Join Us
Sign up for our feature-packed newsletter today to ensure you get the latest expert help and advice to level up your lab work.
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.
A sprinkling of Bis-tris is all it takes improve your protein gels considerably. If you can afford it!
It’s the hot new technique. With a single procedure, you can get information about all RNA transcripts at once! It sounds like a dream. While RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has opened the door to exciting new questions, scientists interested in pursuing this technique should be aware of the roadblocks ahead of them. While RNA-seq can be…
Sometimes working with a liquid handling machine seems a bit like wrangling a wild mustang—I know what I want it to do, but the software doesn’t work that way. That’s particularly true when working with 96-well plates. So, sometimes you have to think “outside the box.” Don’t limit yourself to what the manufacturer intended (but…
Sometimes the wide view is the best so a good genome viewer is a must for every molecular biologist. We review three leading genome viewer packages to get you started..
Routine PCR? Let’s be honest, there’s no such thing. Even with the simplest PCR reaction things can go wrong, so you need to have a good checklist of ideas for PCR troubleshooting and rectifying the problem. Today I have brainstormed all of the ways I can think of to approach problems with standard PCR reactions….
This is the first in a three-part series on the transformation of E.coli. By the end of this, you should be an expert on E.coli transformation and on which strains to choose for different applications. If you’re already an expert, I hope it’ll be an enjoyable refresher for you. In either case, please comment below…
The whole TLC technique sounds easy to do, but it can be difficult and tricky during interpretation or give unexpected results, especially when working with biomolecules. For this reason, it is important to be familiar with troubleshooting thin layer chromatography. Some of the common problems faced during TLC and their solutions are listed below: Solvent…
Scientific research is a demanding and stressful career requiring lots of patience, dedication and hard work. Sadly the monetary benefits are not commensurate with the effort. Moreover, lack of opportunities, uncertainty, instability and the pressure to publish makes a traditional academic science career difficult. Inspiring (forcing?) many scientists and researchers to leave their traditional science…
When starting a long-term experiment, you need to take a lot of things into consideration (availability of cells, reagents, planning time points), but do you ever think about your antibodies? If you buy an antibody from a manufacturer, run out half way through the study, and buy the same antibody again, have you thought about…
There’s piloting a brand new technique for the first time. Then, there’s jumping through hoops trying to get an established lab technique to work. The former, in contrast to the latter, is expected to be fraught with hardships. Yet troubleshooting an old lab technique that isn’t working anymore, is frustrating at a whole new level….
Need a simple, error-proof protocol for using immunohistochemistry to stain your slides? Here’s a protocol to try – from dewaxing to mounting.
One of the many perks that we often experience as graduate students is the chance to work with a collaborating lab on a research project. A successful collaboration results in: I recently came back from a visit to one of my collaborator’s lab, and wanted to share the aspects that I felt were most important…
If you google “What’s hot in medicine,” you will see the word “gut microbiome” popping up in every corner of the webpage. Microbes keep your body functioning in balance – from digesting complex carbohydrates to fighting off foreign pathogens and educating your immune system. They have even been linked to maintaining brain function as well….
Flow cytometry remains unparalleled as a single-cell analysis technology. The ability to analyze 14 or more fluorescent parameters on a million cells or more allows for detailed understanding of complex biological processes. The Problem With Traditional Flow Cytometry One limitation of flow cytometry is the reliance on fluorescent tags. Even with careful panel design, loss…
How long has it been since you checked your lab freezer? Remember that plasmid you designed? How about that cell line you developed that now sits idly in the vapors of a liquid Nitrogen tank? And the novel peptide or enzyme from a few years ago that remains buried in permafrost? It’s time to revisit…
Mass Cytometry is a relatively new technology which has recently featured in many high-impact journals. You may have read about instruments including the CyTOF, CyTOF2, and more recently, the Helios. With these instruments becoming more widespread, you might find yourself asking, what is mass cytometry, and what can it do for you? The Basis: Conventional…
To isolate your protein, you are going to need to tag it with something that will allow you to fish it out of the bacterial protein soup. This is where transition metals can help you out!
Scientists today depend heavily on many molecular biology techniques to perform their research. For example, with the advent of next generation sequencing (NGS): scientists are able to look at very minute details, right down to individual genetic sequence variations. However, the increase in experimental complexity means that every extra step becomes more crucial than…
Nowadays, it is no longer absolutely true that applying for a PhD means that you are striving for an academic position in the future. Although a majority of graduate students are certainly still aiming for a career in academia, and will thus benefit from doing a postdoc or two, more and more graduates are pursuing…
Do you fear failure every time you do an experiment?Do you feel constantly stressed about obtaining poor results?Do you feel personally culpable when an experiment goes wrong?If you answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, you may be suffering from perfectionism. For a scientist, this is a particularly damaging trait that needs to…
Ion Torrent technology, when it was introduced in 2010, was one of several machines that promised to revolutionize genetics. These were benchtop machines that showed their prowess in quickly sequencing smaller exomes and other DNA samples (about 10-20 million bases per run, compared to Illumina HiSeq, which could read 250 billion bases in a run)….
Alu sequences are repetitive DNA sequences that are widely dispersed within the human genome. These “junk DNAs” are not as useless as one might think. An interesting method to use them is to quantify the number of integrated Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) genome copies using Alu-PCR.
Clinical Trial Coordinator, Clinical Study Coordinator, and Clinical Research Coordinator are all names for the same job and refer to the person responsible for the day-to-day running of human trials. Usually when I tell someone that I’m a Clinical Study Coordinator, they have no idea what that means. I guess it’s like when someone tells…
Unless you are one of those rare breeds that do organization naturally, setting a system in place to archive your experiments takes practice and perseverance. It’s hard to imagine when you are doing an experiment for the 100th time that you will ever forget how to do it; but a year down the line, when…
The sub-G1 assay for measuring apoptosis is easy, rapid, reliable, reproducible, and cheap and is widely used. However, you need to understand the mechanics of the assay and the apoptotic process, otherwise you could over- or underestimate your apoptosis results!
So, you’re sitting there with your list of significant SNPs, thinking, “what do I do now”? Hopefully this article can point you in the right direction! So far, you will have extracted genomic DNA from your organism of interest, sourced the SNP chips required, and had the DNA run on these chips. The chips will…
The first thing you learn about culturing cells is proper aseptic technique and avoiding contamination. After that you’ll learn all the ins and outs of culturing your project’s specific cell line(s). What may not have been covered, is co-culturing, and I don’t just mean ethnic diversity in the lab! Co-culturing is the indirect or direct…
A disruptive sequencing technology Every new generation, a new concept is born and can completely reshape the landscape of biomedical research. Nanopore sequencing technology, although still at its infancy, is beginning to look like a “game-changer.” It’s a revolutionary concept in sequencing in which strands of nucleic acids are fed through a tiny pore (nanopore)…
The resolution of any microscope is related to the numerical aperture of the lens and the wavelength of light used to form the image, and can be calculated using Abbe’s law. This, however, is the ideal situation – the best case scenario. In real life, resolution must be defined in terms of contrast, and there…
Greetings, I’m a research student and I’m having a lot of trouble in finding the right antibodies for my study, because I need both monoclonal and polyclonal. And I need to start addressing some other international scientists. The problem is that I don’t know how to address the situation. If they indeed have antibodies that…
At a meeting recently, I asked two PhD molecular biologists about the last time they used a Southern blot. After nearly a minute of unrestrained laughter, they asked “Who on earth still does that?” “Maybe for a very, very specific use,” conjectured one of the scientists. When I asked the scientist who taught me the…
The MTS cell viability assay is one of the most important yet often daunting assays to perform for researchers in cancer biology, immunology, drug delivery pharmacy, etc. This chromogenic assay is extremely dependable for assessing the effects of a drug on different cell lines. However, it is only an easy assay to master if you…
On the surface, it would seem easy enough to pick an enzyme (or an amount of enzyme) for an experiment. Just look at the concentration on the label, adjust accordingly, and you’re on your way. Alas, not with enzymes. The number of units used to measure enzymes is dizzying. However, it’s better now than it…
You can’t put it off any longer – you need to write your first manuscript. This task can seem daunting at first, but with a little organization and planning, you’ll soon be publishing.
While overexpressing a gene of interest can provide a look into its role in a cell, sometimes it is necessary to control the expression of a gene. You may want to dictate the timing of the protein’s expression or lower its expression level to adequately understand its function. This is particularly relevant when studying genes that…
In part I, I answered the question, “How do proteins in thermophiles survive under high temperatures?“ In this part, I’ll look look at how nucleic acids survive -thrive, even- in conditions that are too hot for most of us, but ideal for a number of organisms, including the one that gave us Taq polymerase and…
If I had a barrel of apples for each time I’ve heard one of my classmates or friends say, “Oh, I want to work in a lab, but I don’t know how to find one” I could build a moon base out of apples. Working as an undergraduate will help you land sweet internships, look…
The most comprehensive way to evaluate DNA concentration and purity is to use both UV spectrophotometeric measurements and agarose gel eletrophoresis. This quick reference guide gives an overview of the information that can be derived from both. UV spectrophotometric measurement of DNA concentration and purity DNA itself, and most of the common contaminants found in…
Choosing a PhD topic can be very hard. There are a lot of things to consider from the subject to the supervisor. Here are some tips to help you choose. Find out what you really like This is the first topic because it is the most important. My first advice would be to get some…
Before I get into today’s topic, please allow me to digress a bit and start with a few sentences that sum up the polymerase chain reaction (PCR); the grand-daddy of molecular biology. PCR, a method that is at the heart of modern day molecular biology discoveries, is a process that amplifies genetic material through our…
The eBook with top tips from our Researcher community.
