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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.
Working with RNA is definitely an acquired skill. It’s a lot more finicky than working with DNA, and requires careful attention to detail in order to avoid disastrous through RNase contamination. Here are a few common ways to lose your hard-earned RNA: 1. Don’t keep everything on ice Keeping the temperature of all of your reagents cool is…
Any research biologist spends a large amount of their working time at the computer, whether it’s writing articles, analysing data or just checking emails. In fact, any new research proposal will likely start by trawling Pubmed and online databases to get the latest information on a particular topic. But have you ever stopped to think…
Restriction enzymes are a basic tool in the molecular biologist’s arsenal. They’re super easy to use, and virtually essential for cloning and other applications. Restriction enzymes are also a great example of a perfect “tool” from nature that scientists have co-opted for their own use. Here are a few fun facts about restriction enzymes that…
Good organization is essential for keeping a lab in good running order. Databases of strains, plasmids, primers, and stocks are useful for keeping track of your materials, and allow your work to be continued easily after you’ve left the lab. In this article, I’ll talk about a few tools in Microsoft Excel that will make…
It’s time to start thinking about your next move. Maybe you’ve finished your undergrad/master’s degree and are considering doing a PhD. Or maybe you’re past all that and need to find a post-doc position. Amongst all of this, you might be considering the option of doing your PhD or post-doc in a foreign country. It’s…
I’m sure you’ve heard of Parkinson’s Law, or at least the modern-day generalisation of it. It states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” When I first heard this, back in the mists of time, I thought Mr Parkinson was damn right, had a chuckle at a very accurate…
I once knew a postdoc who was absurdly accurate at guessing the optical density of microbial cultures. I was jealous – imagine how much time I would save if I could spec my cultures just by looking at them! Since I lacked the innate optical talents required to compete with my friend, I developed a…
Transforming yeast with DNA is a very similar process to transforming E. coli, but with just enough differences to trip you up if you let your attention slip. Whether you’re doing a yeast two-hybrid screen, or using yeast as a model system, here are a some mistakes to to avoid… 1. Forgetting to add single…
One of Bitesize Bio’s regular readers asked me to interview people in jobs that don’t necessarily require a PhD. So, today I’m talking to Angela Briski who’s a research technician and currently working in stem cell research. Hope you enjoy the interview… You describe yourself as a Research Technician. And what exactly is it that…
Site-directed mutagenesis studies can be extremely useful for elucidating the function of a gene or protein, or for creating variants of an enzyme with new and improved functions. There are now many approaches available for generating site-directed mutants, whatever your purpose. In this post I’ll summarize three techniques that will enable you to produce a…
One of my colleagues, a very good molecular biologist, told me that the only time she uses chemistry is when she needs to calculate molarities. I, of course, scoffed at this statement, and tried to remind her of all the chemistry she uses daily. True, I may be a bit biased since I am a…
Thanks to the power of digital imaging software, faking data is a lot easier than doing real science. Clearly the honest majority of us would never deliberately distort the scientific record, but is it possible to stumble into trouble through sheer ignorance? Quite possibly. The line between innocent enhancement and deliberate fraud can be blurry…
This week our careers interview focuses on medical writing and what kind of opportunities are available for anyone looking to move into this field. Lauren Donaldson tells us how she got started out after her PhD and we’ll be comparing this with a freelance medical writer in the coming weeks so keep posted. You describe…
We scientists are all so focused on getting our work published that many of us seem to forget something very important; that publication is just the beginning. After publication is when our manuscripts really have to do their essential work of communicating our science to our peers. If no-one reads the manuscript, we might as…
Here’s an all-too-often repeated scene in the lab: First thing in the morning, you approach the 37°C incubator with trepidation, open it and through one half-open eye you take a look at the LB plate that you spread your ligation-reaction-transformed E.coli aliquot onto. Looks good – thousands of colonies. Emboldened, you take your “no ligation…
Learning how to speed read can save you a bunch of time; we’ve outlined some simple steps that will dramatically improve your reading speed.
Sepharose beads are porous, which gives them a high surface area for interaction with proteins and allows them to hold a lot of liquid. This is perfect for the application that they were originally designed for: purifying milligrams of protein in columns. When immunoprecipitation (IP) – a small-scale technique for pulling specific proteins out of solution using…
This week we’re taking a look at the clinical research industry for some great advice if you’re thinking about moving into this field. Vicki Ronaldson, one of our staff writers, tells us all about her job and how she got there… You describe yourself as a clinical research scientist. And what exactly is it that you…
Virtually every research scientist has a use for sterile technique in the lab, whether you study infectious microorganisms, do tissue culture, or use E. coli for cloning. Good sterile technique is a basic lab skill required to avoid contamination of your materials and experiments; and fortunately, the principles are simple to learn and easy to…
So you want to make a difference? Here’s a career move for you that I personally think is a terrific choice for a scientist. I’ve been speaking with Jennifer Pohlhaus, who works in science policy and here’s what she had to say about her job. Hi Jennifer, Your job as a Science Policy Project Manager…
At the end of my last article, I provided some practical tips and tricks for working with enzymes at the bench. Now, we’ll cover one of the cornerstone techniques of enzymology work: the enzyme assay. Starting with the simple assays and eventually working our way to the more complex, this article introduces the principles of…
So now you’ve had your job interview – how well do you think you did? Here are 5 tell-tale signs that should give you a clue. 1. The Interview Lasted Longer Than You Expected This isn’t 100% true in all cases, and I definitely know people who got jobs they didn’t expect due to the…
Looking for a new direction in your career? This is the latest in our new series of articles that focus on careers for scientists. When we started this series, we thought you’d be interested in finding out about who does what behind the scenes at Bitesize Bio, and how we got here. I interviewed our…
A partial digest – typically done when you only want to cut one of two or more restriction sites in a DNA – can be a frustrating procedure to execute. The best advice anybody can give about partial digests is to avoid having to do them. However, there are times when there just aren’t many…
Western blotting is a common lab technique used to detect and analyze proteins. It also happens to be a really long and complicated procedure, with many steps along the way that are easy to mess up. How do you make sure that your Western blot is successful? Avoid the following five ways to destroy your…
We’ve had some great feedback about this column lately. I hope you enjoy today’s interview as much as you seem to have liked the first couple we’ve covered. There’s more coming soon, looking at scientists who made the move into areas like Marketing, Regulatory Affairs, University Teaching and lots more in the pipeline. Today, we’ve…
Recently I had the opportunity to help a job seeker prepare to interview for their dream job. They successfully navigated through rigorous phone interviews and secured the make-it or break-it face-to-face interview. The candidate and I discussed all of the preparation, research and pre-work necessary to ensure a successful interview. Dress to impress When I recommended…
In Part 1 of this series, we began our journey into the fascinating world of enzymology. We looked at the most basic concepts of what an enzyme is and the incredible jobs it can do. In Part 2 of “Working with Enzymes,” I will look at some things that you should keep in mind to…
Understanding how to format your manuscript is an important skill for researchers and getting it right will make your PI very happy – they’ll spend less time proofreading and editing the document for you and it might just help get your manuscript through to peer review faster. When writing up your results for a…
Many PhD students conducting their research are not aware of the fact that conducting autonomous research is project management. This assumption is realized by most students only after graduation or in the last year of their studies (a webinar discussing project management will be held this coming May). Because being a technician and a project…
As scientists, we become engrossed in our own scientific world. We focus on graduating, publishing a paper, or writing that grant application. Our labs, quite literally, become our world. Which is why we all know the glazed looks in the eyes of non-scientific people who had the misfortune of asking us what we do. As…
In parts one and two of this series I described how semi-permeable membranes and precipitation methods could be used to concentrate your protein-of-interest, but there is one more method that you may not have thought of for protein concentration – chromatography. While chromatography resins are an obvious choice for protein purification, they can also be…
While precipitation is an obvious choice for concentrating DNA and RNA samples, it can also be an effective way to concentrate proteins. Here in installment two of this three part series, I describe the two most common methods for protein precipitation – ammonium sulfate and trichloroacetic acid. Background Precipitation of proteins occurs primarily by hydrophobic…
This is the first of a three part series describing some of the most common methods for concentrating proteins. In later installments I’ll discuss using protein precipitation and chromatography to concentrate a protein. However, here I’ll detail the most popular approach – semi-permeable membranes, used for both dialysis and commercial protein concentrators. Structure of the…
Protein kinases and protein phosphatases phosphorylate and dephosphorylate a plethora of proteins. They are responsible for regulating the majority of cellular activities. Because of their importance, they can seem intimidating to tackle as a research project. At the end of the day however, kinases and phosphatases are- simply put- enzymes. Therefore, you can standard enzyme…
So my PhD hasn’t been easy but whose has? And if it wasn’t for some supportive colleagues and some great advice I wouldn’t be where I am today, or where I was last year! I found out about a great conference from a colleague, and their enthusiasm got me really interested when all I wanted…
You’ve done the experiments, gathered the data, interpreted the results, and now you’ve got something important to share with the scientific community. Congratulations! You’re writing a scientific paper. Once you’ve decided on which journal to submit your paper, you can get the guidelines from that journal. All that’s left is to write the paper. Your…
Looking for a new direction in your career? Well you’ve come to the right place. This is the first in our new series of articles that focus on careers for scientists. We’ll be looking at jobs that are off-the-beaten-track (and sometimes on no track at all) and ones that are certainly not on the standard…
If you purify proteins expressed in E. coli, then you’re probably familiar with this scenario: you come in bright and early in the morning and inoculate your large flasks of media with the overnight culture, start shaking them at 37 °C, and now you wait. And watch. And wait some more. You can’t venture far,…
I learned most of my molecular biology skills in the first lab I worked in almost 10 years ago. I realized recently that I was in desperate need of a refresher course, so I did a little bit of reading to see if I could improve the efficiency of my cloning reactions. In the process,…
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