I Ride Off Into the Sunset

Welcome back? Maybe, the jury is still out. I've been essentially offline on this blog for months now, but considering so many previous posts of mine still continue to collect comments, I doubt I will be taking the site down. But in the meantime, until other fun side-projects of mine come to fruition, I doubt I'll be blogging new science-related things anytime soon.

I do, however, have some good news. I landed a staff scientist position at a major biotech company here in the DC-Metro area doing what I love to do (research)! It's an amazing opportunity for me, and I'm looking forward to it like nothing I've done thus far in my career. Definitely a big step forward for me, and a major boost for my career. Thus, I guess I should say...

So-long postdoc! Hello real-world!

Wish me luck!

Molecular Biology Quotables

"Like a commuter ticket that is intended for a fixed number of train rides, the poly(A) tail of the mRNA is continually shortened during the translation process until a critical minimum length has been reached."

-- Amrani, Sachs and Jacobson (Nature, 2006)

Such excellent phrasing in molecular biology is rarely achieved.

Portal: Still Alive typography (A song for the research bench)

Someone sent this to me -- i just HAD to post it here. I just hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Support Open Access - Contact your Elected Officials

For some reason I can't bring myself around to write about protocols lately. I guess I've been too busy at the bench to finish up my series on SELEX or other bench topics. So, in the meantime...

I came across this excellent article from ScienceProgress.org, "Kicking the Doorstop on Open Access" by Rick Weiss, that discusses an effort by various publishing houses to reverse the NIH's efforts towards OPEN ACCESS SCIENCE. So, today I would like to urge the few readers we have to contact your elected congressional representatives and ask them to vote NO on the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act" (H.R.6845) which is due to a House floor vote. The bill was sponsored by Rep. John Conyers.

You can visit the US House of Representatives website to easily search for and contact your representative. A short, to the point, message usually works best to voice your opinion.

So, until next time... good luck!

BioSize Bio : A MUST READ FOR BENCH SCIENCE

Few science blogs actually talk about science - this blog included (unfortunately). It seems that it is far too easy to slide into a rut of bitching ABOUT science, rather than blogging about the science itself. Here at Working the BENCH we previously posted that we were planning on refocusing our efforts on the protocol development and the science behind them. In that same vein, today we've added a dedicated RSS feed on the far right (above the fold) for the 5 most recent posts over at BiteSizeBio, a must read for bench scientists (whether you blog or not). So, please head over there and check them out if you have not done so already.

Until next time, enjoy!