Reagents are expensive and are a significant cost to your lab. You know what to do to keep others from stealing your reagents. But contamination, improper storage and “lost” batches will all eat into your stock of reagents, bump up your consumables costs and waste your precious time. Unless you take steps to prevent them, that [...]

If you found our previous section on super resolution interesting, you may be curious for a more detailed explanation behind some of the techniques. Introduction to this counterintuitive method Of the super-resolution microscopy techniques, structured illumination microscopy (SIM) is arguably the most counterintuitive to grasp. Of course, that’s what makes it so much fun! To understand how [...]

With ever increasing demands on researchers to publish, sometimes it feels like the whole world and their dog are vying for authorship on your latest manuscript. Appropriate and fair representation of those that contributed to sample collection, lab experiments and preparation of the manuscript is essential but can often be complex. So in this article [...]

 “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke In the fast-moving field of next generation sequencing, standard practices are evolving rapidly. Today, more and more labs are using Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization (SPRI) beads instead of gel purification in the preparation of libraries for sequencing. A crucial step, not for the [...]

As biological catalysts, enzymes transform their target substrates into products. Enzyme kinetics is the rate of that transformation. By understanding how an enzyme’s behavior is affected, you can figure out how it functions in physiology or fails to function in disease. Now it gets complicated… What affects an enzyme’s kinetics? In the first place, most [...]

Following on from our previous article, here are some suggestions for an old microscope (should you happen not to destroy it!). 1. Museum piece Start your own mini scientific instruments museum. Before you know it, you be raking through the old skips and dumpsters at your institute looking for exhibits. 2. Teach kids Teach your [...]

It’s all too easy to forget how many common lab chemicals are dangerous.   To remind you, I pulled together a list (and a few cautionary tales) of hazardous yet ubiquitous chemicals a few weeks back). It proved popular, so I’ve furthered my efforts to bring you even more chemicals that you should not be [...]

You’ve added the final touches to your scientific manuscript / presentation / thesis. You’ve even run the spellchecker and grammar checker and everything seems perfect. There are no little green or red squiggles under the text. Now it’s ready to submit or present – or is it? What could be wrong? If you read my [...]

Next Generation Sequencing is to play a central role in a £2.7 million funded by the Wellcome Trust in the UK. The ‘Mainstreaming Cancer Genetics Programme’ is a truly translational collaboration which aims to take research from the lab bench to the clinic via industry. Testing more genes in more people The three year study [...]

Few scientists in the training stage are lucky enough to have the perfect advisor (aka PhD supervisor PI, boss).  The reality is that most scientific advisors receive little to no training on how to be good mentors.  You may want to take a look at a companion post to this one called “Getting the Most [...]