Do you use human cell lines in your research? Well, keep reading because this may be the most important article you will ever read in your research career. It is estimated that 18-36% of all actively growing cell line cultures are misidentified and/or cross-contaminated with another cell line (1). For researchers, this could mean that [...]

Back in August I shared my training regimen for guesstimating the OD­600 readings of microbial cultures with superhuman accuracy. Although my method is effective, I will admit that it has two shortcomings: you need to make a separate standard curve for each container type, and guesstimation is not an officially sanctioned scientific method. But now, [...]

If you use a human cell line in your research, have you wondered where, or who, it came from? I never gave it much thought, until I read Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In 1951, cervical tumour cells were taken from Henrietta Lacks and put into culture, to divide endlessly and [...]

Virtually every research scientist has a use for sterile technique in the lab, whether you study infectious microorganisms, do tissue culture, or use E. coli for cloning. Good sterile technique is a basic lab skill required to avoid contamination of your materials and experiments; and fortunately, the principles are simple to learn and easy to [...]

If you purify proteins expressed in E. coli, then you’re probably familiar with this scenario: you come in bright and early in the morning and inoculate your large flasks of media with the overnight culture, start shaking them at 37 °C, and now you wait. And watch. And wait some more. You can’t venture far, [...]

If you regularly grow up the same bacterial culture, whether it’s the strain that expresses your favorite protein, the culture you make your competent cells from, or just your regular control strain, it can be a bit of a pain growing it up from scratch each time. Before you even get to grow your actual [...]

If you use a spec to measure cell density, you may making a very common mistake and taking inaccurate measurements as a result. Specs are often used for measuring the density of suspension cultures, but the mistake that many people make is to record the OD given by the spec as an absolute value. The [...]

Several peer-reviewed articles advocate using microwaves for sterilization, but would you trust microwave-sterilized growth medium?

I often wonder why it is that molecular biology researchers stubbornly refuse to change 40 year old methods that, while they work, are not as good as newer, faster and cheaper methods out there. I suppose rational scientists often have irrational superstitions. One example of an old method that could be improved is the growth [...]

Here’s the context: “Eighty years after Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin on a moldy culture dish, the battle against killer bugs is faltering. More and more bacteria – including insidious tuberculosis strains that have cropped up2 – now shrug off almost all antibiotics. Meanwhile, few new antibiotics are reaching the clinic. Medicine is on the defensive, [...]