Dear DSC Customers,



Since the GWDI strains are now available, I need you to know that we do not have extra staff to fill orders, and our usual order return times will likely not be kept up. 



This does not only concern GWDI strain orders, but when order numbers are large, it will affect every DSC order. We have one full time technician, Olivia, and one part time student, Julio in the DSC lab. 



What a GWDI order for EACH STRAIN entails (for us):



- The strains are currently frozen in 96 well plates sealed with a foil and lid. What you currently order are plate coordinates.

- To recover each strain, we poke a hole into the foil and plug out the whole frozen content onto a bacterial plate

- The plate has to be resealed and frozen

- Once the strain is growing on the bacterial plate we

1) streak on a plate for the customer

2) inoculate a plate as a stock for us

- Then we need to STORE the strain, as we only have this bacterial plate(s)

- Storage means for now that we will grow a few bacterial plates for cell storage; as we do not know if a strain will sporulate, we cannot test this, so we cannot store spores. I don’t have to detail here what reliable storage entails.

- Freeze at least two tubes of each strain stored in two different freezers



Also, we do not have our new DSC release ready yet as it has too many pieces, therefore these strains are not yet in dictyBase. Thus to track the orders has to be done manually and adds currently to the DSC workload.



We will see how fast we can fill orders as we need to get some experience. But as of now, we have already 37 GWDI strains ordered, and we also have a couple of new regular orders.



Payment: Each strain is $30.- for academic/non profit use. When you use the GWDI order form, please fill in the shipping account No or that you will call in, and the Payer and Payment Info for the strains. If you know your lab is already set up in NU Core, then let us know and write it onto the form. Sending all the information immediately, will SAVE US TIME. 



Usually we notify you when a strain takes longer or is difficult to grow. But if we have already many orders piled up we might email you immediately that it will take longer. Also, if you order a large number, we might ship these in installments. Finally, please do not hesitate to email us to enquire an estimate how long your order might take.



Thank you for your understanding and patience.



Best wishes,



Petra and the DSC team