Sorry about our lack of posting, but as you can see from the title….. we’ve moved!!!  We really miss the old building, where many late nights of wringed-hand planning and pots of black coffee were consumed during the building of the company.  But, at a certain point when everyone was wearing coats in the lab because we had to keep the air conditioner on all the time, even in the winter, to keep the sequencer cooled, or maybe when we covered the sequencer with plastic because the roof was leaking and water was making its way through three flights of wooden floors, or just because the thought of fitting 5 people in a 1100 sq/ft lab gave us all the shakes, we decided we needed a bigger place to set up shop.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to….. (drum roll begins)

3139 Olive St., St. Louis, MO  63103…….

7500 sq/ft and 2 floors of early nineteenth century masonry bones and concrete floors and ceilings that would make even the strictist minimalist proud!    Only took about a month of moving and a couple of trips to IKEA to get the lab set up, and viola!  We are fully producing sequence that looks better than ever!  Even bigger news is we have adopted another sequencer, that I lovingly refer to as “Brad”, however everyone is not sold on that.  We now have two Illumina machines and two Applied Biosystems machines.  Oh, and what beauties they are!

Their names are (and by the way, I picked all the names and am totally responsible for anyone getting mad about their name being used to name a sequencer [which by the way….. is SUPER cool].  Let me assure you that this naming scheme is purely out of love for these very unique yet apt names, as they were culled from my own family):

Illumina #1 – Randy

Illumina #2 – Mitch

AB #1 – Ronnie

AB #2 – Brad

Come on now, quit swooning!

Here, let’s take a walk around.

The main wet-lab section of the building.  Space for all of our folks and equipment.  Also, please notice  the double doors at the end of the room which lead out to our front 2nd floor covered patio!  Having spent most of my adult life working in academic labs, this makes me giddy every morning when I come in.  I have my coffee out on the front porch and head inside to attack the day with a ferocity not seen since my first year of graduate school.

Here is the sequencing room.  Notice the metal tube in the back by the Applied Biosystems machine?  This is a custom air handling unit that we had installed in the building.  These machines put off a lot of heat.  And, YES, the AB machine in the right one third of the picture is Brad!

Hey….. check out Jin, our senior scientist, at the bench!  She does NOT mess around! Also, if you need some lights for your lab, let me know because I built the ones above the Jin.  I wanted them to look like race cars.  I may put a tutorial up soon

This is a pic of our conference room.  And, no that is not a “state fair, pay-to-put-your-friend-in-jail, jail” in the background, that is the original freight elevator.  It has stairs that go to the roof, though we have enough to do down here so I don’t know what is going on up there.

Alright, back to work now, and I have quite a few interesting posts coming in the upcoming months, so please check back.  Also, if you have any questions or whatever, write them on a 3×5 blue-lined note card and send them to our CTO, Jarret.  He will be super-confused and we will all have a great time making fun of him.

Until next time,

Jon