I have a dear friend and collaborator whose image file names follow this format: aaaa5kk.tif, aaaa5kkk.tif, aaaa5kkkk.tif, aaaa6p3kkkkkkk.tif, etc. We have collaborated together on several projects, and I dread the days I have to go back through the files and look for a particular image. I am sure that these names have some meaning to [...]

This article discusses some of the important things to consider if you are using agarose gel electrophoresis for size-selection of your NGS libraries. Gel electrophoresis is a simple and very commonly used technique in most labs. Careful! It’s a critical step However this simplicity means people can often overlook the fact that there are applications where [...]

So you want to do meiotic spreads do you? Maybe it’s to check if meiosis is progressing the way it should, or even to look for sites of DNA damage. Whatever the case this technique can be a little tricky at first, but once you learn a few tricks it’s like riding a bicycle- so [...]

You have spent days, if not weeks, at the bench setting up the treatment and control samples for that crucial experiment. You submitted your cDNA library for sequencing and after a few weeks of waiting anxiously you get back a list of differentially expressed genes. Hooray?! Hold on- not quite yet! There is something you [...]

Now that it becomes clear that epigenetics is involved in a plethora of diseases as well as in many processes contributing to normal health and development, you might one day find yourself wanting to do ‘ChIP’. ‘ChIP’ stands for chromatin immunoprecipitation. This technique allows you to identify in vivo protein-DNA-interactions. My favourite gene For example, you might like to know [...]

A commonly used technique in epigenetics is Chromatin Immunoprecipitation, or ChIP for short. This technique can show you whether a certain protein (e.g. transcription factor or histone modification) binds to DNA, when in its native conformation, namely chromatin. Insightful, but difficult This information can be very insightful, but difficult to obtain. Most protocols and suggestions [...]

Sanger sequencing is still a workhorse of most molecular biology labs. Even with the advent of next-generation sequencing we still need to sequence our clones and PCR products. In this article I have listed some of the tips and tricks we used in our Sanger services. (1) Dilution of BigDye: I’d expect this to be [...]

Coating (or ‘subbing’) slides for immunohistochemistry can be the difference between having an organized set of tissue slices ready for microscopy- or watching them detach and float away during a wash. It takes a lot of time to place tissue slices in correct anatomical order, aligned right-side up and flat. To the naked eye, all [...]

In the same way that you should ‘Think Before You Fix’, the choice of embedding media should be dictated by your required end-point. The basic principle is that by processing tissue into an embedding medium you harden the tissue and provide support protecting it from the mechanical forces associated with sectioning. Parma ham and steak [...]

Periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) is another commonly used special stain in the histology lab. What Does PAS Stain? (1) Polysaccharides: The technique is commonly used to identify polysaccharides- these macromolecules are composed of monosaccharide units joined by covalent bonds. The main polysaccharide identified via histology staining in human and animal tissue sections is glycogen. This is [...]