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 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 Suzanne on August 10, 2009

Formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues are valuable samples that typically come from human specimens collected for examination of the histology of biopsies for the detection of cancer. But each sample contains much more (read on...)

by Nick on July 31, 2009

The following question was emailed to Bitesize Bio by Beheroze Sattha and I gladly took up the challenge, and I immediately knew the answer. Or so I thought. After delving extensively into Pubmed, Genes V (I know, I need a new (read on...)

by Suzanne on July 26, 2009

Real-time PCR is a technique that is now commonly employed in almost all molecular biology laboratories to quickly answer very specific questions. Northern and Southern blotting are now a thing of the past. No longer do we wait (read on...)

by Shoba on July 20, 2009

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 (read on...)

by Suzanne on July 15, 2009

Thanks to Bitesize Bio reader, Muthu Arumugam for contacting us about some problems he has been having with restriction digestion and clean up of DNA. I have boiled his query down to four main questions that are pertinent for (read on...)

by Suzanne on July 1, 2009

Gel extraction -- what could be easier? Now we have quick and easy gel extraction kits, we no longer need to use time consuming old fashioned methods like electro-elution or "freeze and squeeze". Thank goodness. When Gel (read on...)

by Shoba on June 23, 2009

Controls are obviously extremely important when setting up experiments. Without them, meaningful interpretation of the experimental results can be impossible. I say obviously, but in my previous job as a technical services (read on...)