by Shoba on March 12, 2010

I recently visited a lab that had a salad spinner on their lab bench and at first I wondered if they were putting together a salad lunch there but when I took a peek I got a nice surprise. It turns out that the salad spinner was (read on...)

by Suzanne on March 10, 2010

We received the following question from Bitesize Bio reader, Beheroze Sattha. It relates to a problem with absolute quantification using plasmids for standard curves. Since many people use this technique it is an interesting one (read on...)

by Jode on March 8, 2010

While almost every lab has a small toolbox with some screwdrivers, pliers, and such, here are some tools that may not have obvious utility at the bench, but could make your life easier. A Butane Torch If your OCD is as bad as (read on...)

by Suzanne on February 3, 2010

Recently we received a question from Bitesize Bio reader Sonia after our article How to: Get Better Plasmid Midiprep Yields. She asked: "What could be the problem when one sample gives a good yield while the other plasmid gives (read on...)

by John on January 25, 2010

If you’re performing DNA/RNA precipitations, you will have read Suzanne's excellent article on which alcohol to use for precipitating your precious samples (check out some useful info in the comments for that article as (read on...)

by Nick on January 11, 2010

There's something in the water, and it would love to go after your experiments. Straight out of the tap, water contains microorganisms, endotoxins, DNase and RNase, salts and other impurities that could gobble up your experiment (read on...)

by Suzanne on December 10, 2009

Since our most popular article of all time (“The Basics: How Ethanol Precipitation of DNA and RNA Works”) was published, many of our readers have asked us to further explain the difference between precipitating DNA with (read on...)

by Eric Perkins on December 7, 2009

Working at a plasmid repository, I get a lot of feedback from scientists who are relieved we exist simply because that means they don't have to request a plasmid directly from another academic lab. Either they've had a bad (read on...)

by Nick on November 19, 2009

TAE or TBE, which is best? Well, of course, it depends on what you want to do. Here are the pros and cons of both: TBE (Tris-borate-EDTA) is a better conductive medium than TAE (Tris-acetate EDTA) so is less prone to (read on...)

by Christopher on November 2, 2009

First of all let me say the technique of labeling tissues (immunohistochemistry, IHC), and cells (immunocytochemistry, ICC) is indeed science NOT alchemy, though at times it may certainly seem like alchemy! But to scientists (read on...)