Many thanks to all who participated, supported, and attended the GET2012 conference! Don't consider this to be our only follow-up post about the conference, I just wanted to write a brief message and share some photos of the sample collections. (One thing we'll post later is some videos online.)
We managed to collect blood from 110 participants and 80+ microbiome kits (we haven't counted them yet) -- it's really exciting to have so many samples! The blood will be especially valuable, many thanks to our colleagues at the Feinstein Institute (the nurses who did the blood draws). Anu, Tom, and Ward all helped pack the samples up for overnight shipping to Coriell to establish blood cell lines (EBV-transformed B cells, to be shared in the NIGMS repository). Here's Tom's parting photo of the kits, as he and Anu left them at FedEx while I circled the block in a Zipcar truck:
[caption id="attachment_401" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="GET2012 blood kits at the FedEx office for overnight shipping. By Tom Clegg, shared as CC0."]
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And here's a snapshot we made on Monday evening, when Jeantine, Jason and I finished constructing the microbiome kits for the conference (five self-collected swabs from various body sites). Many thanks also go to John Aach & Mike Chou for their invaluable help, spending the better part of the day at the reception desk handing out and receiving these kits. An avalanche of ziploc bags!
[caption id="attachment_397" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Microbiome kits for GET2012 conference. By Madeleine Price Ball, shared as CC-BY."]
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