In a recent summary of the presumptive presidential nominees’ positions on issues related to science and the environment including GMO labeling, global climate change and fossil fuels, there was a clear dichotomy.  That is not likely to surprise many in an election year.  However, we were interested in seeing what actual scientists thought of these “Science and Environment” political issues.

Percepta polled…

In this campaign year, politicians have once again started to consider the issue of regulating pharmaceutical pricing policies.  It’s not a new concept but recent practices of certain pharmaceutical companies have given this topic new life.

An article in The New York Times on October 4th reported on several pharmaceutical companies that were buying existing patented therapeutic drugs and dramatically…

Approximately 570 diagnostic tests and testing systems have been approved by the FDA for exclusion from regulation under CLIA criteria.  These tests are referred to as CLIA waived tests.

Roughly 4% of all CLIA waived tests in existence in the United States are HIV tests or test systems. Though all CLIA waived tests, including HIV tests, are designed to be…

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulates all non-research laboratory testing performed on humans in the U.S. through the 1988 Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (or CLIA for short). Many of the tests performed are genetic tests that assess DNA and/or RNA.  For years this amounted mostly to PCR and blotting methods.  However, more and more clinical labs…

A slew of papers focused on an epigenome roadmap and the nature of gene regulation were published this week, highlighting the increasing importance of understanding not just genes but the switches that control them.  The focused effort of more than 200 scientists that authored the publications was the topic of a New York Times article today. Understanding the organization of…

It feels like we all know that there are certain laboratory practices that are common in most life science labs but how well do we know the list?  Percepta polled over 1,000 global scientists to find out the relative usage of 11 techniques used in life science laboratories.  While there may have been some shifting of the rank order,…

Cell Culture is among one of the most widely used research methods in life science laboratories globally, and is present in 73% of the laboratories recently polled by Percepta (see figure).

This large market has the attention of many suppliers wanting their fair share of the…

Smart mobile devices have changed our lives and we now walk around with the internet in our back pockets.   They help us shop, share information, and update our favorite social media profiles.   However, how people use mobile devices tends to vary depending on the task at hand (pun intended).  Many find their mobile devices to be useful in the…

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…