Life Science Tools of the Trade

As I thumbed through the August issue of Biotechniques, one particular ad caught my eye. I know. You’re asking, “What’s the full page ad that caught my attention?” It was for none other than SAB!

The ad has a picture at the top of the page with some info about the site below. Simple, easy to read and easy to spot.

It only left me with one question…. does anybody know who the people in the picture are?

Occasionally I’ll buy a kit and there isn’t much information available  about the included reagents. However in a recent email from Stratagene I noticed a link which led me to the following information about one of their most popular kits.

Stratagene’s Quickchange Mutagenesis Kit:

Contains: PfuUltra™ High Fidelity DNA polymerase, 10X reaction buffer, dNTP mix, Dpn I restriction enzyme, QuikChange control plasmid and control primers, XL-1 supercompetent cells, pUC18 control plasmid.

Save yourself some money and buy the reagents individually. There really isn’t any reason to pay an inflated price for some pUC18 and competent cells.

PS:I have never bought competent cells that transformed with a higher efficiency than those I made in the lab. On the rare occasion I’ve needed supercompetent cells I made electrocompetent cells (wash bacteria in water-how hard is that?).

Good luck and happy mutating!

that decided to sell FuGENE 6 in these bottles? 

I was just in the hood mixing my 5ul of Fugene with Opti-Mem when what do I do?  I tip the bottle of Fugene over and spill half the contents out.  Admittedly, I’m a klutz but the bottle doesn’t fit into any of the racks we have in the lab.  In case you don’t know, it’s a tiny glass bottle with a screw top.   

Whose idea were these bottles anyway?  I really like Roche as a company but they dropped the ball when they started using these bottles!!

Imaginary scenario (or is it?):

Sitting at a conference table listening to a presentation. An open bags of chips and cookies are on the table. I look to my left and see bare feet. The toes curling on the table…………12 inches from the snacks. I can barely contain my amazement as I try and see if anyone else has noticed this breach of decency. At least three of us did notice and two of us stopped eating immediately.  I guess the third person was REALLY hungry. I know what I would have done if one of my children did that at the dinner table.

I considered either asking politely “Would you get your dirty toes off the table?” or kicking off my shoes, ripping off my socks and attempting to grab some chips with my toes!

WWYD? (What would you do?)

Since hbogerd was giving Stratagene a hard time, I thought I’d let them off the hook a little bit. Through the end of September they’re running a promo where if you buy two pcr enzymes you get one free. Don’t know if the deal is available to everyone but I’d check it out.

We’ll be buying a few thousand dollars worth of enzyme… maybe I should ask the rep about an ipod?

Today I opened up my email and saw that I had received two identical emails from Stratagene asking me to reserve my copy of their 2007 catalog. Inspired by their brillaint use of the internet as a tool to inform and annoy I offer this  Mini-SAB Survey:

Do you enjoy receiving multiple identical emails from biotech vendors?      No.

Which company comes to mind when you think of “multiple identical emails”?      Stratagene.

 Additional comments: I knew I shouldn’t have entered that contest for the free iPOD shuffle!

If you took a series of 6 week snapshots of your career, how productive have you been during most of them? If you’re like me there are some real dry spells of failed experiments, failed projects, etc.  Now try and imagine the success rate of an inexperienced summer student dropping into the lab for a six week summer science experience! Q-Success? A-None!  I’ve seen several come and go and the reality is I would rate them based on how little they impeded the research in the lab.  I guess it is tough for these kids who got straight A’s to come in and FAIL at something. You know they’re thinking “I’m smart. I won the science fair. How hard can this be?” What an eye-opener to find out that smarts and hard work do not always equal success in the brutal world of basic research. Throw in the fact that they might actually do some mild physical labor (unpack boxes, autoclave some waste) and after the summer they’re ready to fill out those med school applications ASAP (a reference for med school was the real goal in all honesty) and say goodbye to the lab forever. Why do we hire them? I guess the P.I. likes the idea of mentoring  aspiring scientists. In reality the mentoring they get is a class in music appreciation listening to music I like that isn’t played on the radio and as a bonus, an introduction to Durhams’ finest Taquerias. Hey, it’s better than working in a ketchup factory! Or is it?

Favorite true summer student story: “I’m really sorry I was late again but I was talking to a friend on the phone so I couldn’t call you.”

Tired of making your own slides?    Looking for the easy way out.  VisiScience has a database of over 3000 slides you can use for your Powerpoint presentation.  Anything from common shapes to molecular pathology, it looks like they have you covered. 

It sounds like a great idea and a time saver.   The only problem, this lab is way too cheap to fork out that amount of money.  Looks like we’ll still be making our own slides!

 www.visiscience.com

From a recent Stratagene promo: From now until September 30, 2006, order 2 Brilliant® QPCR or QRT-PCR kits from your EZAccess program and receive a free EZAccess T-shirt!

I wonder how many female scientists would feel comfortable wearing a t-shirt with EZAccess on it?  People get paid to think up stuff like this?

#1  “Hi, I’m your new sales rep from a major biotech company that starts with the letter Q”.  Did they tell him about the problems in quality control or why there was a job opening? No, I didn’t think so. Yeah, I filled him in. Good luck.

#2 A favorite sales rep from days gone by (recently promoted to regional sales supervisor) stopped by to introduce the latest greatest new sales rep. We used to buy almost everything from __________ but after a string of useless apathetic reps we moved on. Could we be swayed to return to the major biotech company that starts with the letter F? Sure, but a month later no contact has been made.  It really doesn’t matter to me, but it should to her!

Music: a bootleg from Alejandro Escovedo and Richard Buckner  “Bottom of the Hill” 1/19/00 

Reading: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by J.S. Foer (READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!)

In a regular week, we order anywhere from 20-60 DNA oligos from Operon. Order the oligos Monday and receive them Wednesday. Tuesday for Thursday. You get the idea. Two days, plan your experiment accordingly. Well, when orders started taking longer… the complaining began.

The delay in the orders went on for about a week when I received a call from Mr. Wilkins at Operon. I didn’t call them. They called me! “We moved our plant and a lot of your orders were delayed.” NO KIDDING! I already knew that. What I didn’t know was that Operon wanted our business so much they were going to make things right.  Mr. Wilkins would look into it a bit further and get back to me.

Well, you know my faith in customer service reps. I figured that was the end of it. However, much to my amazement, not only did Mr. Wilkins get back in touch with me, he reimbursed us for some of our troubles.

Kudos to Operon for owning up to the problem and doing something about i!

bdoehle’s cross country drive has begun. So yes, another friend leaves the lab. Good luck in Seattle……………………and enjoy the drive.