Friday, July 30, 2010

Allele’s pallet of the super star fluorescent proteins

From AlleleBlogs
http://allelebiotech.com/blogs/2010/07/alleles-pallet-of-the-super-star-fluorescent-proteins/


“Photoblog”–just some fun pictures from our notebooks.
    The brightest cyan, green fluorescent proteins, and the brightest ever FP in LanYFP!
The brightest cyan, green fluorescent proteins, and the brightest 
ever FP in LanYFP!
Ain't they pretty?
These fluorescent proteins are representatives of the growing family or high quality, new generation FPs engineered to enable experiment previously deemed impossible.
    Cells infected with lentivirus carrying mWasabi. Lentivirus carrying LanYFP will make most cells much more brighter than this.
2-3 times brighter than EGFP, no cytotoxicity detected
The mWasabi is stimulating
The brightest green fluorescent protein with excellent photostability, carried on 10e8 TU/ml high titer lentivirus.
    The LanFPs express well in bacteria.
Reminding you of icecream
The LanFPs express well in bacteria
Project planning is under way to test the cytotoxicity of lanFPs in different mammalian cell lines and in vivo with a focus on neurons.
    The FPs fold so strongly that they fluorescence even in SDS-PAGE.
Fluorescence while running in denaturing gel
Can you see the FP bands in the SDS PAGE?
    FPs in SDS PAGE–a closer look
while the gel is still running
Can you see them now?
    FPs in gel cassette over UV lights
Easier to see now than during gel running
Invincible FPs
    FPs in gel cassette under blue LED
The red FP is harder to see because of the black background
Fluorescence in SDS page under blue LED
The purified FPs can be used as “real time” protein markers.
New Product of the Week 07/26/10-08/01/10: pCHAC-mWasabi-C for expressing mWasabi fusion through retroviral vectors.
Promotion of the Week 07/26/10-08/01/10: Get 3′ TAMRA & BHQ oligo mods for $45 ea & 3′ Dabcyl mod for $20 50 nmol syn scale only/while supplies last- use dbtkrm0726

Saturday, July 24, 2010

老袁如此无耻,小爷懒得姓袁

袁世凯的侄子(侄孙?)袁瑛放炸弹谋刺老袁未果被俘。过堂时他指着坐堂的老袁大骂∶“你袁世凯胆敢称帝,小爷我就懒得姓袁”

今偶见一贴:

北佬 加帖在 猫眼看人 【凯迪网络】 http://www.kdnet.net
本人怀着沉痛的心情向禹晋永兼职客座教授的学校 - 北京大学、清华大学、人民大学、中央财经大学、中国科学院、北京化工学院 - 致哀!在广大P民的心中,你们正在死去!

遂追索禹教授新诗一首:

“心系玉树睡不着,半夜起来看微博,以为只有我一人,结果博友都没睡,都在关心玉树人,国家行动很神速,救援工作没停步,玉树幸运比汶川,我们大家都心安,祈祷难友能安魂,活人定要信乾坤,国家民众齐出手,幸福生活样样有!”

赏析(转):首先,此诗总长十三句,对转韵的运用放浪果敢,颇有唐乐府之风;“心系玉树睡不着,半夜起来看微博”一句、押的是方言古音,朴拙大气;“以为只有我一人,结果博友都没睡”,构想新意,不落窠臼;“玉树幸运比汶川,我们大家都心安”、“国家民众齐出手,幸福生活样样有”句,颇有讽世辛辣况味;单从 “活人定要信乾坤”句,足可说明诗人知敬畏,安天命,绝不妄自尊大说“胜乾坤”等;最后,诗人的悲愤在“祈祷难友能还魂”句达到了高潮,难友一词,无居高临下态,指你我无论生死,不过是难兄难弟,只争来早与来迟,祈祷“能还魂”,则更从态度转向了行动:“能还魂”意指“来索命”,如何索命,又索谁之命?故此诗似歌功颂德而内有褒贬,皮里阳秋,微言大义也,实为近年来少见的虎狼之作


北大有如此人物,我懒得说是北大人。

Saturday, July 10, 2010

华夏快递 : 格丘山:重读爱因斯坦的“我的信仰”

没有一篇文章像爱因斯坦的"我的信仰"令我这样感动,在"我的信仰"这篇短文中,爱因斯坦以一个科学家的诚实和简洁说明了他的人生观,宗教观,政治观。

对于人生,爱因斯坦说:

"要追究一个人自己或一切生物生存的意义或目的,从客观的观点看来,我总觉得是愚蠢可笑的。可是每个人都有一定的理想,这种理想决定着他的努力和判断的方向。就在这个意义上,我从来不把安逸和享乐看作是生活目的本身""这种伦理基础,我叫它猪栏的理想。照亮我的道路,并且不断地给我新的勇气去愉快地正视生活的理想,是善、美和真。要是没有志同道合者之间的亲切感情,要不是全神贯注于客观世界""那个在艺术和科学工作领域里永远达不到的对象,那末在我看来,生活就会是空虚的。人们所努力追求的庸俗的目标""财产、虚荣、奢侈的生活""我总觉得都是可鄙的。"

对于政治,爱因斯坦说:

"我的政治理想是民主主义。让每一个人都作为个人而受到尊重,而不让任何人成为崇拜的偶像。我自己受到了人们过分的赞扬和尊敬,这不是由于我自己的过错,也不是由于我自己的功劳,而实在是一种命运的嘲弄。其原因大概在于人们有一种愿望,想理解我以自己的微薄绵力通过不断的斗争所获得的少数几个观念,而这种愿望有很多人却未能实现。我完全明白,一个组织要实现它的目的,就必须有一个人去思考,去指挥,并且全面担负起责任来。但是被领导的人不应当受到强迫,他们必须有可能来选择自己的领袖。在我看来,强迫的专制制度很快就会腐化堕落。因为暴力所招引来的总是一些品德低劣的人,而且我相信,天才的暴君总是由无赖来继承,这是一条千古不易的规律。"",在人生的丰富多彩的表演中,我觉得真正可贵的,不是政治上的国家,而是有创造性的,有感情的个人,是人格;只有个人才能创造出高尚的和卓越的东西,而群众本身在思想上总是迟钝的,在感觉上也总是迟钝的。"

对于战争,爱因斯坦说:

"我想起了群众生活中最坏的一种表现,那就是使我厌恶的军事制度。一个人能够洋洋得意地随着军乐队在四列纵队里行进,单凭这一点就足以使我对他轻视。他所以长了一个大脑,只是出于误会;单单一根脊髓就可满足他的全部需要了。文明国家的这种罪恶的渊薮,应当尽快加以消灭。由命令而产生的勇敢行为,毫无意义的暴行,以及在爱国主义名义下一切可恶的胡闹,所有这些都使我深恶痛绝,在我看来,战争是多么卑鄙、下流!我宁愿被千刀万剐,也不愿参预这种可憎的勾当。尽管如此,我对人类的评价还是十分高的,我相信,要是人民的健康感情没有被那些通过学校和报纸而起作用的商业利益和政治利益蓄意进行败坏,那末战争这个妖魔早就该绝迹了。"

对于宗教,爱因斯坦说:

"我们所能有的最美好的经验是奥秘的经验。它是坚守在真正艺术和真正科学发源地上的基本感情。谁要是体验不到它,谁要是不再有好奇心也不再有惊讶的感觉,他就无异于行尸走肉,他的眼睛是迷糊不清的。就是这样奥秘的经验虽然掺杂着恐怖产生了宗教。我们认识到有某种为我们所不能洞察的东西存在,感觉到那种只能以其最原始的形式为我们感受到的最深奥的理性和最灿烂的美正是这种认识和这种情感构成了真正的宗教感情;在这个意义上,而且也只是在这个意义上,我才是一个具有深挚的宗教感情的人。我无法想象一个会对自己的创造物加以赏罚的上帝,也无法想象它会有像在我们自己身上所体验到的那样一种意志。我不能也不愿去想象一个人在肉体死亡以后还会继续活着;让那些脆弱的灵魂,由于恐惧或者由于可笑的唯我论,去拿这种思想当宝贝吧!我自己只求满足于生命永恒的奥秘,满足于觉察现存世界的神奇的结构,窥见它的一鳞半爪,并且以诚挚的努力去领悟在自然界中显示出来的那个理性的一部分,即使只是其极小的一部分,我也就心满意足了。"

我想诸位也许能够比我从这些话中吸收到更多的真谛,最后让我抄录爱因斯坦在悼念玛丽·居里夫人时说的话与大家共勉,"居里夫人的品德和热忱,哪怕只要有一小部分存在于欧洲的知识分子中间,欧洲就会面临一个比较光明的未来"。

我想,对中国也一样。

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Entrepreneurs Roundtable in San Diego: How to Get Seed Funding

Wednesday July 28th at 5:00 p.m.



Johnson and Johnson Auditorium

3210 Merryfield Row, San Diego, CA

Hear from successful entrepreneurs
Make connections
Take your idea or company to the next stage

Program

5:00 - 6:00 p.m. Networking & Refreshments

6:00 -7:00 p.m. Roundtable & Discussion: How to Get Seed Funding

Confirmed Speakers

Court Turner (Avalon Ventures)

Raj Krishnan (Founder, Biological Dynamics)

Malcolm Bohm (Founder, Trialytics)

Moderator: Doug Lappi

7:00 -7:15 p.m. 30 Second Pitch Segment

(pitch your company/service in 30 sec.)

Please send a short pitch proposal to pitch@sdentrepreneurs.org by July 26th for consideration

Please register via

http://seedfundingjuly28th.eventbrite.com

This event is free to the public. Refreshments provided. Donations and sponsorship are welcome.

The event is sponsored by the San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange (www.sdentrepreneurs.org). The SDEE was founded by local entrepreneurs in order to provide a voice for the early stage technology startup, to encourage new entrepreneurs, and to sponsor networking and educational events to help develop the skills necessary to bring funding and business to the San Diego area.

Allele News Release, editor JW http://www.allelebiotech.com/News//index.php?mod=article&cat=OtherNewsRelease&article=692

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Updates on dealing with banks

In earlier blogs I wrote how banks behaved in relevance to both of my business and personal accounts. I paid much attention as part of a learning experience because banks represent the type of business that my company deals with at the highest frequency among all commercial services. Previously I complained about CapitalOne for not making efforts to understand a situation that unfairly resulted in increase of interest rate. They later changed that and now gave my company the lowest rates among all accounts. I thought for a well that Discover was friendly and reasonable but it turned out that they increased our rate without notice to above 25% after agreeing on phone to reverse a rate increase, just the opposite to CapitalOne, and of course they are history, I closed the Discovery account never again will I have them for business funding needs.

Advanta's underwriting bank got into some trouble during last year's turmoil and shut down our account, and it was gone from our list of credit services for good as well after I paid it off quickly. What's funny is that for some reason Citi bank kept sending monthly statements to my home address, maybe thinking that linking my business account closer to myself would make it safer? After repeated problems of miss-delivered (to my old address) and late payment issues, we seemed to have cleared it all up by a bunch of phone calls and finally using our business address. However, just last week they decided to close our account based on these payment issues. It struck me that severe miscalculations that these large banks have through their staff that make judgment calls on customers' credit worthiness still exist after they run themselves to the ground, had to use your and my tax money for a bail out that almost tore apart our nation, cost me big losses on their stocks, now they tell us good customers that we do not deserve their services. The lesson learned, a company has to have a system for operations, but that system must have a common sense check point in place.

I am not against just citi bank, of which I am a share holder and I hope they would do well, for being quite stupid while probably feeling kinda smart on making such moves through their customer accounts; or BOA who completely messed up my personal account for more than 20 years and lost me as a customer for ever; or Union Bank who on one hand tried to lure my company's business, on the other hand had a bunch of really bad business people working on my issues. I closed BOA, then Union bank checking, loan, and cutting down the last dealing with them.

Just a blog for other peeps or biz to learn something from my first-hand dealing with these banks who contributed handily and heavily to troubles many of us are experiencing now. As a businessman, I will continue to find the best service, and take risks of getting funding to continue hire new people and helping my employees through the good time and the tough times. As an executive, I learn from other business and try to avoid doing things that are unreasonable, unethical, or plain stupid. As a scientist, I try to put more reasoning and logic in figuring out human factors in all these events.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Allele Custom Services for Drug Screening Companies

http://allelebiotech.com/blogs/2010/06/allele-custom-services-for-drug-screening-companies/
Many target discovery and validation programs can benefit from RNA interference, fluorescent proteins, stem cells, and viral delivery systems. However, applications of these technologies require special reagents and laboratory know-how. Even when available, many generic reagent kits are not tailored for your particular needs in screening or validation.

At Allele, we accelerate your discovery efforts with custom RNAi screening, fluorescence based assays, and cell model development services.

1) Our RNAi platform, based on our patented shRNA/miRNA technologies, use DNA linear template, plasmid, lentivirus, retrovirus, or baculovirus vectors that prompt cells to endogenously express RNAi. As a result, our screens offer advantages over synthetic siRNAs:
• Higher levels of consistency
• Greater delivery and gene silencing efficiencies
• Accessibility to difficult-to-transfect cells, including primary cells
• Potential for inducible RNAi expression
• More persistent silencing with shRNA under Allele’s own IP–you may not need to license siRNA patents!

2) Fluorescent proteins (FPs), which can span the entire visual spectrum, have become some of the most widely used genetically encoded tags. Genes encoding FPs alone or as fusions to a protein of interest may be introduced to cells by a number of different methods, including simple plasmid transfection or viral transduction. Allele Biotech is one of a few companies that develop and improve FPs through fundamental research. We have so far achieved:
• The brightest cyan and green FPs, true monomers for minimum artifact or cytotoxicity
• The brightest yellow and red FPs from lancelet, only FPs from vertebrate
• mTFP1 as the best FRET donor by 3 independent reports
• Photoconvertible FPs for super imaging or kinetic labeling
• Delivery on plasmid, retrovirus, lentivirus, baculovirus vectors

3) As a major advancement in the stem cell field, it has recently been shown that mouse and human differentiated cells may be reprogrammed into stem-like, pluripotent cells by the introduction of defined transcription factors. These induced stem cells (iPSCs) provide unprecedented resources of cells of different differentiation stages for functional testing and drug screening. Allele Biotech develops and provides state-of-the-art reagents in convenient forms for iPSC production
• iPS factors carried on lentivirus, retrovirus, baculovirus for different cell types
• Availability in combination with fluorescent proteins under own IP, and drug resistant genes
• 4-in-1 or 2-in-1 effective use of iPS factors on one viral vector
• Feeder cells of human origin expressing factors essential for stem cell culturing

4) Introduction of protein factors, miRNA, promoter-reporter, and virtually any other genetic element of interest via the most efficient viral packaging systems.
• Introducing protein-FP fusion, promoter-FP reporter, photoactivatable factors for cell-based assays
• Introducing critical factors for cell immortalization
• Episomal or integrated expression using baculoviral vectors
• High throughput, systematic expression of whole class of molecules in any type of cell
• High titer viral packaging at low cost for delivery to animal tissues

In addition, the Allele team can provide custom-designed assays that can be used for assaying enzyme activities in almost any pathway, such as the EGF pathway, TNF response/apoptosis pathway, nuclear receptors, etc. We utilize technically advanced methods to provide our partners with advantages over alternative methods or other services.

New Product of the Week 06-28-10 to 07-03-10: Eco-friendly mammalian tissue culture plates, 40% less plastic to the environment, 40% less cost to your budget, contact our sales rep today for quotes and details.

Promotion of the Week 06-28-10 to 07-03-10: Oct3/4 iPS lentivirus with RFP as marker, new to the market, this week only all kits containing Oct3/4-RFP same price as the original, non-RFP versions, save ~$50!