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Search below to delve into the Bitesize Bio archive. Here, you’ll find over two decades of the best articles, live events, podcasts, and resources, created by real experts and passionate mentors, to help you improve as a bioscientist. Whether you’re looking to learn something new or dig deep into a topic, you’ll find trustworthy, human-crafted content that’s ready to inspire and guide you.
Your lab is full of non-chemical hazards that can explode, stab, kill, and – as if that wasn’t enough – bite. Here’s a list of those hazards to remind you why Environmental Health & Safety exists! 1. Centrifuges Centrifuges are dangerous, especially when not cared for! An unmaintained ultracentrifuge imploded in an American lab in…
The thing that was most difficult for me as an R beginner was plotting graphs with error bars – there is no concise way to do this with base graphics. There are workarounds, often using the ‘arrows’ command, but isn’t there a simpler way? Yes, in fact there are a handful of plotting packages for…
More than a pun on the explosive growth of sequencing data, BLAST makes annotation and comparisons of similar sequences much easier. Created by a group at the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information in 1991, the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool is arguably the most heavily used tool for sequence analysis (that’s available for free,…
Most of us hate cleaning and are often hard pressed to find time to clean our homes, never mind our laboratory space. However, an annual spring clean and maintenance of a regular cleaning rota/regime will contribute to an efficient, organized and harmonious lab environment. This is increasingly important in communal lab spaces where multiple staff…
My mom is a microbiologist and so I was a lot more informed about bugs than most kids. In fact, I probably gave more than one classmate nightmares with my talk of there being 10 times more bacteria that make up the human body than human cells. I remember my mom working by a Bunsen,…
It seems like every movie that needs a shot of a scientist doing their sciencey-thing either gets the person to pour one pretty liquid from one flask into another or to stare intensely at a test tube with a look of knowing so much more than you ever could. Another favorite shot is of someone…
We’ve been slowly coaxing you along in our R tutorials. We’ve introduced what R is, gave you a basic tutorial into how to use R and also spent some time learning how to explore your data with R. By now you are probably itching to use R for more complicated analyses. To indulge you, I…
Like athletes running on turf versus sand, the gel you run your DNA through can highly affect your results. The two main types of gels that people use for DNA electrophoresis are agarose and polyacrylamide (PA) gels, but figuring out the differences can be confusing. Basically, you choose a gel based on two main factors:…
Run to red! It’s a mantra I learned when first using gel electrophoresis to separate DNA molecules. This can save you a lot of frustration and humiliation in the lab (stage right: a complaining scientist who swears the equipment is broken as a supervisor facepalms in embarrassment). But what about how does this jell-o like…
Here are five unfortunately easy ways to wreck a centrifuge, and how to make sure it never happens in the first place!
People often joke about hiding from sales reps, but the fact of the matter is that valuable opportunities are lost when scientists disappear into thin air. Think twice before attempting your own vanishing act; a brief chat could reward you with amazing deals, introduce you to faster, better technology and keep you in the loop…
Grad school is a long, hard, long, time-consuming, and–wait for it–long process. A bad relationship with your primary mentor can make it worse, and may even drive you away from a science career. Because much of your success and happiness in grad school depends on an effective relationship with your mentor, this article covers how…
What did we do before the internet? And where would we be without handy online molecular biology tools? Apparently in the ‘olden days’ doing a simple gene or protein alignment required programs that used dynamic programming algorithms such as the Needleman-Wunsch and Smith-Waterman algorithms. These required long processing times and the use of supercomputers or…
As you’ve probably kind of guessed from our previous articles Introducing R and the Basic R Tutorial, we think R programming language and R-studio are great tools for data analysis and figure production. And now we are about to prove it! So, you’ve collected some data and are pretty sure you know which statistical test…
Freeze-thaw—you know it’s bad for your samples, don’t you? While working in the lab, you have most likely heard someone say ‘aliquot your protein/cells/DNA/RNA to avoid too many freeze-thaw cycles.’ But do you actually understand why? You probably thought that avoiding freeze-thaw cycles had something to do with damaging cell structure as well as proteins…
Resolve lab obstacles with creative solutions with these non-lab products that can actually be very useful in the lab environment.
The relationship you have with your supervisor during the course of your PhD is a critical one. Like all other personal or professional relationships it can range from being harmonious to disastrous. Choosing a supervisor you think will work well with you in the first place is important, however it can be difficult to foresee…
Figures play a central role in science not just as a way of displaying results, although this is obviously important, but also as a way of getting across complicated theories and processes in a relatively simple and direct manner. I’m a firm believe in the power of putting ideas into diagrams and spent a considerable…
A variety of lab supplies can be purchased off the shelf in your neighborhood, which can save you time and money. Here is a grocery list of items that you can stock your lab with today!
The great thing about being a scientist is, well… that you get to be a scientist! And it can be fun and rewarding. But being a scientist can be a nasty stressful business too. As I come to a turning point in my ‘academic career’, I find myself making mental notes of the pros and…
Our previous articles have discussed statistical tests for comparing two datasets. Unfortunately, many experiments are more complicated and have three or more datasets. Various statistical tests are used for comparing multiple data sets. Let’s focus on the right side of the diagram and talk about statistical tests for comparing more than two datasets. One independent variable…
So you grab a quick 5 minutes in between lectures to sit down and tackle an item on your to-do list: order a secondary antibody for an upcoming experiment. But when you start to search your favorite secondary antibody provider’s website, you realize it is not going to be a 5 minute job. Conjugated, F(ab’)2…
Over the years, I have noticed that laboratory environments are just as fragile and sensitive as the experiments performed within. If permitted, the lab can deteriorate into a chaotic mess within only a few days. That is why it is crucial to establish an organizational system in the lab. Here are a few of my…
One of our readers posted the following question to us and we decided to pass it along to everybody’s favorite microbiology expert, Aunt Yersinia: For one year I am working in different research laboratories, after I got from school. I keep wondering why EVERYBODY is using pre-made Agar solutions for pouring plates, and EVERYBODY is…
Scientific success is often defined by how well your experiments progress and the results you produce. However, scientific research is driven by a curiosity about the unknown, and you cannot always be prepared for the unknown. Inevitably there will come a time when your experiments fail. In this article I give you some of the…
Just about any molecular biology experiment will involve the action of enzymes or other active proteins. And when enzymes are involved, the pH of your experimental environment is going to change. This is because most enzymatic reactions involve the loss or gain of hydrogen ions (protons), which modifies the pH of the environment. Biological systems…
This guide is full of very simple but effective tips so you can have a pleasant lab experience, and help create a happy lab.
One of the great things about being scientists is that we are lifelong learners. Scientists go to a lot of seminars, meetings and conferences. The traditional, hour-long seminar is also a great way to learn a lot in a relatively short time. So it continues to amaze me how most scientists don’t take advantage of…
Math is an important part of lab life, from making solutions to calculating protein concentrations, and miscalculations can cause mayhem for your experiments. Therefore it is important that your math is right, or you could spend weeks trying to figure out what’s going wrong in your experiments. I was hopeless at remembering how to do…
In the previous article, I showed you how to interpret mean-squared displacement (MSD) and showed four easy things you can learn from an MSD graph at a quick glance. Now let’s turn from analyzing an MSD plot to making one. I am going to use the programming language R to generate simulated data and then…
Stuff moves. It is useful to study how stuff moves, because motion analysis can tell us a lot about the object that is moving. For example, we can learn if an object’s motion is aimless, diffusive wandering, or directed towards some goal, free to explore the available environment, or restricted to a confined space. Studying…
Developing a career in the biological sciences can be a daunting venture. You must throw your heart and soul into your career and wait years before you know if you are going to be successful. For those of you who are feeling a bit lost, I have garnered some pearls of wisdom from post-doctoral scientists…
Here are our top 10 least favorite ways to ruin that larger-than-life-sized autoclave. Don’t try these—your lab manager won’t be pleased!
The conventional sequence for getting a new job in science (or anywhere else) goes like this: 1) Apply for a job 2) Get an interview 3) Ace the interview 4) Pray that your references hold up. So if you had a bad relationship with your last boss, you’re in trouble. Because no matter how well…
I met a final year PhD student once, who told me a sad story. His supervisor had a plausible idea that exercise reduces the chances of developing bowel cancer. To test the hypothesis, the student made a transgenic mouse with an increased incidence of bowel cancer and got the mice to run (or not run)…
So now you’re convinced that R is the language for you, you’ve downloaded R-Studio (from https://www.rstudio.com/) and opened it, and. . .what the hell do you do now? Great question! I always find it easiest to learn by doing something, rather than just by seeing a list of possibilities, so here I’ll walk you through…
Working with large datasets can be very frustrating and time consuming. If only there were more tools out there to simplify things without needing to invest a PhD’s worth of time to learn how to use them! I am here to tell you that there is a solution, and a free one at that. If…
I was shocked recently at a seminar called “Writing with style” by the Manchester University writer-in-residence, Chris Simms. He opened by saying that he has never done a presentation using Powerpoint in his life. What? Surely biologists and PowerPoint presentations (PPT) go together like biologists and white lab coats. They teach you to make PPTs…
A while back, I read an article on Bitesize Bio entitled “When Your Partner is NOT a Scientist” that piqued my interest…for the wrong reasons. And I discovered that I hold polar opposite views on balancing a marriage and an occupation as a scientist. So I was compelled to write this article, not to be…
Every research lab is full of equipment specially designed for specific technical and experimental requirements, unfortunately this means said equipment is often expensive. Thankfully there are simple and cheap everyday items which can help you with your experiments and generally make life a lot easier. 1) Perforated metal ladle – to fish out samples from…
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