What happens when you finally get the degree you worked so long for and then realize you really don’t want to spend the rest of your life in the lab? Or if you get tired of working long hours with few results and low pay or you succumb to any of the other reasons that [...]

Accurate transfer of proteins from the SDS-PAGE gel to your membrane is an important step in Western blotting.  However, optimizing transfer times is hit-or-miss, and it can take several tries to get a publication-worthy image.  Here are a few hints on how to ensure that your transfer is accurate and complete: Always include a pre-stained [...]

When I first heard of touchdown PCR, I thought of a landing aircraft, which, as it turns out is not a bad way to think about it. But despite it’s amenability to analogies and dreadful puns (see title), touch-down PCR (TD-PCR), a very useful technique for improving PCR amplification specificity, is trickier that it might [...]

Of all the of competent E. coli cell strains available, which one should you choose? The choice of strain to use in a given experiment is determined in large part by the nature of the experiment and the set of traits that best fit it. In this article I summarize some of the most important [...]

No scientist is an island, not even a great scientist like you. A good network of professional contacts is as essential to your career as hard work at the bench. This is because your network can open many doors that no amount of good bench work could. Access to unpublished information, collaborations and job opportunities [...]

Working with RNA is definitely an acquired skill.  It’s a lot more finicky than working with DNA, and requires careful attention to detail in order to avoid disastrous through RNase contamination.  Here are a few common ways to lose your hard-earned RNA:  1. Don’t keep everything on ice Keeping the temperature of all of your reagents cool is [...]

Perhaps at no other time of year like the winter solstice is the mixture of religious beliefs and daily life more intertwined.  Most people, regardless of race and country of origin, come from a faith that believes in God or a Higher Power. As scientists, it is a widely held belief that we do not [...]

Any research biologist spends a large amount of their working time at the computer, whether it’s writing articles, analysing data or just checking emails. In fact, any new research proposal will likely start by trawling Pubmed and online databases to get the latest information on a particular topic. But have you ever stopped to think [...]

Transforming yeast with DNA is a very similar process to transforming E. coli, but with just enough differences to trip you up if you let your attention slip.  Whether you’re doing a yeast two-hybrid screen, or using yeast as a model system, here are a some mistakes to to avoid… 1. Forgetting to add single [...]

Science attracts so many different and quirky personalities that you are bound to have a problem with some people. But when your boss is the problem, its a big problem for you. So what do you do when you don’t get along with your boss? Well sometimes the best advice is really to just move [...]