Life Science Tools of the Trade

Destrade and Saccomadi reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A (http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=1086) that a cork comes out of a wine bottle more easily if you twist AND pull. My personal experience told me that a screw top bottle comes off much easier if you twist but a cork? Who would’ve guessed it! If the experiment is opening bottles of wine can an experiment ever truly fail? I can’t remember the last time I drank an experiment, at least since I gave up mouth pippetting!

PS-If you don’t know why a post about opening a bottle of wine is in “tools of the trade” you haven’t been doing this long enough. It’s a tool.

The restriction enzyme SMA I cuts at 25 degrees.

The restriction enzyme SMA I cuts at 25 degrees.

The restriction enzyme SMA I cuts at 25 degrees.

The restriction enzyme SMA I cuts at 25 degrees.

 ……..and that’s why my cloning didn’t work.

What would you pay for a previously unavailable critical reagent. Not grant money, but your personal hard earned cash? Whether driven by pure scientific interest or simply the hope of buying a quick ticket to stardom (Cell, Science, Nature) would you belly up to the bar with $10? $100? $1000? more?

Paul Sternberg (Caltech) and James Thomas (University of Washington) have offered $4,000 of their money from their own pockets to the first person to find a sister species to C. elegans.  Details of the offer can be found at Wormbase.org.