16/9/13

Totally paying the price for being a slacker. Will not let this happens anymore from now onwards.

COMEX 2013 and 4TB Seagate

Finally, after purging all the evil spendthrift in me for the past 9 months, finally it is time we get a new toy (actually it is really a necessity) for 2013! Am thinking of getting a 4TB Seagate for all my storage needs. Glorious!

September

Can't believe that it's already September. It has been 8 months. While it is an enjoyable session, with lots of praises and new skills learnt, I admit the whole effort lacks focus. Too many parallels going on and I have yet to close any yet. Papers better be churn out fast, cause I'm really running out of time!

Extremely pure DNA extraction.

So our lab was dealing with shit loads of DNA work. I mean like ... err.... 20 terrabyte of DNA sequences? Yup. So when it comes to extracting high quality DNA, skills and experience is really what it takes. So you don't end up with 20TB of rubbish data.

Having work with these DNA extraction over the past few months. I think I should start writing about some basics of DNA extraction here. Specially from animal tissues (different tissues, different methods. Think bone vs muscles), plants, gram-positive bacteria and even random stuffs (think soil, think carpet, think CSI:NEW YORK!)

The most important think is about how you want to manipulate the DNA physically! Yeah not chemically because you just want to make them mix around and then purify them, removing other stuffs that will inhibit your downstream analysis. Also I think I will talk about how to transport DNA. For example, sending DNA from one lab to another to different countries requires special care. After all, remember, you are probably sending only a few drops of preciousness that will give you gigabytes of FASTQ files!