Kevin Folta and Liz want researchers to dig out old bacterial clones from freezers and mail them in. They'll transform these forgotten strains with a library of nearly one million random DNA sequences to screen for novel peptides, antibiotics, or molecules that could reveal new biology. Contributors get co-authorship and minimal effort required.
Chapters
Rad, dude, but there's no such thing as polymerase chain reaction. I don't know where you hear these things. Tonight Liz and I are going to see Devo and Flock of Seagulls anyway. Yeah, they're totally tubular. Okay, dude, catch you later. Bye.
Hey, Kevin, did you see my copy of Maniatis?
Maniatis? Well, yes, I did. I left that one-volume molecular biology set Over by those sequencing plates that we're siliconizing.
Oh, barf out! Thanks. Are you ready to go to the concert?
Gag me with a spoon. We gotta make glycerol preps.
Oh my God, I forgot glycerol preps.
Barf out! All that time storing them in the cold. Do you think anybody will ever even look at them again?
Barf out! I don't I don't think so. This is such a mess.
Yeah, I don't know that anyone will ever use them again, but maybe they will. Maybe. You know, Liz, those clowns have to be in this freezer somewhere.
I know, but I don't know where.
You know, it's a It's a real shame that we're stuck using just the old clones that we made way back when in the 1980s.
I know, but what if we don't do like crowdsourcing thing?
Crowdsourcing? You mean asking people on the internet to send us their clones so that we can do more discovery science?
Of course, that's a great idea. Why would you do that?
That's a brilliant idea. Let's talk about that some more.
Let's do it.
When we were standing by the freezer, Dr. Estrada-Johnson had a brilliant idea. Could we crowdsource the next generation of clones for discovery? Meaning, go back and identify old constructs that you have in your -80 that we could repurpose for future discoveries.
We have a unique resource. We have 800,000 feature library of random DNA sequences. We can move them to any transformation vector with Gateway Cloning.
And that's the beauty of this, is that we have this crazy resource of almost a million different constructs that are just random DNA, and now we can try them in your system. What we need you to find is any old cultures that are long forgotten that may be potentially repurposed for discovery science.
The thing that we need is your old bacteria glycerol stock with construct with a chromosomal integration promoter reporter.
And if you can find those and send them to us, we'll transform your organism with a promoter and reporter construct with our random peptide libraries, and we'll look for new peptides and small molecules that can potentially disrupt biological processes.
And you will be a collaborator with us on the exciting biology we get to explore.
And that's what's so much fun about this. It's very low work on your side. All you have to do is dig in a -80 for a tube that you forgot about decades ago, send it to us, and we'll take care of the rest. And then we'll go forward and maybe find the next generation of antibiotics, growth regulators, or other small molecules that allow us to understand how biology works.
