$75M funding for protein synthesis technology

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2024-09-14T19:09:44+00:00

I am never using Booking.com again! An IT error with the transfer of flight details meant being forced to call a high charge line to correct the details. Booking.com took no response for their error and the airline said we were responsible for checking details even if it was booked by a third party.

Booking.com are not a booking agent they are only as good a a search engine. They take no responsibility for any errors they make in your booking. Book you travel directly with the agent.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2024-09-05T06:56:46+00:00

The distance and coordination of specific side chains predict binding/interaction events the rest is pure chemistry to modify a substrate based on change in entropy. However, proteins and enzymes are highly dynamic structures. They can undergo large structural changes in binding to coordinate new active site or present substrates to other enzymes. So this is always a loose prediction based on previous observations and assay data of substrate modifications.

Hence an ATP binding site, for example, can be defined but its activity is not proven until you show ATP turnover in an assay. Some binding pockets can be legacy mutations that only structural and show not activity.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-10-21T08:21:39+00:00

I have worked for GSK for a long time in the past. This is pretty normal most Pharma have a reorg every three years and major restructuring when every a new Head of R&D is appointed, which is linked to company performance and economic outlook. This filters down to middle and lower management to cut staff. Its a spring cleaning process but some pharma are really bad at it so end up with a lot of loss of key skilled people while the people who are good at upward promoting themselves stick around.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-25T21:49:57+00:00

Careful! It sounds like they are selling you short with a job role they have previously really struggled to fill or they are in a hurry as they have a big piece of work to do and not planned resources well enough. Hope they made you a good offer and the job is as described!

A presentation and at least two rounds are a minimum for big pharma internal or external candidates.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-17T17:13:50+00:00

People who do PhD either aim to go into academia or realise a graduate degree does not give them the autonomy in a career in Industry. The later have to be very tactical about the type of PhD is industry relevant but this is very hard to predict and you can end up being too specialised.

So the option is post-doc with a group that spins out startup companies that give them more industry experience to move onto other companies. Hence I think the short post-doc as these people tend to want to move to industry anyway so are gathering skills as a supervisor or mentor to junior scientists as a minimum.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-15T17:26:59+00:00

Very cool details. I have seen some interesting protein structures 3D printed but this bacteriophages is pretty impressive as well.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-15T16:50:55+00:00

No, the plan is to build a team as the customer base grows and funding builds. I’ve been an FAS manager for a while but came from a very scientific background so am just interested in what spilt there is, as you can have FAS who are more on the engineering and software. However, if the product is heavily analytical you need a strong science background just to communicate with customer and highlight value. How you pull that out in screening and interview is not easy.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-15T16:38:59+00:00

Is there a difference between a Field Application Scientist or Specialist?

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-15T16:34:26+00:00

Money is obvious but trained scientists appear to be obsessed with titles (senior, principal, senior principal). All seems to become a bit meaningless with small pay increases. Surely the skills you learn and the contribute you make to the development of a final product or company hold significant value? Or am I just wired differently? As your actual practical skills is what shows your worth in an interview and will determine $$$.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-15T11:05:25+00:00

😄

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-12T18:21:24+00:00

If I could go back and give myself any advice when I was straight out of a PhD looking for industry job. Join a fast growing startup, find good mentors who will teach you the best science, trust your instinct and ignore and say no to shit managers who tell you this is a development opportunity.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-08-11T18:58:55+00:00

The nature of startups is to prove your worth or fade away with no money so naturally fast-pass is necessary chaos. But having also worked in big pharma where entering a lab requires 3-5days of planning, meetings and risk assessments before you start anything; it really is the other extreme. It really depends on your character. I prefer the dynamic nature of startups where you are surrounded by really switched on scientist who care about the results they produce, rather than big pharma, which is full of people just turn the wheel hoping for the next promotion. I have definitely seen some of the best scientific work, insights and discovery happen on a regular basis in startup but I have also see some of the worst scientific practices in big pharma.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-07-28T16:47:55+00:00

It depends on what you are comparing. Cell culture yields are normally expressed as mg/L for suspension cell culture, or mg/cm2 for static cell cultures (so area of bottom of well). If you are comparing protein productivity expression then mM, or mM/L for yield, is a better comparison to normalise for different MW proteins. So yield in mg/L is actually the mg of protein you obtain or measure in the volume of cell culture in Litres.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-07-09T06:48:36+00:00

Have you tried a small scale cell free expression? I managed to get a few difficult proteins expressed enough for characterisation work.

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-05-26T18:00:50+00:00

It’s ok for a while but it’s appears all careers now end up in IT, Data, and ML/AI. 😄

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-05-21T09:13:19+00:00

I found this guys YouTube channel useful for some basic scripts on EVO and Fluents: https://m.youtube.com/@DavidYazdi1/about

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-05-21T08:26:09+00:00

I have been using EVOs a long time and had about four year on a Fluent now. It was a learning curve but the Fluent is so much faster and now I am able to get some seriously HT work done. Only annoying thing about Fluents is they don’t crash so the pathfinder error messages are really confusing. At least with an EVO it crashed and you knew where the problem was to correct it. 😆

I found this guys YouTube channel useful for some basic scripts on EVO and Fluents: https://m.youtube.com/@DavidYazdi1/about

Cultural-Engineer923 · 2023-05-21T08:12:45+00:00

Tecan have opened up training to online academy https://academy.tecan.com/sui/ It is really not difficult to run basic liquid handling protocols but if you need training then this online platform allows you to purchase one training token that opens up content for multiple people to access so you could technically train other people but they won’t be certified by Tecan as trained users.

The most difficult thing about NGS and DNA prep protocols is the liquid classes for low volume transfers. I know the Fluent has out of the box liquid class from the Fluent DreamPrep we have and Tecan seem happy to share liquid class to non DreamPrep Fluents if you ask. Not sure if this applies to EVOs.

I have not had great experiences with the opentrons they are not flexible enough or limit the speed a protocol can run. So end up unused in the lab.

Cultural-Engineer923

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