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Beyond Bulk RNA-seq: Revealing Cell-specific Gene Expression
Streamlined High Pressure Freezing for Cryo-ET: Waffle Method to Serial Lift-Out
Onboarding in Empower™ CDS – How to Train New Users Effectively
Scaling Up Spatial Biology Analysis: From Many Markers to Many Datasets
Ultra-sensitive Mutation Detection and Epigenetic Profiling
Decoding Tissue Complexity with High-Dimensional Spatial Biology Pipelines
Innovations and Emerging Tools in Peptide Science
Latest Articles
How to Deconstruct a Paper Before You Commit to Reading It
You don’t have the time to read every paper, so stop trying! Here’s how I decide whether a paper has earned my attention: I break-up the paper into sections, then evaluate the main claim, compare the discussion with the introduction, turn the results into closed questions, and, finally, critically assess the controls. Here’s how you can do the same.
If your drug discovery research keeps failing human trials, the issue may be your hypothesis. These questions will help you design a more clinically relevant study before running it. Drawing from my experience in optometry, basic research, and clinical work focused on infectious keratitis, I’ll share how you can make your research more translational.
Before running MDCK transport assays, don’t rely on visual confluency alone. A monolayer may look ready but still be leaky, leading to misleading permeability data. Validate MDCK monolayer integrity first, using TEER to assess electrical resistance and lucifer yellow passage to detect leakage between cells. Together, these checks help confirm whether each well is suitable for transport measurements before you invest time and valuable compounds in the assay.
RT-qPCR is essential for measuring RNA, but reliable results depend on careful choices at every stage, from RNA quality and reverse transcription to detection chemistry and controls. This guide walks through the key decisions and common pitfalls in the RT-qPCR workflow, helping researchers generate more meaningful, reproducible data.
Effective iPSC culture depends on four essentials: choosing the right substrate, handling cells gently, limiting spontaneous differentiation, and maintaining strict quality control. Match substrate to endpoint, minimize temperature shifts and mechanical stress, remove differentiated cells to preserve purity, and run regular QC to confirm pluripotency and genomic stability. Consistent practice improves survival and reliable differentiation outcomes.
Microscopy & Imaging
Optical microscopy has always been restricted by the diffraction of light. Because conventional widefield and confocal microscopes cannot resolve structures substantially smaller than about 200nm laterally, they miss critical signaling compartments and nanoscopic organization. Newer super-resolution technologies, such as stimulated emission depletion (STED), structured illumination microscopy (SIM), and photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), solve this problem…
DNA / RNA Manipulation & Analysis
Transcriptome–Methylome Integration often fails due to structural issues rather than biological absence. Key challenges include over-aggregation of CpG sites, variance mismatches, asymmetric data preprocessing, and inappropriate statistical models. Proper region mapping, variance assessment, covariate alignment, and cohort size evaluation are essential to detect true regulatory relationships. Addressing these factors before complex modeling improves interpretation and avoids false conclusions about methylation-expression associations.
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