Not every lab has the cash to shell out on fancy equipment. And let’s face it, in today’s climate of budget cuts, even the baller labs are looking for ways to be more frugal. Years of lab work has taught me a thing or two on how to make ends meet. So, if you’ve found…

Imagine that you want to test the efficiency of an antimicrobial treatment in inhibiting a certain bacterial pathogen. As part of the experiment, you expose the bacteria to the treatment and monitor the cultivability of the microorganism by counting the number of colony forming units (CFU) formed on culture media. If the microorganism is sensitive…

Negative staining of proteins is a versatile tool for structural biology. The sample preparation protocol is simple: the sample is embedded in a heavy metal stain that gives rise to increased specimen contrast. Thus, negative staining is a very convenient method to assess sample homogeneity, formation of macromolecular complexes, or quality of protein preparation. Conventional…