Over the past two decades, PCR has been a staple procedure for most life science labs. Even today this application continues to evolve as new reagents, consumables and instruments are introduced to the research community. Regardless of the "bells and whistles" that these new products provide, it is the quality of such items which will, in large part, determine the success of your experiments. BioReady rTaq is manufactured using GMP guidelines, but what does this mean? GMP is an acronym for Good Manufacturing Practice, and is defined by a set of guidelines that must be used throughout the manufacturing and quality assurance testing. These guidelines include documentation of testing and manufacturing procedures, in process testing, and maintenance of historical records for all tests and production by batches. Though these common sense guidelines seem simple, they require a highly trained and closely managed production team to be able to execute effectively. All Bioer products, whether instrumentation or reagent, undergo this rigorous testing and documentation.

Every quarter we give away 30 scientist bobble heads to subscribers to The Barker that can answer a riddle or logic problem. If you know the answer to this month's challenge, click here to submit your answer and have a chance to win a free Pillars of Science bobble head.

In honor of our newest addition to our Pillars of Science collection, Charles Darwin, we will pose a scientific twist on a classic riddle that he might have appreciated, tongue-in-cheek. 

Below is a sequence of 12 letters, derived from a very simple relationship, in which the first three letters have been ommitted. In earlier days, this may have been used as an intellengence test in English-speaking schools:

_ _ _ F F S S E N T E T

What are the first three letters?