Dear Meredith and others from Pasadena,
The experimentation referred to in the above email is indeed not a new
untried technique, but rather involves the application of a commercially
available microcartridge. Since the supplier had to special order this
item, he had casually asked what I had in mind to do. Regrettably, he
published my comment in his company's flyer quite without my notification
or my permission. I don't know how my name got attached to all this, but I
can guess.
I am aware of the earlier publications re this technique and so it is
doubly embarassing as it implies that perhaps I might fail to credit
earlier results. My apologies and reassurances to those who think so.
This is all very unfortunate and I suppose a case for keeping one's mouth
shut. My only excuse is the supplier is a personal friend and probablly
didn't think before he acted. No hard feelings here. Besides, personally I
feel uncomfortable about even this degree of secrecy in science anyway.
Finally, so that no one's experimentation is held up on my account, I have
to tell you I have no data to share at this point, but the idea was simply
to do in situ digestion in a gel slice in an empty 1 X 1.5mm guard
cartridge from Optimize (not the culprit here) Technologies, available from
Western Analytical (1-800-541-8421) as cat. no. 10-02-02179, $20/copy but
should be reuseable. You will also need a holder.
No guarantees here, and good luck if you want to try it.
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Gary M. Hathaway, Director
PPMAL - Protein/Peptide Micro Analytical Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
139-74, Division of Biology
Pasadena, CA 91125
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~ppmal
email Gary: hathaway@caltech.edu
email facility: ppmal@caltech.edu
phone: lab (818) 395-6388 or office (818) 395-2769
FAX (818) 449-3414
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