…at one point the company was called Calbiochem-Novabiochem-Novagen. Guess they decided that was too much of a mouthful (though rather memorable) and decided to simplify thei identity by calling themselves EMD (where EMD comes from I don’t know - you think they would have used a contraction of Calbiochem-Novabiochem-Novagen and called themselves “CNN”…okay now I know why they didn’t do that) Now if you’re not yet truly confused by who this company is, they’re actuall Merck Biosciences everywhere except America where they use the memorable EMD Biosciences moniker. Anyway, if you’re in the UK you click on their website and you see the Merck and the Novagen logos prominently displayed (guess Calbiochem and Novabiochem don’t rate in Blighty) plus the name of a new comer to the party “Clinalfa”. So I was hoping to pick up some Vioxx with my ELISA kit and clicked on the Merck logo only to find that Merck Biosciences is owned by Merck KgaA…it’s enough to give you a heart attack.