“The essence of the scientific enterprise,” says Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” “[is] the Joy of Discovery.”1 But that doesn’t mean it’s practical or even feasible for researchers to do all the discovering themselves.
Take RNA expression analysis. With microarrays and next-gen sequencing, in situ hybridization and qRT-PCR, researchers are answering the most basic of questions, such as what makes a cancer cell a cancer cell.
Yet few investigators have the ability to answer that question entirely on their own. Many, constrained by space, infrastructure, know-how, or time, have no choice but to outsource the work to others. Often, that means employing a university core facility. But some elect to go off campus altogether, enlisting commercial service providers instead.
“The whole application, in terms of both arrays and qRT-PCR, is quite complicated,” says Marie-Louise Lunn, Director of Product Marketing and Communications at Exiqon, a Danish service provider focusing on microRNA ...
