Science

Three of this year's nobel prizes were given for topics we work on:

The 6th edition of the the book Erkrankungen des Lymphgefäßsystems (Diseases of the Lymphatic System) is out. It's a German language textbook, for which Kenny Mattonet, Jörg Wilting and myself wrote the fifth chapter (Genetic causes of primary lymphedema). Get it from here, since Amazon still sells the old, 5th edition. If you have a really good excuse why you should get one for free, mail me! I have a few copies.

The Neon transfection device from Life Technologies (oops, Thermo Fischer nowadays and former Invitrogen) was introduced about five years ago to the market. It is designed for easy electroporation of mammalian cells. We have had the device available since 2011, but it was not much in use. I don't know whether the low adoption rate is due to the user-unfriendliness (I still don't know how to put the electrode tip to the pipettor despite having done this hundreds of times, it's just really finicky mechanics), expensive running costs (for its desposible gold-plated electrodes and the proprietary transfection buffer) or something else I cannot figure out...