Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Science Policy Alerts

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 4 December 1998:
Vol. 282. no. 5395, p. 1811
DOI: 10.1126/science.282.5395.1811a
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Random Samples

Most biotech companies hawk their wares with ads featuring sequencing machines, gels, or graphs. A few try to spice things up with photos of hip young scientists, while one even coyly proposes to "Unzip Those Genes ..." Still, some readers of Nature may have been a tad taken aback last month by an ad that bared more skin than a Calvin Klein spread.

Figure 1 "Some people may have a dirty mind and see two naked people," says Jean-Pierre Rosat, an immunologist and marketing manager for Dictagene, a small biotech company in Lausanne, Switzerland. Even the high-minded may have trouble discerning any clothing on the pair ... but that's not the point. The ad's message is not sex, but the beauty of folding--as in protein folding, of course--and the joining of amino acids. In fact, says Rosat, whose company synthesizes designer proteins, "we felt that the picture expressed purity"--as in the purity of a synthesized protein--"and virginity."

Sure beats chromatography, anyway. "Science and Nature are traditionally such hard-core titles," says Jahnvi Yagnik, Nature's display sales manager. "This adds a little lightheartedness." At least the pages weren't perfumed.

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)