by Suzanne on December 6, 2007

RNA purification may be a common procedure in molecular biology but it is by far the one that people fear most. Why? Dreaded RNase. It’s everywhere... all over your bench and pipettors, and floating in the air, waiting for (read on...)

by Dan on December 6, 2007

Myosin II functions as a molecular motor which facilitates contraction of the actin cytoskeleton during migration, resides outside of protrusions at the front of motile cells, and acts at a distance to impact cell protrusion, (read on...)

by Dan on December 5, 2007

As genetic screening becomes increasingly advanced and personal genomes become more commonplace, the potential for genetic engineering and modern eugenics is becoming a reality. "Designer babies" may not be science fiction (read on...)

by Nick on December 5, 2007

Lysis of some microbes is easy, but for others its much more difficult - I think due to differences in the make-up of their cell wall. At the moment, one of my colleagues is preparing hundreds of cell-free extracts from (read on...)

by Nick on December 4, 2007

Ethanol precipitation is a commonly used technique for concentrating and de-salting nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) preparations in aqueous solution. The basic procedure is that salt and ethanol are added to the aqueous solution, which (read on...)

by Dan on December 4, 2007

On a couple other blogs, a study published in Science by Joan Steitz1 is being called "One of the biggest findings of the year," and "If it turns out to be true, this finding just flipped the whole field on its head." Bitesize (read on...)

by Nick on December 3, 2007

No matter how efficient you are, it's always possible to improve your productivity and improving your productivity means that you get more of the rewards you are trying to obtain: results, publications... or dare I say it, (read on...)

by Dan on December 3, 2007

There might be more to cell death besides apoptosis and necrosis. In a paper that sounded a bit fishy to me, Michael Overholtzer, Joan Brugge and coworkers1 introduce "Entosis": A non-apoptotic cell death process, that occurs by (read on...)

by Dan on November 30, 2007

Looking at the tree of life, descent with modification is an obvious theme, where genes are passed on through 'vertical' lines of ancestry. It so happens though that genes can jump from one lineage to another, by a process (read on...)

by Nick on November 30, 2007

Here are the highlights of what I've been reading around the blogs this (read on...)