Friday, February 27, 2015

Weekly Links February 27 ,2015

“MUST READ”
o    Qu’est-ce que l’épigénétique ? Dans cet entretien Edith Heard, professeur au Collège de France, explique la particularité de cette discipline relativement récente qui s’intéresse au devenir génétique de nos cellules et représente un nouvel espoir dans la recherche contre le cancer.
o    But now, thanks to scientific advances such as genetic sequencing and new DNA editing technologies, the industry is in the midst of a dramatic reversal. Last year investors poured $3.3 billion into firms that are developing drugs for brain-destroying or psychiatric illnesses, more than in any of the last ten years, says NeuroPerspective.
DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION
TOOLS/TECHNIQUES
o    If you want to get the maximum yield and quality from your next-generation sequencing experiment then you are going to need to make sure each of the libraries you produce is carefully quantified ready for pooling and/or loading onto a flow cell. If the quantification goes wrong you’ll get a bad balance of samples within your pool, and if the loading goes wrong you might get no data at all!
o    In this article I’ll explain the pro’s and con’s of using qPCR and also discuss some of the other methods people use; these come with an advisory warning to avoid unless you really understand their limitations!
o    In a paper in Lab on a Chip, scientists from Corning, Inc. and Massachusetts General Hospital demonstrate a new, microengineered approach for treating cultured cells with drugs. Instead of growing the cells on flat surfaces, cells are grown on micro-modified wells plates that contain regular patterns of tiny holes.
o    Read any flow cytometry protocol and somewhere near the beginning will state something to the effect of ‘Place 1 million cells into a tube.’ The question is, faced with that special sample for THE experiment, how do you determine the number of cells in the tube? First we'll give a bit of information on why it is important to know the number of cells you have.
o    Bacterial cultures may be much easier to grow than mammalian cells, but if your yields are suboptimal there are plenty of parameters to play with. Here we list a few of the things you should consider to maximize your culture growth.

HEALTH/MEDECINE
COMPANIES
o    Unchained Labs is committed to building the next cool life science tools company. One that matters. One without old school rules. One with products that'll make a real difference in the research scientists do every day. 
The first Unchained product, Optim, lets scientists unlock optimal biologic formulations simply and quickly. For the first time, researchers can measure multiple protein stability parameters - including denaturing temperature and aggregation onset temperature - on multiple samples simultaneously. Assays are high throughput, label-free, ultra-low volume and very easy to run. 
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
o    Employees are vastly more satisfied and productive, it turns out, when four of their core needs are met: physical, through opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work; emotional, by feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions; mental, when they have the opportunity to focus in an absorbed way on their most important tasks and define when and where they get their work done; and spiritual, by doing more of what they do best and enjoy most, and by feeling connected to a higher purpose at work.

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