Lynnea Waters

Amgen
Lynnea Waters
Lynnea has a PhD in Molecular Biology from University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently working as Medical Communications Senior Manager – Oncology at Amgen.

Articles by Lynnea Waters

How to Properly Streak a Single Bacterial Colony

Bacteria are the workhorses of many molecular biology laboratories, and mastering the basic techniques to manipulate bacteria is an important stepping-stone towards achieving great results. When isolating DNA from bacteria, it is important to start with a single colony to ensure a homogenous population of bacteria in your culture. Isolating a single bacterial colony from…

Demystifying the Flow Cytometry Optics System:  A Peek Under the Hood

Demystifying the Flow Cytometry Optics System: A Peek Under the Hood

To many users, the flow cytometer is a magic box: put in cells, get out data. You click the button to tell it which colors to look at without much thought about how the machine does this. However, not all fluorophores are created equal—some configurations might exclude the spectrum you’re really looking for. Here’s a…

great talk

How to Give a Great Scientific Talk and Engage Your Audience

We have all been to awful talks—hours of slides crammed with data, given by presenters who assume you know as much as they do. But hopefully you’ve also seen a great scientific talk. A talk in which you’re walked through a story, eagerly anticipating each question and data point, until you finally reach a conclusion…

mass spectrometry contaminants

Common Mass Spectrometry Contaminants: I Messed It Up So You Don’t Have To!

Through many trials, and lots of error, I learned that there are many considerations for mass spectrometry that might not be obvious to you as a molecular biologist. Common contaminants, even in small quantities, can mask important peaks in your mass spec data and have a huge impact on the final results.

primary murine B cells

The Care and Keeping of Primary Murine B Cells

So you want to work with mouse B cells? Primary murine B cells are a difficult, yet fascinating system to work with and can help deepen your understanding of an immunological system. You can study many things with primary B cells, including: immune activation antibody production cell-cell interactions between immune cells and immune phenotype These…