The Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research was awarded $8.1 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct a novel clinical trial using whole genome sequencing to test women and their partners, before they actually conceive, for mutations that could cause rare, but serious diseases in their offspring.

The project is part of the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research…

Where do scientists charged with analyzing forensic DNA samples from crime scenes go when they want to stay current on new methods, trends and products?  We recently learned it may not be the same place as other scientists undertaking similar tasks like DNA-based paternity testing, human cell line identification and human phenotype testing.

In a recent survey, we asked over…

Biopharmaceutical companies, being in a regulated industry, have always been focused on meeting quality requirements and controlling their supply chain. However, in the past few years they have had to deal with increasingly stringent regulatory demands to demonstrate that they are in control of not only their internal manufacturing processes, but the manufacturing processes of their raw material vendors…

When was the last time your company produced a printed catalog? You might want to consider the effectiveness of a printed catalog for certain regions such as in China. In Apr 2013, we polled Chinese cell culture researchers regarding what catalogs they used in the last month to purchase life science research products and whether it was in print…

We asked 2,172 researchers around the world what they thought of the announcement that Thermo Fisher Scientific is acquiring Life Technologies.  Less than 24 hours after the announcement roughly half of the participants (49%) were aware of the news.  The fact that this news has spread this quickly is a testament to the considerable impact this merger is likely…

Percepta:  Epigenetics has certainly been a hot topic.  We’re very glad to have a chance to speak with you and get your read on where the field is heading.  Now that the field has had a chance to develop, can you give our readers a brief summary of what is now encompassed in the field of epigenetics?

PJ:   Well that…

China remains an attractive market for life science tools suppliers capable of taking advantage…

Percepta: So, as the Editor of the Life Science Dashboards™ tell us what you have been working on lately.

SK: Well, we are going through some format changes to the Dashboard, including updating the brand and look and feel for 2013, and we’ve also improved the structure of the content somewhat. We’ve just completed a month-long audit of some of…

If you are looking for ways to communicate with researchers that identify themselves as immunology researchers, some of Percepta’s latest data suggests the popularity of various information sources spans a pretty broad spectrum. Search engines still rank high as a place immunologist look for product information. Also popular are peer recommendations, journal citations and company web sites, with more…

As has been shown again and again, seemingly homogeneous cell populations often consist of more than one cell type, which can confound research results. Single-cell research offers a bottom-up approach to circumventing such unwanted cellular heterogeneity. As a testament to its potential promise, the NIH has committed ~$90 million over 5 years to single cell analysis research. At Percepta,…