Now that you have a basic understanding of the inner workings of a flow cytometer, it’s important to grasp the types of measurements that are being made and, perhaps more importantly, what measurements are NOT being made. For simplicity’s sake, we’re going to frame this discussion in terms of a classical flow cytometer; think of [...]

It is with some regret, but much optimism for the future that we announce that BitesizeBio.com will cease to produce further articles and videos for biologists at the end of this month. We have been in business producing fantastic content to help scientists at the bench since 2007 and have grown our audience tantalisingly close to [...]

Horsemeat testing is continuing to show that contamination, while lower than when first reported, is still not, well, stable! There’s been horse meat around for donkey’s years..! The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) showed at the end of March that it’s testing found 352 samples out of 362 contained less than 1% horsemeat. Of the [...]

Labs across the world spend a great deal of money on commercially manufactured Taq polymerase for PCR every year. But you don’t have to: Many labs choose to save money by making their own Taq (and Pfu for that matter) for routine applications. This post is not intended to provide a step-by-step protocol for making [...]

The value of PCR to forensics has been known for a long time; but now, getting purified DNA and RNA samples from soil and fecal samples is becoming more important and commonplace as tests for environmental impacts, disease spread, and even biomarkers for colon cancer become more prevalent. And if you thought getting nucleic acids [...]

What is Congo red? Did you know that Congo red (CR) originally started out as a textile dye? It belongs to the azo class of dyes- synthetic compounds that are among the most popular dyes used in the clothing and fashion industry. CR is a benzidine derivative which can react with structural polysaccharides- including the [...]

Unlike Nick Oswald I think I can multitask in the lab. If I organize my day efficiently and perform lots of experiments and other tasks in parallel, I get more done. But there is a school of thought – the one described in Nick’s article – that says no-one can really multitask, that our brains [...]

Accuracy and reproducibility In all fields of science, accuracy and reproducibility are of paramount importance and it’s never been more true than in the case of genomic sequencing where minor errors could lead to real problems further down the line for groups studying hereditary conditions or perhaps oncology. The obvious starting point would be a [...]

“No man is an island” said  John Donne. But if he were, every healthy man or woman would be a lavish, tropical, densely populated island. Recently, I talked to a Knight wants you to help him explore that island. Interested? Confused? Read on… The population of the human island is, of course microbes. Humans have [...]

Whereas DNA can survive for millennia, RNA is short-lived, which is a bummer if you are trying to isolate it. The reason – as we discussed recently – is that RNA is prone to degradation by enzymes called RNases. Therefore, isolation of total RNA from cells and tissues requires a method that will efficiently isolate [...]