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Oligo Giveaway Results are in!
Last week our 10th Anniversary Free Month of Oligos Giveaway contest ended with the selection of winner Allan Kelleher from the University of California San Diego. Our contest was exclusive to our Facebook friends and fans but we announced the giveaway and updated the status of the contest via our other social networking channels. I got the opportunity to meet with Alan this last week at UCSD’s Bonner Hall where he is hard at work in molecular biology research.
We gave him a certificate to confirm his win and took a few photos. He was a really nice guy and we are happy that our $1600 worth of free oligos will assist him in his experiments. I will post the pictures on our social sites soon.
I was really eager to promote this contest. At Allele we wanted to do something that marked our ten years in business in an impressive way while at the same time abiding by our philosophy of encouraging the advancement of research. Oligos were an organic choice as they were our first commercial product on top of being a universally useful tool in the industry, which is evident in their use by medical researchers, molecular biologists, physicists, oceanographers; the list goes on.
To hold the contest exclusive to our Allele on Facebook friend/fan base was another organic choice as most of our contacts on this format are bench researchers. Some are just fans that are interested in our weekly product promotions and new product announcements. However, most of our Allele on Facebook contacts are friends. This allows us to see their bio questions. In frustration they will post, “Has anyone had experience with this type of ligation…?” Facebook gives our friends the opportunity to get help from top scientists for free and often during their workday for the fastest access to information available.
For all the benefits available to you, join Allele’s friends on Facebook today and be the first to know about everything Allele Biotech has to offer!
How I started my company and why–Inaugural Event by San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange (SDEE)
For current graduate students, postdocs, and holders of other “in-transient” positions in bioscience-related fields today, a persistently resounding question on our minds is “What path should I follow at the end of a long and ragged journey of training?” Interestingly in our industry, like downhill skiing you see in the Winter Olympics, once you start one path it is not an easy switch to get on another.
Many of the Ph.D.s in biomed share the general view that an independent research position typically at an academic institute or non-profit organization such as San Diego’s local Salk, Scripps, or Sanford—Burnham, is the goal of the many years of training. Others soon realize that there are numerous research jobs at biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies that will make good use of their expertise, experience, and unique background knowledge in a particular field. And of course there are those who “defect” to different industries that may or may not directly relate to their extensive experience in wet labs, such as working in intellectual property laws, clinical trial management, biomedical sales, business development and management.
Research in major pharmaceutical companies (big pharma) normally focuses on a project with set goals, milestones, and layers of monitoring and management. That is how a large team can function together and get the tasks done in a timely manner. Working in smaller biotech companies can be much more flexible, researcher-initiated, and in many ways fun. On the other hand, you will be required to do much more than reading papers, designing experiments, obtaining and interpreting results. Starting a small biotech company is by no means an easy path to take, but if done correctly with some luck and a lot of determination, it can be a very rewarding career. You will get to utilize to the maximum extent of all your intelligence, knowledge, vision, and personal relations. You also have the opportunity to do real cutting-edge research in various areas, and see the fruits in journal publications, grant awards, as well as in the wild wide market.
The San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange (SDEE) was founded by local San Diego entrepreneurs in order to provide a voice for the early stage technology startup, to encourage new entrepreneurs, and to sponsor networking and educational events that help develop the skills necessary to bring funding and business to the San Diego area.
The inaugural SDEE event to be held Wednesday March 10th at 5pm. It will help answer some of the questions you may have been thinking about regarding starting or working in a startup biotech company. Allele Biotech’s founder and CEO Dr. Jiwu Wang will be among the speakers. Ten years ago Dr, Wang was a postdoc at UCSD with an NIH fellowship, right before he started Allele with a number of NIH small business innovative research grants. He will talk about the ultimate “academic freedom”–doing any research you want but completely at your own risk– as the reason to start a technology-focused company, and the lessons he learned the hard way about running a lab vs organizing a business. Other speakers include CEOs from a number of San Diego biotech companies with great stories to share with postdocs and others. The talks will be brief yet informative, and on-site interactions are encouraged. The Sanford-Burnham building 12 is outside the main campus, with plenty of free parking. Click here for more details about the event. http://www.allelebiotech.com/allele3/SDEE-First-Event-Announcement.pdf (at AlleleNews). Let us know if you are coming by emailing to events@sdentrepreneurs.org
New Product/Service of the Week 02-15-10 to 02-21-10: Viral shRNA design and packaging services, packaging 2ml virus at 10e8 TU/ml for less than $1,400.
Promotion of the Week 02-15-10 to 02-21-10: FREE spreading beads (ABP-CE-CCCSB100, 500) to go with any competent cell order.
Submit Your Pictures and Enter to Win $100 in Cash
Allele Biotech is holding another fun contest to give back to our loyal supporters and everyone has the chance to win $100 in cash! We are looking for interesting and relevant pictures, illustrations, and computer generated art that pertains to any Allele Biotech Product or service to replace the flashes on our homepage. If it is chosen to be used we will give you $100 cash!
Check out our technical data sheets, read our past blogs, and even use your own lab experience and impressions with Allele Biotech Products to come up with your entry. There are over 1000 products to choose from so everyone should have lots of inspiration!
All you have to do to enter is submit your picture to our facebook inbox! The picture has to be of your own creation and/or one to which you own exclusive rights. Response time and prizes will take about a week.
Let your creative juices flow and you could get $100 in return. Your picture could be funny, serious, or even super nerdy!
Used to promote our Sapphire(TM) Baculovirus Expression Service
All photos, illustrations, and computer generated graphics (aka. “the picture”) submitted must be lawfully owned by entrants who submitted them. Pictures that are not chosen will not be used in any way by Allele Biotech. Winners may collect their prize via cash, check, or a one-time Allele credit of $100 good toward any Allele Biotech purchase. Allele Biotech has full rights to pictures selected for use in Allele advertising and winners must forfeit any future rights to the picture. Contest to run indefinitely and to be terminated at any time.
10 Ways to Stay Green in the Lab in 2010
It is hard to do in this business. Numerous consumables, single-use everything to maintain experiment integrity, and constantly ordering reagents with all that packaging! It is a never ending stream of materials that go into experiments dealing with such small molecules. Hope is not lost- there are a few cheap and easy things we as bench scientists can do to help make our labs a little greener.
1 Always recycle- It is mandatory now for most companies and organizations to recycle (especially in California) if they produce more than 1 dumpster full of trash per week. You can do your part in the lab by always putting non-toxic/hazardous recyclables in the recycle bin! Even here in the Allele labs I often find Kimwipe boxes, glove boxes, and even plastic drinking water bottles in the trash and have to fish them out. Always recycling is an easy and, best of all, free thing to do to make your labs more earth friendly.
2 There’s no place like the correct waste receptacle- Every type of waste has its place. Be nice to the earth by putting biohazard in the biohazard, sharps in the sharps, organic solvent waste in the organic solvent waste drum etc.
3 Shut it down!- Always turn off your computer and unused equipment. You can save about $250 per computer per year just by shutting it down every night. Turning off other equipment like the UVP is easy to forget too. Just powering off that at night saves energy and extends the life of the bulb which also saves your lab some cash.
4 Look for ethidium bromide alternatives- This is a work in progress. With all the controversies regarding SYBR and DAPI in their function and mutagenic qualities it seems that there is a call for development of a legitimately safe method to visualize DNA and RNA. Allele is on the case and hopes to have something in the pipeline soon!
5 Swap your boxes- Styrofoam is a necessary evil in the lab. It is the easiest way to transport your temperature sensitive reagents and diagnostics; it is lightweight so it does not add too much to your shipping charges. The bad news is (until better recycling is implemented) that one styrofoam box will be here forever! If you have no occasion to reuse your styrofoam within your own institution there is good news. There are companies out there who will buy your used styrofoam boxes, like Allele with its Box Swap Program, so at the very least that styrofoam box can be used a few more times, eliminating the need to buy it brand new and decreasing demand for this material. If you cannot take advantage of our program then set one up for your own company!
6 Only use dry ice when you have to- If your shipment only requires -20 degrees C for a single day transit time blue ice will work! I have seen it more than I can say when we get a robust reagent sent to us in dry ice with priority shipping. Within the US, priority shipping usually means a transit time about 20 hrs. This last time I saw a small vial in the box which had ~7 lbs of dry ice. This much dry ice will keep a 2lb object frozen for about 24 hrs and someone used it to ship a 10g vial that only needed to be stored at -20 deg C for about 20 hrs! If they had used a 12oz blue ice pack they would have saved on shipping and packaging and we would have been able to reuse the pack, furthering our green endeavors.
7 Close the sash!- This is another great and inexpensive way to save the environment and some money. Closing the hood sash, incubator doors, and refrigerators adds up; constantly leaving them open add up too!
8 Back that thing up!- Since we are lab folk we do not have as many crazy office chain emails going around but I checked and yesterday I sent out 17 emails and received a few more than that! Days like that I shudder to think that there are people out there who receive more than I do on a daily basis and print out every single one for their “records”. This is madness. Please remember to not print emails unless you really need a hard copy. It’s just as easy to save it in a computer file and back your file up.
9 Talk about it- Those motivational types tell you to talk about your goals to others as a means of supporting and motivating yourself to accomplish said goals. Talk to your lab mates and ask them things they can think of to green up your lab. Do not feel weird about seeming “nerdy” by supporting the environment. Chances are, if you work in a lab everyone thinks you are a big nerd already!
10 Network green- I do not like business cards. They are usually made of paper, come in obscene quantities, and do not get recycled. If your title changes or you switch companies you have to go a buy thousands more to update your info. Additionally, they are only for work; there is no social aspect to them and they are too small to really put all your contact info on. Good news is you can go green in networking with Pokens! Pokens are these amazing little animal and people shaped devices that store all your contact info including your company’s website, your email, your social networking pages (i.e. facebook, linkedin, etc.), phone numbers, and whatever else you want. When someone else has a Poken you can “high-four” them and your contact info is swapped. Your Poken can hold many profiles and when it gets full you can load them onto your address book on your computer. There is an upgraded model specifically for business that is not animal shaped and is a zip drive as well. They are relatively new to America and I am one of the many campaigning for them to revolutionize the business card industry! I have two- one for work and one for play.
Francis Collins On the Job
Dr. Collins did a town hall meeting style announcement his first day as NIH Director on Aug 17th, 2009. He laid out his view for the NIH: more funding (good), encouraging young scientists (good, average age for first own funding for US biologist is 42, not good), and staying open in communication with society it is serving.
The NIH has $30.9 billion budget for 09 and 2010 thanks to the stimulus addition of $10 billion/year. However, it will feel dried up after two years if the budget plan remains as is. The Obama administration does not seem to want increase the basic research but instead focus more on health care management.
Collins is a well admired director and established scientist. However, it may be a little concerning that he might be too much into “big science” and organized efforts. I don’t know what they teach in graduate classes now but from what I was told 20 years ago curiosity-driven science is the best science and that was what got the US to the dominant leadership in biomedical fields.
Talking about nurturing young scientists, big programs and big labs controlling most grants by proposing big science seem trendy these days. The fight to become one of the big guys in a small, crowded field is a really daunting path for young researchers to tread. The big guys have the say from publication to funding and often times the unpleasant thought and bitter taste of competing against a scientific juggernaut turn young researchers away.
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