Sigma BioBlogs

AACR is over 100 years old, with a membership of 30,000+.  The membership is quite inclusive, with a mixture of people from basic science research, clinical research, and also physicians, patients, survivors, and patient advocates all intent on studying and learning more about how to stop cancer.

We got the chance to meet many of them, and a few answered the question “Where does your bio begin? (You can still enter your video too!).

Communication, collaboration, research and education are all a part of AACR’s mission, with 6 Cancer journals for the thousands of scientist who are members, and also CR magazine, to provide information directly relevant for cancer patients, survivors, and patient advocates.

For AACR 2010, the volcanic ash prevented many European presenters from attending, so AACR shifted and met the need by patching the speakers through via video and teleconference.  Some of the recorded talks are here.

Plus an amazing twitter feed which is still active 4 days post-meeting as bloggers sift through their notes and communicate the information that they gathered during the meeting.

The science has come a long way too.  Many traditional topics were under exploration, such as studies around Ras and p53,  there  were also discussions about newer technologies for  such as microRNAs, using biomarkers for early detection,  nanotechnology, and systems biology.

Some blogs of note:

Sally Church’s blog. This lady knows the cancer community.  I got the chance to have coffee with her and she knew half the researchers walking in and out of the conference hall.

Nature writer Brian Maher has a series of short blogs about the sessions he attended.

Another look at Bert Vogelstein’s talk…

This AACR video details some fascinating statistics on cancer research

Lush blades of grass tickle the back of my neck.  All I see before me is a pale blue sky speckled with faint clouds.  A curious trio we made, my husband, 5-year old niece and I lying in the grass at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  We stare up at the sky briefly and then the moment of relaxation is over.  My niece is back on her feet and ready to move on to the next flower bed where she promptly requests my camera so she may take a photo of the array of deep plum colored tulips.  It was the sort of afternoon that makes one savor the beauty found outdoors.

The day with my niece served as a reminder to me of why it is important to protect our natural resources and Earth Day is a great time to discuss ways to reduce our impact on the environment and share tips for greener living.  Here are a few of my personal favorites because they are easy to incorporate into your lifestyle:

Bamboo utensils– avoid the disposable utensils when eating out.
Reusable Produce bags – drop these inside your cloth grocery bags as you head out the door and reduce plastic bag usage even more.
Stainless steel water bottle– Fill up your own water bottle instead of buying a plastic bottle.

What are some of your “green living” ideas?

Remember, your small changes can make a difference.  It is difficult to imagine that one less plastic fork or plastic bottle you toss in the trash will make an impact on the environment but consider the combined efforts of a group of many.  At Sigma-Aldrich eco-enthusiasts join forces in our internal Green Team.  The team looks for ways to encourage adoption of environmentally-friendly practices by their fellow employees at home and in the office.  The initiatives include providing online tools for car sharing, reducing departmental printing and coordinating on-site recycling.  Joining a team activity is a great way to start making an impact in your community.   Find an Earth Day event near you.

Want to green up your lab?  Finding green alternatives in the lab without impacting your research is probably more complex than swapping disposable utensils for bamboo, but we can help.  Visit sigma.com/green for “Greener Alternatives” and more information on greener products, programs and services along with links to resources on environmental sustainability.  It is amazing what can be accomplished when a group of dedicated individuals get together to drive change.  We will be working along side you, striving to make Global Citizenship a priority.  Sigma’s Global Citizenship Initiative GC1015  goals include more efficient water and energy use, waste and emissions intensity improvements and expanding community engagement to name a few.  Check out the full list of GC1015 goals or come up with your own ways to benefit the environment.

Whether you start to make changes at home or in the lab, what matters is that you are doing it.  The earth will thank you…with a vibrant bouquet of plum colored tulips.

When we set out to create a leading destination for researchers and students exploring diseases, functions and gene pathways we were excited to learn an engaged group was accessing Your Favorite Gene powered by Ingenuity, a collection of scientific information including dynamic biological pathways, interaction networks and gene overviews.

We also knew we could count on scientists to provide feedback to improve this resource and those suggestions are at the heart of this new version.  The overwhelming response was a request for more literature!!!

When designing experiments researchers focus on peer-reviewed publications and data to help them explore ways to answer their scientific questions.  Until this version of YFG, those resources were scattered across the web in several different locations such as:
ChemBLdb
PubMed
Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)
Clinical Trials.gov

Now it is all in one place!  YFG now contains expanded content with greater functionality to quickly connect you to the information that is relevant to your research.  I could go on but I don’t want to steal Kyle’s thunder.

Listen to Kyle Brueggeman give the highlights of the updated version of Your Favorite Gene Powered by Ingenuity.

It isn’t everyday that we can get a product manager to talk to the camera so take a minute to listen and then feel free to tell us what you think at yfgsuggestions@sial.com.

We are also hoping that Kyle’s willingness to speak to the camera will inspire you to do the same and enter our video contest at AACR.

I met many BRF’s a couple of weeks ago at the ABRF (Association for Biomolecular Resource Facilities) 2010 meeting in Sacramento, while I was learning more about how scientists use social media, and acting as a resource for our YFG research tool.

What is a Biomolecular Resource Facility?  It’s also known as a “Core Lab”.

The ABRF group consists of about 800 scientists.  Compared to disease research meetings which have over 10,000 attendees, the group is involved is small, but the name “core” facility very aptly describes a typical ABRF scientist’s position..

Core labs are facilities within scientific institutions and companies that operate and maintain the machinery required to generate gene expression data, protein analyses, Next Generation DNA sequencing, protein sequencing and characterization, post translational modification analyses.  These cornerstone techniques are used by researchers throughout the world to study cancer, heart disease, and other molecular biological questions.

I asked Angela Crawford, Sigma’s Proteomics Product manager what to expect.  She said “The ABRF community is very inclusive and collaborative.  Many members are collaborating to establish standards and share best practices.  Together they develop better analysis methods, which leads to a better understanding of biology. Expect to see lots of ways to interact with the scientists.”

And we did!  The opening reception was a great example.  Each attendee received a card and a colored sticker denoting the number of meetings attended, and was given a card to complete by getting the name of someone from each giving newbies and veterans a simple ice-breaker to get to know each other.

The closing event was great as well! We got a chance to get to know more ABRF members before we headed back home.

This level of long-term successful, global collaboration is amazing to see.  A description of these collaborations or “Research groups” is available via the ABRF.org website.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet ruled the BRCA gene patents invalid.  The decision has a lot of impact to the life science industry both on the academic and industrial side.

There has been a lot of discussion online, and I thought a summary would prove useful.

Patient blogs…

Steph H

Teri S.

#BRCA – Twitter

Gene Patent – Twitter

Judge Sweet -Twitter

BRCA gene function – From YFG

Pros and Cons of Gene Patenting

A search on Google for “Kansas upset” delivers 6,090,000 results, pulling in tweets, sports channels and news sites covering the defeat of top seeded Kansas by the University of Northern Iowa.  The “bracket killer” left many an avid viewer dismayed.  I wipe droplets off of my forearm from a nearby Miller High Life that had the unfortunate circumstance of being in one such viewer’s hand during the 3 pt shot by Farokhmanesh that sealed Kansas’ fate.

As the madness sweeps through my house, I seem to be immune and can easily steer clear of the television but, on this occasion, I stuck around.  It was worth positioning myself within range of a beverage spray to view the fist pumping and overturned popcorn bowls.  I enjoyed a bit of a geek out as I watched this crazed person beside me and thought: what is it about our biology that drives the behavior of the “sports fan”?

How is it that we react physically, leaping from our seats and raising our arms during an exciting game? When Northern Iowa shutdown Kansas in the biggest upset of the tournament, what fueled the emotional reactions from the stadium seats (and from my sofa)?  Some scientists believe the answer to be mirror neurons.

While studying the brain images of macaque monkeys, neuroscientists in Italy observed that a set of neurons fired both when the monkey performed an action and when a human it was watching performed the same movement.  The sports fan isn’t playing the game, but with the same neural network engaged in watching the athlete perform, sports fans are connected to the game as if they were performing the activity.  A new spin on the phrase “get your head in the game”.  It applies to the fans too.

Now we can understand the sports fanatic.  But does it matter?  Didn’t we love them anyway?  Sure but think of the bigger picture.  This set of neurons driving this behavior may provide the mechanism for action understanding, imitation learning and simulation behavior.  Dr. Ramachandran expands on this topic, suggesting a role in our rapid development of culture and an explanation of phantom pain in amputated limbs.  It is fascinating.

Intriguing enough to put myself into the fray again?  Well, the Midwest Sweet Sixteen games are this Friday and I am sure the TV will be tuned to a game.  I don’t think I can avoid it.  Can I at least blame mirror neurons for what happens to my spouse?  Some neuroscientists aren’t convinced.  We think a few cell biologists should get in on the debate and identify cell signaling pathways that are involved using the Your Favorite Gene Search engine.  View pathways involving motor command neurons to jump start your research, but wait until after the Madness subsides.

John Rinn is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, but not like the professors I remember.   Those guys were 40 years older than me, and their knowledge was gained from 20-30 years in the lab.  John Rinn knows cool skater and snowboarder lingo (moguls, lines, turns, trix), is the same age as me, and his bioknowledge comes from playing with new technologies to demonstrate the unthinkable.

His Nature publication on LincRNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs)  has RNA experts divided over whether or not non-coding RNA’s are functional.   By developing technology to look closely at non-coding RNA’s, his lab has identified over 5000 LincRNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs).  They are functioning RNA’s that play a part in cell cycle regulation, and maintaining embryonic stem cell pluripotency.  Dr. Rinn is also investigating epigenetic aspects, which he describes as Genomic Origami.

The beginning of bio for Rinn was not a direct path.  He chose a university based on its proximity to mountains for snowboarding…and his life long hero is middle to long distance runner Steve Prefontaine…whose motto is “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift”

Thanks to his passion for new types of runs in snowboarding, Rinn injured himself and was bound to a hospital bed, and that’s where science really started to open up for him.

John Rinn gets some air

WBB: Where does Bio Begin for you?

JR: With coffee!  I spend 9-10am typically as an hour of reflection.

WBB: Interesting.  I’ve heard it said by more than one scientist that downtime is when great breakthroughs and ideas happen. Is that true for you?

JR: Yes. I actually get the best ideas when I go snowboarding.  It’s then that I have the time for my mind to drift, and dream up new experiments.

WBB: So you feel that snowboarding and science go well together?

JR: Yes…In snowboarding, if you do the same thing over and over again…it just gets old.  So you try different combinations of tricks…from a cliff to a mogul through trees to another mogul then jump off a cliff…that makes a beautiful run.  It’s the same with experimentation, except this time instead of looking for lines down the mountain you are trying to uncover beauty and truth by combining different experiments.  One experiment is not the key, it’s the “line of experiments”.  You need a combination that is synergistic.

WBB: So snowboarding and science do have a lot in common!

JR: Yes! And pain is always a part of the learning.  In snowboarding it’s injuries.  In science it’s in negative experiments.

WBB: Be careful out there!

This post brought to you by the following Sigma Life Science Bioareas

• Biomapping- Genomics tools and resources
• Epigenetics tools and resources
• Bioreprogramming -Stem Cell Biology reprogramming tools and resources

We have been using biowords for weeks now to describe everything; biocool, bioblog, biotweeple, biofacebooking, biosocial, biobling…

The word for today is “Biocontest”.

The contest is something we planned when we first posted our Wherebiobegins twitter account.  We knew that if there were great prizes like a Targeted Knockout, a CompoZr Integration kit, or an Apple® iPad,  we would see some creative biosparks flying across the web.

Here’s how it will work:

• Think back, and determine the story of what sparks biology for you.  Nature? experimentation?
• Tell your PI you need time to create an entry that will win a CompoZr ZFN
• Tell the story either through an essay, a video, or an image .
• Go to WhereBioBegins.com/contest and upload it.
• Tell your friends to vote for your entry! “Category” prizes will be awarded based on popular votes.
• Check back frequently to see if you are winning!
• Know your legalese

If you have problems with your submission, please email yfgsuggestions@sial.com.

Good Luck!  We look forward to seeing your entries!

It’s with great pride that we tell you Sigma Life Science is Where bio Begins.

To quote our VP of Marketing, Dr. Helge Bastian…“We want to help life science researchers address their research challenges and are committed, more than ever to support them on their way to new and revolutionary discoveries.”

Over the past decade, Sigma Life Science has built a repertoire of products and technologies to support the biological researcher. Part of our commitment to biology is to share our knowledge and resources with you.

If you’ve been following us over the last 30+ days, you have noticed that we are using social media as a means to get to know the biological community at a whole new level. We’ll continue this trend here. As we go forward look to sigmabioblogs.com for the skinny on new techniques, improving old techniques, exciting applications, war stories from technical services, and information about scientists from all over the bio community.

Here is a video of our President, Dave Smoller, to tell you the details.

Watch the video and then check out our great tools and techniques listed below.

• Targeted Genome editing
• Knock out research models
• Custom oligo services
• Biomolecules including antibodies and small molecules
• Reprogramming tools for stem cell research
• siRNA and shRNA’s for gene knockdown
• Biological search tool

Thanks for talking to us. We are having fun and hope you are too.

Welcome to Sigma Life Science. This is Where Bio Begins.

We imagine Bio began for some Neanderthals when their forkhead domain of FOXP2 first mutated.  This change impacted the transcription factor it coded, and the rest is history.

Of course it is sensational to say FOXP2 is the “speech gene”, or that one or two mutations lead to the development of speech, so we’ve made this sensational video to honor the idea.

Hopefully scientists will soon understand more about the cascade of changes that came from this mutation, the difference they made in neural connectivity, and all the physical changes that came before and after.

In the meantime, enjoy our homage to those mullets, I mean mutants, who could first speak.