Aug 18, 2010 – Maryland NIH Vendor Show
August 18th, 2010
Archive
Posts Tagged ‘Eton Bioscience’
SciOnline 2010 and all of our findings
February 3rd, 2010
Ever thought of putting extra lab space on Craigslist? Would you trust advice from FriendFeed over a lab manual? Do you know what putting your data in “The Cloud” could do for your lab’s workflow?
These were the types of questions asked and answered at Science Online 2010, a conference in RTP designed specifically to give science researchers and bloggers a common forum. Hosted at the Sigma Xi Center between January 14-17, the conference focused on the ways new Internet technology is changing how science is done and how information is distributed.
A wide variety of topics were covered using the unconference format, where the presentations were not lectures so much as large discussion groups. The program catered to all levels techie. The novice could learn what Twitter is and how to tweet, the casual follower was presented with a variety of demos to further spark their interest, and the advanced IT gurus could learn from other members in the audience, as the conference allowed for a unique overlap of experts from academia, industry, and the blogosphere.
New Internet technology is allowing mass participation and collaboration on a scale not seen before. Blogs continue to grow in number and variety as more and more scientists and journalists use them as alternative outlets for their material. While the conference is evidence enough that the science blogosphere is here to stay, two other major areas of new Internet technology – social networking and cloud computing – are not yet as commonplace among scientists, yet offer even more potential to change how scientific research is done and shared.
Social Networking
The general consensus of the conference was that social networking has so far failed to live up to its potential for collaboration among scientists. A large variety of social networking sites have been launched specifically aimed at scientists, but thus far none has caught on. The only one that drew a partial recommendation from the crowd was Epernicus. LinkedIn, a more general networking site, got some recommendations from the crowd to use as an online address book, but no social networking website offers a community specifically tailored to scientists.
The one exception is FriendFeed. For those of you who are unaware, FriendFeed is the main competitor to Twitter. The conference showed evidence of an ongoing argument between users of each respective site reminiscent of PC vs. Mac. Scientists at the conference in general preferred FriendFeed, praising the chance for more in-depth discussion that is possible in the public discussion groups. Specifically, “The Life Scientists” group was highly recommended.
In The Cloud
When your work is “in the cloud,” everything is done and exists on the Internet. This allows for easier access across different workstations and simplifies collaboration on shared documents, among many, many things. Not surprisingly, cloud computing was pioneered and remains most popular among computer scientists. However, recent years have seen the concept catch-on everywhere it can. Google is the most well-known leader in the new technology and Google Wave specifically is the biggest attempt to bring the cloud style of working to everyone. Cloud computing is broken down into three general areas:
o SAAS: Software as a Service (e.g. Basecamp)
o IAAS: Infrastructure as a Service (e.g. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud)
o PAAS: Platform as a Service (e.g. PayPal)
For scientists these new technologies open up many new possibilities for analysis and collaboration. The casual armchair scientist, by using the cloud, can now access datasets and computing power that can match all but the largest research institutions. Even for members of such research institutions, the cloud provides an attractive plan B for outsourcing work that might be more difficult to accomplish within an existing administrative structure.
Cloud computing offers a whole new way of doing things, but don’t kiss your hard drive goodbye just yet. The universal recommendations from the conference were to be sure to back-up everything that is essential and to keep private materials out of the cloud.
For all you life scientists interested in what all this new technology has in store for you, be sure to check out BioGPS, a website (http://biogps.gnf.org/) created by the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) that is devoted to compiling all existing genetic resources. If you like the looks of it, be sure to see how they’ll be “going social” in 2010 (http://biogps.blogspot.com/ – announced February 1).
Secondary Structure and Sequencing
July 27th, 2009
Secondary structure has been a thorn in the side of many researchers since they discovered it existed. Sending in a sample only to see a truncated sequence at the end can be incredibly discouraging. Working with siRNA products can be even worse because getting through those samples is incredibly difficult.
No one likes getting their results back and seeing this:
Here are a few tips on how to improve the quality of this data:
1. Add DMSO. To improve the quality of secondary structure we usually add 1 microliter of DMSO. Best of all, DMSO does not degrade the quality of the reaction as a whole. If you are one of our customers, all you have to do is put add DMSO in the special instructions and we will do it to every sample on the order. This is also free of cost to you.
If this low-cost option does not work for you then I am afraid you might have to try something like:
2. If you are trying to PCR up a very G-C rich region, addition of betaine or DMSO to your PCR reaction can help, as can substitution of 7-deaza dGTP for 75% of the dGTP in your PCR reaction.
If this is still not working for you then:
3. Our special protocol (not disclosable for proprietary reasons): The second line of defense can be our special protocol. We have developed a protocol that can get through the most difficult secondary structures. It may be a slightly pricier option, but it certainly is worth it. We had tried many different reactions to get through the above example and by using this protocol we were able to achieve this:
Our turn around time remains the same for these samples.
If all else fails
4. Try manual radioactive sequencing as a last resort.
If you have any questions about this that need answering, feel free to contact support@etonbio.com. We work with Secondary Structure DNA Sequencing on a daily basis and we are more than happy to help out.
