On February 10th, 2014 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released details about its fiscal mandates for the year. President Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act (Public Law 113-76) into law on January 17th 2014, ensuring funding to NIH for the fiscal year ending September 30th, 2014.

The Act provides NIH with a budget of $30.15 billion, which is an increase…

With the explosion of biological data now available as a direct result of genome sequencing initiatives, use of commercial gene synthesis and pre-designed synthetic biology tools is becoming increasingly popular. We wanted to understand how molecular cloners feel about using synthetic biology tools as replacements for in-house methods such as cloning. So, in December 2013, we polled users of…

In October 2013, we polled users of protein analysis products in the U.S. to understand how, if at all, budget sequestration has affected their lab’s purchase of protein analysis products.  Results reveal that both non-profit and for-profit researchers are impacted by budget sequestration as approximately 56% of non-profit and 29% of for-profit respondents indicated budget sequestration has definitely affected…

In places where controlling tuberculosis (TB) is a concern, there is an urgent need for simple, inexpensive diagnostics that can identify active TB, particularly in the context of HIV infection. In a recent paper (PLoS Medicine, October 22, 2013), researchers discovered that a unique RNA transcriptional signature found in whole blood could distinguish TB from other diseases including HIV…