Happy Chinese New Year!

Best of luck!

Promotion of the week 01/21/11-02/06/11: 15% off basic lentivirus EF1a-Luciferase. Email samajram@allelebiotech.com for more information.

New Product of the week 01/21/11-02/06/11: SurfaceBind Just-a-Plate 96-well PCR purification kit.

Tags: Chinese New Year

Happy Holidays!

We like to explore and are inspired by journeys to the unknown. Science is not only a disciple of reason, but also one of romance and passion.

Physicist Stephen Hawking, in a Parade magazine interview, September 12, 2010

New Product of the Week 122010-122610:

pORB-CAG-AFP-GFPfusion(mWasabi)-sIRES-VSVG for insect and mammalian cell expression of human cancer antigen protein AFP, validated and ready to ship. Email vivec@allelebiotech.com

Promotion of the Wee 122010-122610:

5% off all cell culture related products including consumables. For this week use the code CellCulture when you check out at our website (http://shop.allelebiotech.com/).

Tags: science

Many Thanks to Give

We would like to thank our customers for choosing Allele’s products and services. The economic conditions have been challenging for the last two years and are still difficult. Allele Biotech could not have possibly achieved what it has within this time period without the support of its customers.

We thank online readers who visit our Blogs, News and Technical Forum to make our webpage one of the highest ranked among biology reagent suppliers; surpassing Clontech, Stratagene, Promega, IDT, etc. (by online ranking service Alexa’s accounts).

We thank our collaborators (some converted from customers) and business partners (manufacturers, distributors, licensors) for working with Allele and making our plan of one new product per week a reality. Allele Biotech has a very innovative and able research team, but working with researchers outside of the company is always a major part of the R&D effort at Allele.

Allele Biotech is obliged to its employees for their creativity, organization, dedication, and professionalism. The culture that they have nurtured here is to be individually motivated as a basic research group, and to be disciplined and organized as a service provider at the same time.

Allele Biotech is a beneficiary of the US government’s policies on supporting biomedical research and innovation. We appreciate the support for our basic research in the forms of grants and contracts from the NIH and the IRS, and ultimately the American tax payers. It is our duty to create and produce better tools for improving human health.

Thank you once again and have a Happy Holiday!

New Product of the Week 112210-112810:

Photoconvertible FP mClavGR (green-to-red) on lentiviral vector pLICO, email FP@allelebiotech.com for product details.

Promotion of the Wee 112210-112810:

10% additional discount off HPLC siRNA’s promotion price, $135/15 nmol, use promo code FB112210si, order by emailing oligo@allelebiotech.com.

Tags: Clontech, collaboration, collaborators, customer opinions, customer service, IDT DNA, IDT oligo, Life Technologies, mClavGR, photoconvertible FP, promega, Stratagene, thanksgiving

Integration of Orbigen Products

Allele Biotech has been marketing products previously offered by Orbigen since July of 2008. In the process, Allele Biotech has transferred the majority of the Orbigen products to its own product lines, and left out a few that were no longer in demand, under proper license, or in some cases replaced with newer and better versions.

The biggest class of Orbigen products now under the Allele Biotech brand name are the polyclonal antibodies such as anti-EDG1 EDG2… EDG8 (catalogue numbers: PABs 10626, 10619, 10628, 10630, 10496, 1063), anti-BMRPs (catalogue numbers: PABs 10536, 10537, 10538). Other popular polyclonal antibodies from Orbigen include PAB-10983, PAB-10216, PAB-10683, PAB-11651, PAB-11141, PAB-10241, PAB-10469, PAB-10778, PAB-11248, PAB-11665, PAB-10563, PAB-10774. Orbigen antibodies have been tested in hundreds to thousands of labs over more than ten years.

One key product group developed by Orbigen is the baculovirus system, which includes the viral Sapphire genomic DNA and pOrb transfer vector plasmid for efficient packaging. We have further developed the pOrb vector into a bicistronic vector for dual expression or mammalian infections.

Retrovirus packaging cells, on the other hand, have been obtained from non-Orbigen sources and are now called Phoenix 2 as products under a new product line, the Gryphon retrovirus system. These cells have similar functions but were built by different researchers and further selected at Allele Biotech. Like all packaging cells we have experience with, these cells do not attach well after a freeze/thaw cycle. It is absolutely essential to wash away DMSO and better seed them in high quality, attachment enhancing dishes such as our EcoCulture plates.

Products previously under the Orbigen brand name are now included in Allele Biotech’s brand new shopcart (now beta-testing at shop.allelebiotech.com). We hope the new functionalities at the new site combined with the relevant knowledge and information you used to enjoy at our current allelebiotech.com site will provide you with an improved shopping experience.

New Product of the Week 110810-111410:

Retroviral vector with drug resistance new version, ABP-PVL-IRES10P.

Promotion of the Week 110810-111410:

GFP-Trap beads-immobilized camelid antibody for GFP fusion pull down. 15% off ACT-CM-GFA0050, any number of vials ordered this week. Use code SP110810.

Tags: Allele Biotech Orbigen merge, anti-BMRP, anti-EDG, biocarta antibodies, Orbigen, Orbigen antibodies, PAB-10, PAB-11, polyclonal antibodies

How do you produce your iPS cells?

From AlleleForum: First off, thank you for choosing Allele Biotech for your iPSC experiment needs. Now onto your questions

You asked Q1: How many human fibroblast cells you normally to start for transfection. I understand you use 12-well plate? How many days you wait till the cells grow confluent? If the cells never grow confluent, should I still transfer them to feeder plate? Is it critical for the cells to reach confluent, if it is, could you suggest the reasons to me

We usually plate at 70% or about 10e4-10e5 cells and transduce the cells for 2-3 days. It should become confluent in 2-3 days. There is no need for the cells to become confluent before splitting onto feeder cells. Please note for primary cells, do not wait for the cells to get too confluent because contact inhibition may induce growth senescence before cells are reprogrammed.

Q2: How many cells you plate on the feeder plate, let’s say it is 6-well plate, and how many clones would normally pup out from each well?

From one well of a 12 well plate, you can plate 1/5 onto a well of a 6 well feeder cell plate. From there, you should get plenty of colonies.

Q3: At the time when you need to cut the Loxp sites, what passage number you do, do you have to dispense the iPS into single cell? Do you have a detailed protocol for that? Other than virus, do you have any other means to do the job, like plasmid?

Never dispense iPSC into single cells. They do not grow back well if split into single cells. iPSC colonies should be passaged in patches of cells. To excise loxP, the suggested timing is after 12-14 days when the cells are reprogrammed into iPSC colonies. Just transduce the iPSC colonies with Cre virus.

Q4: Is it true, that the 4-in-1 is more powerful than individual ones? Do you have the construct(4-in-one) for sale?

The 4-in-1 is somewhat more effective than 4 individual ones. For license issues, we do not distribute the construct to customers because we only offer packaging service. Similar type of plasmid DNAs may be accessible from other sources.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know. Thanks again.

New Product of the Week 082310-082910:

pInman-iPS Bac2Mam viruses, email iPS@allelebiotech.com for details.

Promotion of the Week 082310-082910:

Thomson set of iPS vectors on lentivirus, send in order this week get 20% discount. Email iPS@allelebiotech.com for details, with promotion code V082910.

Tags: 4-in-1, feeder cells, iPS, iPS colonies, iPS medium, iPS protocol, lentivirus, loxP Cre, splitting iPS cells