Life Science Tools of the Trade

Sorry for the long absence, not that anyone missed me. I’m getting close to the time where I move on from my graduate studies and begin toiling for slightly more money than I am making now. Yes, that’s right I’m looking for postdocs. In this time of uncertain funding, I decided that I should possibly look outside of traditional academic postdoctoral oppertunities to at least see what was out there. My current institution sponsers a “PhD Career Fair” and for the first time I took them up on attending to talk with all the interested employers who I was promised would be waiting to snatch me up. Boy was I sorely disappointed. Evidently, I am completely unemployable. Industry wants protein chemists, formulation chemists, and other people with industry experience. Unfortunately, I don’t know how you actually get industry experience so that you can get a job that wants industry experience (but no postdoc experience). Perhaps I’m wrong, but it looks like no one wants a virologist with strong molecular biology training.

Hmmm…perhaps they are hiring at the golden arches.

Maybe someone can explain this Hybridization buffer to me. I buy it for the post docs in the lab but I really don’t understand the advantage of it. My understanding is that it allows for quicker hyb times than traditional buffers.

Sounds great BUT what perplexes me is that they have to incubate the ExpressHyb for hours for to get it to resuspend. How is that faster? By the time the buffer is back in solution they could have already hybridized the blot with the old fashion cheap buffer. That’s the other thing, this stuff is expensive. $500 for 1 litre!

Right now we have the money so they’ll keep getting the ExpressHyb but with NIH slashes….who knows.