It's a sign of how depraved those faculty whiners are that some still seemed skeptical at the end of this marathon.
In addition to the revelation of the meaning of Giroir's chicken, much of the discussion was about TIGM. The highlights:
- Giroir and Diedrich setting the record straight on TIGM. Shorter version: Things are great and it's not the System's fault. TIGM was a university initiative from the start, driven by the late Dick Ewing, who was VPR at the time.
- Two free mice for A&M researchers (whether A&M researchers not working on mice can sell the rights to their pair on eBay was not addressed).
- TIGM has submitted lots of grants and is now likely to get one to do screening of ES cell lines for drug discovery (?). Unlike working with mice, this can be done on a large scale.
Giroir pointed out that TIGM is a core facility and that it is currently important for research at about 200 other universities. Someone else asked for examples - what do they expect TIGM to do, collect references to papers that acknowledge them?
This is just a little bit of what happened on Monday afternoon. Vision 1920 is having a harder time reconstructing the discussion about TIPS and NCTM, and welcomes comments to help reconstruct those parts.
V1920---Vision 1920 overheard some faculty potbanger saying something like "the ES knockouts are heterozygous, so they'll only see effects if haploinsufficiency has a phenotype." He also said something about RNAi.
ReplyDeleteMyth Buster---The Lexicon ES cells are not only heterozygous and dependent on haploinsufficiency impacting a phenotype, but in probably up to 90% the alteration does not even affect gene expression in ES cells. The alteration causes a phenotype in specialized cells during development and into the adult. Specialized cells are the basis of most diseases particularly neuronal and behaviorial alterations. This coupled with the low quality of the Lexicon ES cell bank in terms of viability and authenticity of targeted genes, e.g. quality control, an issue never considered in the deal, lowers the probability of usefulness to near 1% or less for suggesting a specific drug based on a specific biochemical target.
Aggie technological naivity in this area will become the laughing stock to competitors and those who are knowledgeable. And eventually exposed for scammers and fraud to the naive who contract to use this approach for high throughput screening. Maybe naive third world researchers can be sold on the idea.
V1920---Giroir pointed out that TIGM is a core facility and that it is currently important for research at about 200 other universities. Someone else asked for examples - what do they expect TIGM to do, collect references to papers that acknowledge them?
Myth Buster---Although TIGM refuses to disclose precise numbers based on productivity in respect to services, most specifically mice, insiders know that the total production from start to finish by TIGM personnel likely exceeds no more than 20 walking, living mice, probably much less. Production to TAMUS researchers one fourth to half that and among those researchers in the Houston facility, the only place ever produced a transgenic mouse (other than one or two) in the A&M System historically despite investment of millions.
This is not surprising since skilled hands-on TIGM personnel and for that matter skilled personnel in the A&M System that can actually produce a transgenic mouse from ES cells or DNA can be counted on the fingers of two hands. PhD level personnel is about half this and and TAMUS faculty level personnel is not more than half this again.
FACT---TIGM investments and resources have gone to administration and infrastructure and in the faculty and research arena at best to support very limited and transient individuals and their research programs several steps removed from the stated global mission.
It is this example that causes concern over the two additional institutions in development, specifically what is the accountibility practices and milestones that will be put in place to justify continued investment or to reform or sunset if they are not met? After all of greatest concern is the fact that TIGM underwent a full system audit, public, transparent, and still no changes were implemented in respect to leadership, personnel and accountability to this date. Proposals are only to expand the status quo and worse, to admit it is a loser and proposed even a newer application with an even more serious risk, use of cultured ES cells short of mice for busy work and activity just to justify keeping people busy.