Trevor

This is like that meme where people keep saying their dog’s favorite words, but for my scientific interests

Sumitomo Chemical declared force majeure yesterday, making it the fifth Asian chemical company in a single week. First Chandra Asri in Indonesia, then Yeochun NCC in South Korea. By March 5, Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore had declared force majeure on 1.1 million tons of ethylene capacity on Jurong Island. Aster followed a day later with its cracker running at half capacity. The root cause is the same for all five: naphtha, the feedstock these plants break down into the base chemicals behind plastics, rubber, and packaging. Asian steam crackers source most of their naphtha from the Middle East, and virtually all of it transits the Strait of Hormuz. When the Strait closed, all five lost their feedstock within days. Five force majeures in seven days. This is a massive disruption of the chemicals that hold the global economy together. Polymer prices are already up double digits. Everything downstream gets more expensive from here.

@nimivashi15 @GustoHQ We are leaving them after a similar experience. So terrible

@GustoHQ has the most terrible customer service I have experienced thus far. Their policy is called: don’t respond. If you are a startup I wouldn’t make the mistake of going with them. We use them and after 3 weeks of filing a complaint for the fines we received because of their filing errors, there is no response. I took external help and got it sorted in a day. A complete waste of my time. Switch to anything but Gusto. They probably got so far because of YC and SF startups adopting them early but right now they are degrading.

@manishtanks It has been a crazy week

This and the 45 mer self replicating RNA molecule 😵‍💫

Biolab robots have been a big topic on here this week. Not everyone $2m+ to spend, but plenty of labs have an OpenTrons and we're happy to now share a standard Golden Gate Cloning Workflow for their latest models, that we call "SLOWPOKE" pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

"everyone will just vibecode all the apps they need now!" has that "everyone will just print everything they need on their 3D printer now!" energy

PURE makes PURE: reconstitution of the PURE cell-free system from self-synthesized non-ribosomal proteins biorxiv.org/content/10.648… #biorxiv_synbio

@SynBio1 This is some of your best work

My fellow biologists we must do everything in our power to prevent this scenario

Pre-Seed should not take months and months to raise! We are thrilled to announce that @2048vc is launching Pre-Seed Fast Track to help you get funding in 10 business days. If you are raising $500K - $1.5M Pre-Seed round in Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Health or Bio we would love to meet you! We offer clear and transparent process and money in the bank within 10 business days of the first meeting. To start the process submit your pitch through our short form - 2048.vc/fasttrack_pitch If there is a potential fit we will reach out within a few days and follow these steps to fund you: Step 1: Intro meeting via Zoom: 30 mins where you meet with 1 member of our team. Step 2: Deep Dive via Zoom: 60 mins where you meet with 3-4 members of our team. Step 3: References + In-Person Meeting: We will chat with your early customers and professional references, and will spend a few hours to get to know each other in person. Startups are long journeys and we know how important the investor-founder fit is, so we will gladly pay for your travel. Step 4: Term sheet: We make you an offer from $250K - $750K Step 5: Wire: We are high conviction and don’t wait for the rest of the round to come together - we wire as soon as we sign the docs. To learn more about Pre-Seed Fast Track visit 2048.vc/fasttrack. We can’t wait to review your pitches and to meet you! @2048vc // #preseed

Hey, Boston folks! @2048vc wrote the first check in @CaravelBio. Their diligence process was both the fastest and most thorough I’ve experienced - which gave us confidence we were picking the right investors and can give you confidence they’ll be great co-workers.

Check out our new paper on using whole bacteria and protein nanofibers to make biodegradable bioplastics with tunable properties. @M_B_Avinash did an amazing job conceiving and developing this idea. news.northeastern.edu/2024/11/12/com…

This, but importantly it’s my dog’s costume.

@nimivashi15 Thank you!

@TrevorBNicks Agilent

These days with many biotech companies shutting down here are some hacks to buy equipment, plasticware, pipettes etc . 1. Always buy through auctions- you get first cheap pricing. We bought a year worth of plastic ware for a few hundred $ when we started the lab at @DeepOriginBio. 2. Same for pipettes. My colleagues was super active on auction bids and we got 20 individual ones for $500 and about 5 multichannels for $1000. 3. Yes there are repair and calibration costs there but they are way lesser than buying a brand new . 4. Here is another great hack for equipment: buy an old one and when you trade in you get 50-60% off when you exchange with a new one. For our plate reader we bought it for 6k and the company was happy to give as a new one at 50% off that 50,000$ on a trade-in. Much better than buying on eBay , etc. 😊😊😊

I made a spicy BLT so good that I cried a little

St Louis won the water lily weigh off at @mobotgarden with 142 lbs!!! We did it! Thanks @denverbotanic for challenging other botanical gardens to partake!

I firmly believe science fiction writers are the closest thing we have to science “philosophers” or “futurists.” And the few I know spend more time thinking about the likely deep future than almost any research scientist I know.

We setup our first liquid handler today at @CaravelBio - A new Flex with the Nucleic Acid Extraction Module from @opentrons. For folks that have automated a lab before, what’s your favorite protocol to automate or automation resources?