10/27/05 The new limited-edition FGSC mug has arrived. We are asking $5 plus shipping for this handsome and useful mug. Show your support for the FGSC and our resources. Become the envy of your lab-mates. Get your mug today!

10/25/05

Spring 2006 looks like it will be busy with the 2006 Neurospora Conference at Asilomar, the European Conference on Fungal Genetics in Vienna, along with satellite meetings for Neurospora, Aspergillus (also here), and Fusarium.

Our advisory board meeting was held here last weekend and we have revised our fee structure to reflect the trend towards larger orders. We have tried to avoid raising fees for most strains and the change we did make is to have a decreasing fee as the number of strains increases. We did, however, change the way the fee cap is implemented.

We are discussing how we will implement online fee payment and paypal is a leading contender. If you have experience with this, we would like to hear of it.

10/18/05

On October 22, the FGSC will hold its annual advisory board meeting. We will talk about many things including strain distribution and acquisition histories, how much we ask for in fees, developing e-commerce for the FGSC web-site, web-site development, and many other topics. If you have a concern that you think we ought to address, please let us know.

In our continuing effort to develop and maintain the FGSC web-site, we have established relationships with various individuals and companies. For many years, Eric Rogers of the KU Med Center developed our online scripting features (searches and abstract submission). When we migrated, we worked with Look and Feel New Media. Now, Look and Feel has been acquired by a bigger marketing firm and so we are on our own for a bit.

10/06/05

The Neurospora knock-out strains have already proven to be very popular. Keep those requests coming. So far this year the FGSC has shipped over 1,500 fungal strains and over 300 plasmids and library clones.  This looks like it will be our best year ever.

I fixed a problem with the online Aspergillus bibliography today. It was one of the remaining issues from migrating the web-site to UMKC.  The Aspergillus Bibliography was assembled from John Clutterbuck's annual bibliography in the Fungal Genetics Newsletter. It includes over 3,000 entries from 1979 through 2004.