Chapter 582

Oligonucleotide is oligonucleotide, it is composed of two words, one is oligonucleotide, the other is nucleotide.

This word seems very complicated, but in fact, it's Wen Qingbing fan, a Chinese scholar who named it. He has a name that seems troublesome. (I wanted to find out which great Xia named egg pain, such as nucleotide, guanine and cytosine, but I didn't find it for half an hour. Then I thought about it, I can only do this kind of thing when my eggs hurt...)

Nucleotide itself is a kind of basic molecule, and its significance to organism is similar to that of hydrogen peroxide. And its importance is mainly reflected in its composition. Nucleotides linked together are ribonucleotides, or RNA; And then take off the oxygen. It's called deoxyribonucleotide, which is DNA.

Oligonucleotides, however, are a group of nucleotides that are gathered together. The total number of oligonucleotides is less than 20, so oligonucleotides become idle oligonucleotides that are useless for eggs.

Of course, oligonucleotide itself is useless, but it is the raw material of many biological experiments, so that people desperately want to produce it, because the dosage is too large.

Historically, muris, who won the Nobel Prize for PCR, was the director of the oligonucleotide Laboratory of a private company. His job was to constantly synthesize and produce oligonucleotides, and then provide raw materials for other departments of the company to do experiments.

Michael Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in the same year as muris, also invented site directed mutagenesis of oligonucleotides.

However, Michael Smith is much worse than Maurice. He made the technology of site directed mutagenesis of oligonucleotides in 79, and the method of producing oligonucleotides used by Maurice at that time had not been invented.

So Michael Smith had to spend most of his time producing oligonucleotides.

This is the normal situation for researchers, who spend most of their time doing boring and repetitive work.

However, before the development of technology, boring repetitive work is essential, and some valuable achievements are also found in repetitive work.

In the short four years from 1979 to 1983, the development of biotechnology was fast enough to make Nobel Prize winners at a loss. In fact, if we revise textbooks according to the development speed of biotechnology, it is certainly not enough to revise textbooks twice a year.

Biotechnology has thus entered an era similar to Moore's law.

For the scholars, this is an era of pain and happiness. They study hard, work hard on projects, and participate in the changing tide of the great era. Their achievements may be beyond the previous hundred years.

For college students who are studying, this era is only pain. College students in other disciplines are still complaining that what we learn in the university is useless in the society. When students in biology wait until they are looking for a job, looking back at the textbooks of the past four years, they will find that the contents have been modified beyond recognition

Of course, most textbooks are too late to be revised, That they don't even know how far behind they are.

In fact, in terms of proportion, Chinese scholars are lagging behind more, especially in cutting-edge technology. In an age when most Chinese researchers can't understand English, it's too difficult for us to follow the rhythm of American Dad. You can't understand the previous research results and articles. Do you want to do it again?

Even if we do it again, we can't catch up.

Since the 1970s, Americans began to allow commercial private biological companies, the application technology of biological science has been developing rapidly, and the professional terms can be redefined once in five years. If the pursuers learn slowly, they will be left behind, let alone do it by themselves.

When Yang Rui mentioned the DNA synthesizer, not only Li Wenqiang and others from local universities didn't know it, but Huang Mao, who came back from Columbia University a few years ago, didn't have any idea.

"Can't we do it by laboratory methods? We have a lot of people now. It should be no problem to deploy two people. " Huang Mao had heard of DNA synthesizer. He didn't know exactly what it was like.

Yang Rui shook his head and said: "I have bought the DNA synthesizer. A company in the United States called biological research started to try to produce this kind of instrument two years ago. Now we are behind our competitors. When the DNA synthesizer arrives, our first task is to transform this instrument, improve its production capacity, and then produce it. Of course, the original laboratory methods will continue to be used to make experimental materials for this period of time. "

Today's DNA synthesizers are far from the level of future generations, let alone automatic production of nucleotides. It's not easy for them to work normally, and it's necessary to modify them. Just like the early computers, it's not a matter for users to program plug-ins themselves, and don't expect the engineers of the other company to have the ability to repair them. The so-called first generation means that apart from developers, Something that no one else understands.However, you can't buy such scientific research instruments even if you want to. If it wasn't for the honeymoon period between China and the United States, Yang Rui couldn't buy them with money.

Huang Mao had never seen anything, and his focus was different. First, he was surprised and asked, "who is the opponent? You said just now that we are behind our opponents, who are our opponents? "

Instead of giving a positive answer, Yang Rui only said, "apart from our own people, those engaged in scientific research are all competitors. In any case, we should first improve our own supply capacity, and manpower will be used for other purposes later."

Huang Mao still thought it was expensive and asked carefully, "how much is that DNA synthesizer?"

Yang Rui bared his teeth and said, "freight plus, 280000 dollars."

"Hiss"

Several people in the laboratory took a breath.

"I can't help it. It's the price. It may cost tens of thousands of yuan for the transformation when the thing comes. So, we should keep our spirits up and don't let the money go to waste. Next year, people will have a new DNA synthesizer, but the old one hasn't figured it out yet. That's a waste."

"That's too expensive. How much faster can we make it than ourselves?"

"At least five times. Adjust it and change it by yourself. It's no problem to increase it to ten times. It's also necessary to increase the output to at least six people per day. " In fact, Yang Rui doesn't want to spend so much money. Huarui company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of his offshore company. The 280000 US dollars are all his own money. If you take this money to friendship store, you can buy out the first floor building. If you take it to Beijing to buy a house, you can buy 100 sets of siheyuan. In 30 years' time, it will be at least more than one billion yuan, up to 200 million US dollars, and it will have to appreciate 1000 times.

However, PCR is a Nobel Prize research, let alone Yang Rui still has money, that is to say, let him spend all the money, in exchange for a Nobel Prize, Yang Rui is willing to eat it.

Huang Mao listened to the quantity Yang Rui said and looked around. He said helplessly: "the output of six people in a whole day is not enough for all of us... Otherwise, let's recruit a few more people to specialize in oligonucleotides? Don't use the instrument for the time being. "

He still loves money. Huang Mao is now the deputy director of Huarui laboratory. It's helpless to see Yang Rui spend more than half of his working capital.

Yang Rui shook his head: "it's not impossible to be a specialized oligonucleotide laboratory, but it's too laborious. Six people can produce all day, and we have to recruit more than eight people. Plus two or three assistants, you have to prepare ten. This is for raw materials, and we can't do less experiments. So many people have to be equipped with full-time management personnel, plus accountants and cashiers, the size of the company has doubled all at once. There are too many problems. It's better to buy an instrument. In addition, the capacity of the equipment can be expanded, and the purity can be well controlled. These are all advantages. "

The good control of the purity of the instrument does not mean that the oligonucleotides produced by the instrument are more pure, but more average. For important experiments, average may be a more important concept, because it is easier to predict the progress of experiments, and the purity of API may not be regarded as a variable.

People who have studied equations all know that binary linear equation is easy to solve, ternary linear equation is not difficult, and quaternion linear equation is troublesome. If there is no special relationship between five variables, it is difficult to play.

For laboratories with high requirements, everyone is a different variable. The worse the level of researchers, the higher the variable index.

The Mavericks recruited by Yang Rui have not yet demonstrated earth shaking ability, but now that they can develop earth shaking level, they at least have good basic skills. They need too much time to recruit researchers of different levels, and then retrain and even cultivate basic research thinking. Although Huarui laboratory is rich, it is difficult for them to do so, But the lack of Peking University such a brand, want to recruit some high level is not easy, Yang Rui is not willing to offer their own high salary, raise a few snails.

Huang Mao asked: "can we use this kind of project now?"

He actually wanted to ask, is it worth it?

Yang Ruixin said: This is the Nobel Prize, 280000 US dollars, which is just the beginning of investment.

After calculating his savings, more than a year's dividends and the additional income of Jielikang's overseas factories, Yang Rui still has more than $4 million in his hands after seven deductions and eight deductions, which makes Yang Rui say with a little confidence: "let's not say what the big project will be like. Let's send this DNA synthesizer to us. At least we can write some papers on this basis, it's not a loss."

"A few papers cost 300000 dollars, which is quite expensive." Huang Mao sighed and said, "fortunately, foreigners have money. Let's spend it first."

Yang Rui's eyes were turned by what he said, and his heart was a little chilly. It's just the beginning. It's the prelude to the project. Eight percent of the funds go out. It's really dangerous.

Scientific research is a bit like doing business, but it's more difficult than doing business. Both of them care about the capital chain, but when the business is half done, the capital chain is tight, so they can mortgage and loan. It's hard to get some collateral for scientific research. In the United States, there are venture capital companies specializing in biological companies. But what they want is shares, and the price is high. It can't be said to be looting. But in terms of price, it's similar to looting. On the other hand, the timeliness of scientific research is strong. It's normal for business people to talk about loans, shares and one or two months, but it's hard to say the result if they delay scientific research for one or two months. Therefore, it's possible to lose all their money.If it can wait, Yang Rui still wants to wait. So it can save more than a quarter of the bonus. At least it will be one million dollars. Unfortunately, time waits for no one awesome. Yang Rui had to hope that the sales of coenzyme Q10 could be strengthened in the last half year.

……