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When the Job Stops Fitting: Mid-career Pressure, Change, and Getting Back to You
Winning Westerns: Tips and Tricks for the Perfect Western Blot
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Automating and Optimizing Cell Counting (With No Plastic Slides)
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Seeing the Complete Cell: From Confocal Microscopy to Volume EM and Cryo-EM
Latest Articles
DNA / RNA Manipulation and Analysis
Six Tips for Maximizing Plasmid Yield: Increase the Quantity of Purified Plasmids
Need a big plasmid prep? These tips help you maximize plasmid yield without overgrowing your culture. Learn why starting from a fresh colony matters, how aeration and harvest timing affect quality, why gentle mixing protects your prep, and the ethanol-wash mistake that sent one technician’s plasmid down the drain.
AI in science can draft your discussion section, summarise forty papers and even propose novel hypotheses. So are you becoming less essential to your own work? The real risk to your job isn’t replacement, but letting polished output go unexamined. Here’s the one question that keeps your judgment, expertise and ownership firmly yours.
Suicide PCR was built for one purpose: stopping PCR carryover contamination from faking a positive in ancient DNA work. It identified Yersinia pestis in medieval plague burials and still teaches a useful lesson about experimental design. But is it a technique you would reach for today? Here’s our take on whether it’s still a useful methodology.
A chromatogram in a report and a chromatogram in Empower™ look identical, but only one can be interrogated. This article outlines four placement decisions for your critical review items, plus how to build the list, document the workflow, and test whether it actually detects anything.
PCR inhibition can hide behind apparently acceptable QC results, especially in polyphenolic-rich samples like soil, wastewater, plant, and fecal extracts. Partial inhibition may delay Ct values, reduce sensitivity, and cause false negatives without complete reaction failure. Dilution testing can reveal inhibition, but targeted inhibitor removal is often needed to preserve low-abundance targets.
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
Need a big plasmid prep? These tips help you maximize plasmid yield without overgrowing your culture. Learn why starting from a fresh colony matters, how aeration and harvest timing affect quality, why gentle mixing protects your prep, and the ethanol-wash mistake that sent one technician’s plasmid down the drain.
How-To Guides
Article Categories
- Analytical Chemistry & Chromatography Techniques
- Cells & Model Organisms
- Chemistry for Biologists
- Cloning & Expression
- DNA / RNA Manipulation & Analysis
- Flow Cytometry
- Genomics & Epigenetics
- Microscopy & Imaging
- PCR, qPCR & qRT-PCR
- Bioscience Mastery
- Basic Lab Skills & Know-how
- Career Development & Networking
- Dealing with Fellow Scientists
- Equipment Mastery & Hacks
- Getting Funded
- Lab Safety
- Lab Statistics & Math
- Organization & Productivity
