Life Science Tools of the Trade

One of the things about sitting down and solving a structure by NMR is that you don’t come into contact with a whole lot of reagents and suppliers. The one supplier I have to mention is Apple, or rather their educational store.

My new $SHINY still hasn’t arrived. It would have been less hassle to walk down to John Lewis and get the damn’ machine on my credit card and make a claim. I did see two G5 boxes as I came in past IT this morning, so I’m hoping one of them’s mine.

And those Litholoops I talked about last time? There’s a sampler pack which is ‘only’ twenty quid, which barely covers postage I guess. I think I’ll buy a few packs and see what they look like.

Until next time!

Mood: Mango
iTunes: Sweet Gene Vincent by Ian Dury Reasons To Be Cheerful

No, I’m not deeply depressed in spite of the blog title. I choose to find the silver lining inside every rain cloud. My recent (lack of) success with manuscripts does not make for a great 2005 (publication wise), but I’m set up with two papers in the bag for early 2006 when a low(er) impact journal recognizes the seminal nature of the work. See, I feel better already and I hope you do too! Is the glass half empty of is it half full of flat beer?

Invitrogen has a product called TrypLE, a recombinant enzyme obtained from microbial fermentation. This is a cell dissociation enzyme that is stable at room temperature for four months. The idea is that it works just like trypsin only it’s slightly more expensive. I’m not sure really what the advantage is of this product but if someone has tried it out and has an opinion, let me know!

In one of those curious coincidences that typify the incestuous nature of scientific relationships, I found myself sitting next to someone last night who works for one of our rather specialist suppliers. The occasion was my spouse’s company Christmas do, which took the form of an Elizabethan Banquet at Hatfield House. The person I was sat next do said something about mounting LithoLoops and it turns out she’s in their R&D department (such as it is). I was interested in this product earlier in the year but never got around to trying them, but now I have a way in I’m going to see if I can get some *cough*samples*cough*.

And now to the stupidity. Promega have sent mail (real mail, through the Royal Mail, - not this new-fangled electronic nonsense) to every single person in the building telling us that they’re holding an exhibition here next week. Never mind the rainforest the size of Wales that has just been sacrificed, what a complete waste of time and money. And they’ve said the exhibition will be . . . in a location that doesn’t actually exist. TGIF, eh?

To everyone at SAB - have a wonderful Thanksgiving and remember to give thanks for all that you have.

The travel dash is on and I’m one of the numbers this year. I’ve heard the airport is jammed and flights are delayed hours but somehow I’m convinced I’ll be seeing my family and snow tomorrow.

Have a great holiday!!

Today in lab started out fantastic! It has nothing to do with science but selling some fused glass jewelry. A day doesn’t get much better than when you can come into work and make a little money on the side. In my spare (non-scientific) hours, I work with fused glass. What a stress relief compared to the frustration of things not working in the lab. No matter how the glass piece comes out….it’s right! Maybe not quite what you expected but still not a failure.

I wonder….how would making a living as an artist be?

It’s a fairly slow day here in the lab…hard to accomplish much when it’s a short week! Since I had some time I figured I’d thumb through the technical newsletter I got in the mail.
Now, it’s not a new product by any stretch of the imagination but it never ceases to amaze me that someone actually buys pre-poured plates. The ad I’m looking at is for 10 plates….just 10! Not to mention that it costs $2.20 per plate. We would have to order the plates by the case for our lab.
How can these be cost effective for anyone to buy? If you really use that many plates it’s tons cheaper to pour your own. I know, you’ll tell me how much time you’ll save but really how long does it take to pour plates?!
I know everyone in this will be pouring plates for awhile….no way can I justify spending that much money for someone being lazy.

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript “________________________________________” Sadly, after very careful consideration we have decided that your manuscript is not very well suited for publication in N_______________.

An early Christmas gift, a lump of coal.

Impending …………doom or happiness. I’m still working to satisfy the reviewers. The experiments are reasonable although in my mind they add little to the manuscript. A second paper is submitted. Just in time for a Christmas rejection? Time will tell.
Maybe it would just be easier to drop down to the journals that are happy to have a paper submitted with impact factors of less than 1 (which means you don’t even reference your paper!)

SAB survey: What information am I likely to give inaccurately to a vendor. IF information is given, and it usually is not, it is accurate. I still get junk mail from my naive youth when I gave every vendor, joker, prostitute my address.

Gavrilevel: high and rising.

New and improved products that are neither new nor improved: various lipid based transfection products. I still stand by calcium phosphate. So cheap and easy.

Music: Wilco “Kicking Television” (I have better bootlegs than this-why did they release this as their first officail live disc?)

Book: “QUITTER” by Harvey Pekar (the author of American Splendor) with art by Dean Haspeil

The lab supply of FBS was dwindling and we decided it was time to stock up again. I called the company we had previously used to get a quote and found the price went up over $80 for 500ml!! This of course resulted in further quotes and looking into other companies and what their FBS was.

I can fully admit after all that I’m even more confused and amazed at the different types of FBS that are available. Low, mid-grade, and high endotoxin, heat inactivated or not, defined or not, US origin or not….the list goes on and on and the prices vary considerably.

My confusion led me to the cell culture facility here and a VERY important lesson. Most labs purchase FBS based on the company and not the serum itself. I admit, I didn’t end up getting the cheapest stuff. The old saying, you get what you pay for and all that. That being said I didn’t go for the most expensive either. I opted for the middle of the road serum and found out that’s what the facility uses for most of their cell lines.

I guess the point of all of this rambling is….if you are trying to save some money, make sure you’re not wasting it on FBS that you don’t need.

Despite being knee-deep in visa applications and related guff, I still have time to write here. I hope you all are suitably impressed and honoured.

I received a flyer from Oxford Cryostreams. Now you may not know if it’s not your field, but the biggest hazard in structural biology is not the X-rays or the magnets (because the safety systems in effect are pretty damn’ good) but the liquid nitrogen that we have to use at many stages. For crystals for example, it is usual to freeze them and keep them frozen in the X-ray beam in a stream of nitrogen/dry air at 100 Kelvin. Of course this means that you have to provide liquid nitrogen to a dewar that feeds the cryostream, which in turn means sloshing around gallons of the stuff. And although we have oxygen monitors and protective clothing it still gives me the willies (we had a Japanese post-doc in the X-ray room last Saturday night, dispensing nitrogen, oxygen alarm blaring and he was oblivious, just carrying on. Fortunate for him that someone was walking past!) just thinking about it.

Oxford Cryosystems now market a cryostream that completely avoids using liquid nitrogen. It still cools to 100 Kelvin in 20 minutes, but their ‘Cobra’ system uses gaseous nitrogen from a generator (in house or bought from them). OK, it’s expensive, but this could go a long way to reducing a very real hazard in the lab. The technology might not be innovative, but the application certainly is. A round of applause if you please.

Random iTunes Track: ‘Oh Happy Day’, Kelen Franco
Mood: MMMmmmmmBacon butties.

bdoehle asked the question “What do you do when science stinks”. My last week has covered the ups and downs of this often maddening career. A manuscript accepted conditionally. The first experiment (to satisfy the reviewers) worked perfectly, in duplicate. The second, of three, was a complete bust-it is unclear where it failed-RNA isolation, RT or the PCR reaction that followed. The negative was positive, the positive was negative (and don’t even think to ask “Did you mix up the samples” because I have never ever ever had that be the answer to a screwed up experiment). Later that day I resequenced some clones (no this does not count as an experiment but it does count as a failure) because I had some doubts based on some curious contradictory data, but no, those clones were right it was another one that had been sequenced about 5 times that had spontaneously spit out a nice 12 nt chunk of DNA leaving it still in frame and producing an “full lenth” protein and I guess this is on a run-on sentence but so what, I’m pissed at science and wonder why I do this and I’m not trying to brag but I have been pretty succesful and it still sucks when stuff doesn’t work and that accepted manuscript “high” lasts just until your next failure and then you get right behind the donkey and let it kick you in the head again and again and again. But tomorrow is another day. I guess I should look on the bright side and at least I’m not crawling into a mine to dig coal. At least miners get to wear safety helmets. Comments and/or opinions are welcome unless you are a bioinformatics/statistician/actuary type and then you have no idea what I’m talking about because you don’t do experiments so how can they ever fail?

Wine: cheap white crap out of a box
Music: Marty Robbins “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs”
Book: Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snickett

Heh. In this morning’s mailbag I received one item of junk mail, from Hamilton. Who tell me that if I fax back their form for the International Biotech and Lab something-or-other Preview I will ‘have the chance to win an iPod nano’.

Argh!

This is on-topic, honest.

A well-known crisp company (that’s ‘chips’ to you colonials) ran an offer last month. Every bag of crisps had a unique code stamped on it that got you one entry in an hourly (hourly!) draw to win an iPod. One an hour. For a month. That’s an imperial lorry load of iPods.

Needles to say, I didn’t win (boo) but I suddenly find that I’m inundated with offers of free or ‘chances to win’ iPods of one flavour or other. Let’s take a look at the week to date’s haul of junk mail - three items, so not too bad.

(more…)

Here ia an open question for all of the loyal readers of this blog: What do you do when science stinks?

My protein won’t express, my project stinks, and my motivation is lacking. What should I do? My only solution so far (other than drinking) is to graduate. Any other thoughts?

UK readers might appreciate this.

Tory in Disguise

You look like a Tony
Walk like a Tony
Talk like a Tony
But I got wise
You’re the Maggie in disguise
Oh yes you are
The Maggie in disguise

You fooled me with your tax hikes
You cheated and you schemed
Gordon knows how you lied to me
You’re not the way you seemed

You look like a Tony
Walk like a Tony
Talk like a Tony

But I got wise
You’re the Maggie in disguise
Oh yes you are
The Maggie in disguise

I thought that I voted Labour
But I was sure surprised
Gordon help me, I didn’t see
The Tory in your eyes

You look like a Tony
Walk like a Tony
Talk like a Tony

But I got wise
You’re the Maggie in disguise
Oh yes you are
The Maggie in disguise

You’re the Maggie in disguise
Oh yes you are
The Maggie in disguise
Oh yes you are
The Maggie in disguise

I had the most amazing sense of deja vue when I read What makes a good rep?. You guys have got incredibly short
memories.

Anyway - some content. For me, the most important thing is that the rep is a scientist. For me that means a PhD. All right, so that possibly means they weren’t very good (relatively speaking) at science because they couldn’t make a career of it, but at least it means they know what it’s like to do research, usually on a shoestring budget. (And of course I’m not being totally fair; good scientists might well go into sales for other reasons than not being good at science. That’s not the point, here).

So the good rep understands my situation. I don’t necessarily expect the good rep to understand my research project; after all, I’m not sure I do sometimes - but they have a good grounding in molecular/cellular biology (etc.) and won’t get lost when I start talking about transformation problems or whatever.

The second thing about the good rep is that s/he is likeable. OK, this is really shallow, but I don’t want some arrogant tosspot with personal hygiene issues trying to sell me stuff. It’s just not going to happen. But more seriously, the good rep listens before opening its mouth. Think of your good friends - chances are they’re the ones who listen to you best. So we’re talking about building a relationship here. We’re going to spend our hard-won (with blood, sweat and tears - again, a PhD should understand this) grant money with your company. Make us want to. Make me feel special. You can do this deal for me. Naturally, after mumblety years in the business I’m a professional cynic and I know that you, the rep from BigPortfolio Inc, are everybody’s best friend and you’re a fool if you think I’m fooled, but I at least want you to make the effort.

Third, and this is only 3rd, not top of the list: Know your stuff. I can deal with “Oh, I’ll have to check that for you” occasionally but not all the time.

There’s probably more, but that’s a good start. Three essentials if you like. Additionally of course, knowing how impecunious we are, the good rep treats us to lunch occasionally. And has nice legs.