While Luria-Bertani broth (LB) has long been the fuel that powered Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, there is an increasing movement towards more specialized and complex bacterial media formulations such as Terrific Broth (TB), Plasmid DNA Media (PDMR), and Autoinduction Media (ZYP-5052). These media formulations optimize E. coli cell growth and performance utilizing specialized carbon sources [...]

You have been toiling away at your thesis project for years and you think the end is in sight. Now the big question is “What’s next?” If you think you might want to move away from the bench, then you should check out our suggestions for alternative careers for scientists. If you think your future [...]

Merriam-Webster defines networking as “the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business”. Less formally, networking is actively communicating with the other people you know (mostly scientists, in our case) for career advice and job openings, in addition to utilizing opportunities to meet new people for the same purpose. This is a core activity of [...]

For a long time we’ve been able to pinpoint the subcellular location of proteins, and the advent of FISH (Fluorescence in situ Hybridization) allowed us to locate the position of genes in the nucleus, but recent advances in RNA FISH are making it easier and easier to collect the same data about individual messenger RNAs. [...]

A partial digest – typically done when you only want to cut one of two or more restriction sites in a DNA – can be a frustrating procedure to execute. The best advice anybody can give about partial digests is to avoid having to do them . However, there are times when there just aren’t [...]

In parts one and two of this series I described how semi-permeable membranes and precipitation methods could be used to concentrate your protein-of-interest, but there is one more method that you may not have thought of for protein concentration – chromatography. While chromatography resins are an obvious choice for protein purification, they can also be [...]

While precipitation is an obvious choice for concentrating DNA and RNA samples, it can also be an effective way to concentrate proteins. Here in installment two of this three part series, I describe the two most common methods for protein precipitation – ammonium sulfate and trichloroacetic acid. Background Precipitation of proteins occurs primarily by hydrophobic [...]

This is the first of a three part series describing some of the most common methods for concentrating proteins. In later installments I’ll discuss using protein precipitation and chromatography to concentrate a protein. However, here I’ll detail the most popular approach – semi-permeable membranes, used for both dialysis and commercial protein concentrators. Structure of the [...]

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, [...]

As usual, the Nikon International Small World Competition has produced another breathtaking gallery of photomicrographs. Here are some of my favorites, but you have to visit the galleries to see all of the winners, honorable mentions, and images of distinction: If you like these and are looking to spruce up the lab, Nikon is also [...]