Edited by author 08-20-2003 04:02 AM
I like the auto-volume pipettes. Up until this year, I was still using the squeeze ball and thumb-over-the-glass-pipette method, and perfectly happy that way. Now I can't live without my new-fangled pipette.

BTW, all my procedures use vague language, too, but they're the POSTED procedure. They all come with a "long form" that actually has specs for things like "warm", which you're supposed to read for training, and then use the short one for actually working. The condensed version is easier to work with once you know what you're supposed to do.

Maybe your long form was left out of the package.

Edited by author 08-20-2003 07:27 AM
(Deleted message after realizing it sounded like marketing hype)

A picture of Frank Drake:

http://www.erik.co.uk/hackerpix/sfdec.gif

Edited by author 08-20-2003 04:11 PM
Hmmm. Steve, I think you're being a bit gung-ho in trying to sequence your entire genome. The OpenGene site has this blurb on its Long-Read Tower (tm) sequencer. Note that the beasty can do 8 samples per run, takes 30 to > 180 mins per run and manages 300 to > 700 bp per run (700 bp sounds a bit optimistic to me ...)

Hmm - say, 4,000 bp per run, at, say, 60 mins each. That's about 1,000,000,000 hours or 41,666,667 days or about 114,155 years ...

Maybe you should concentrate on the important SNP's that make you who you are, while you're still here to find out what makes you who you are? If you know what I mean.

Don't sweat the vagueness of your protocols. We have a phrase in common use in labs--"Close enough for biology". It's not an exact science, like much of chemistry or physics. A cell really doesn't care if you time something for exactly 60 seconds, or if you let it go for 63 seconds, or stop it at 57 seconds. When it says "mix gently", just do it, it will still probably work fine if you mix it a little too roughly, or if you don't mix it at all.

I agree with funklord, our catchphrase was Buffers buffer, ie: no need to sweat the dilution of a 20x sol'n to 1x.

Used to isolate quite a bit of DNA for a (much smaller after the layoffs) Alameda company that specialized in biophotonic imaging with MY Master's degree.

Now I am temping in Emeryville and just spent an hour programming a robot for vaccine testing.

PS: I would think the TAQ polymerase costs would kill you before you hit that 114,155 year point.

I love going over to Steve's place to see what he's up to. Amazing.

It would be neat to see what Sakusha does in his spare time, too. Can you tell us, Sakusha? I'll bet it's super cool!

idogcow wrote:
Now I am temping in Emeryville and just spent an hour programming a robot for vaccine testing.

Chiron?

Eli the Bearded wrote:
Chiron?

Yep. Building 4, the one with the yellow sphere in front.

Any truth to the (dubious) rumor that Chiron stores frozen
bodies for the cryogenic revival fans?

Any truth to the (dubious) rumor that Chiron stores frozen
bodies for the cryogenic revival fans?

I'll have to ask around, haven't heard that one. Not a lot of Liquid N2 on this floor, however.

idogcow, enjoying your holiday? The bombs woke my wife up, I
slept through them.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3352722

We are back as of noon. The best part is my carpoool took the Scharffen-Berger tour (http://www.scharffen-berger.com/factory/onsite_tour.html)while we were waiting for the all-clear.

Forgot to add that I can now say, "Someone set us up the bomb."

Hi Steve,
So what exactly did you decide to amplify? Are you planning to just count STRs like the cops, look at SNPs, or something else?

Bob Stratton

GEEZ! We can't have just *anyone* doing this stuff! Too much competetion for the pharmCo's. Anyways, those instructions were written for people (possibly from Mars) like me who've been doing PCR and genotyping forever, and only need hinted instructions to do things (this training is what's called "post-doc," from the Latin for "enslavement")

Dont go judging the book by its cover....just because the machine's outside isn't perfect, it's the inside that counts! And PCR is damn sexy.