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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.
Heat maps are a useful way to represent certain types of data; the data are colored by coloring according to the values in them, (e.g. red for high values, yellow for medium and green for low values), providing a powerful visual representation of a data set. This allows you to quickly see results from DNA…
PapersIn recognition of a fresh new year and a fresh new direction for Bitesize Bio, I thought I’d start my tenure as the fresh new Bioinformatics “guru” by introducing you to a handful of websites that will help you locate established as well as fresh new and (mostly) free online molecular biology and bioinformatics databases…
Everyone is worried about getting results, aren’t they? Results are what you need for success in science – they are essential for bringing the funding in. But focusing on results per se is not a good way to work because, as a scientist, you can’t “get” results. You can’t “make” them happen. Essentially in every…
In my current position, I had the opportunity to hire a new R&D scientist to join the team. I was excited at being able to build my team and take my time to find the perfect fit for our company. My experience in the process of hiring gave me a new perspective on all the…
You are not alone. Everyone makes a hash of their protein gel sometimes but this resource can help you work out what went wrong, and feel better for seeing gels even worse than yours.
Your DNA samples are precious so take care of them! Here are 5 ways that DNA can be damaged, so now you now what to avoid in the future.
Ever heard of polymerising agarose gels? I haven’t. If you think you have, read this.
DEPC. IF you work with RNA, you’ll know this stuff. It’s vital for ridding solutions of RNases that would otherwise destroy your work. But just how well do you know it?
There’s more than one way to do a plasmid miniprep. Here are 5 to add to your molecular biology arsenal.
This is the story of how one of the most famous and quirky naming conventions in biology came into being.
Calculating your fudge ratio can help you get your work done on time and get home before dark. Here’s how.
Biology researchers have a bad habit of doing accurate assays using semi-accurate tools. Here are some suggestions on how to sharpen up the accuracy of your assays.
You probably use and rely them more than any other tool in the lab, but just how accurate are your pipettes?
As far as your lab work is concerned, your lab book is the source of all knowledge. Making it easy to find things in there will help. Here’s how to do it.
Bioscientists are generally nature-lovers at heart, but the average bio lab is incredibly wasteful. Here are some ways to reduce your lab’s environmental impact.
An introduction to the Monash protein folding database, which contains protocols for refolding over 600 different proteins from inclusion bodies.
Could ligation independent cloning get any better? Well here is a technique that is sequence AND ligation independent.
Several peer-reviewed articles advocate using microwaves for sterilization, but would you trust microwave-sterilized growth medium?
If you have ever worked out the price of an electroporation cuvette you will realise that, at several dollars each, they are worth recycling. Accounts on how amenable electroporation cuvettes are to recycling vary, but I find that as long as you treat them well it is possible to use single cuvette many times. It’s…
Cover letters are possibly the most important documents you will write in your career because they can open or close the door to your dream job. But, surprisingly, people often under-estimate their importance and assume that they are just the lesser companion to the CV/resume. Of course, that’s not the case. Your cover letter should…
You know those ridiculously priced and throw-away DNA mini, midi and maxi-prep columns? Well the good news is that you can actually re-use them if you are reasonably careful at regenerating them, with this simple and cheap method described in detail by Nagadenahalli B. Siddappa in Biotechniques in 2007. Apparently these columns can be reused…
All over the world, molecular biologists are tragically wasting hours of their life running DNA gels using tris-based conduction buffers like TBE or TAE. These buffers are known to overheat at high voltages, causing problems with gel integrity, sample denaturation and more. Because of this, molecular biologists are forced to keep the voltage of their…
Problems with DNA gel extraction can be a real show-stopper since this is such a routinely used procedure. But, even if you are having no particular problems, it’s always nice to try and pick up some information that might improve your technique just that little bit. Probably for these very reasons, Suzanne’s article 10 Tips…
For identifying positive clones from a plasmid cloning procedure, the routine of performing a mini-prep and then checking the putative clones by restriction digestion is most commonly used. Of course, if you need to screen a large number of clones, another option is a colony PCR to identify positives, followed by restriction digests to confirm….
Amid growing recognition that a successful scientific career requires skills beyond scientific acumen, institutions are racing to provide management training for newly minted principal investigators. Young scientists spend years conducting complicated experiments and crunching data, but when they are finally given the keys to their own lab, they suddenly face tasks they were never trained…
Only a handful of people ever become world experts in their field. The rest attain somewhere between a functional and world expert level of knowledge. So what makes the best better than the rest? Are they born with greater knowledge? Intelligence? Inner strength? Well, the latter is the more likely. Although some world experts are…
A while back, I wrote an article on 5 DNA ligation tips that could improve the efficiency of your cloning procedures. It proved to be quite a popular article so here are another 3 tips that might make your ligations even better! 1. Change ligase brand. All T4 DNA ligase preps are not equal. Many…
Relating to my recent comments on seminars, a beginning grad student or undergrad researcher might wonder why journal club is such a good thing. Or you might not be wondering, since the benefits are more or less the same: digesting, discussing, and analyzing research findings. But whether or not you realize the benefits of journal…
How can you avoid the perils of exposing DNA to UV light during the cloning procedure? Use an alternative DNA stain! Ethidium bromide is not your only option. In this article, we will compare the available DNA stains that can be used in electrophoresis to clarify the options available to you. Ethidium Bromide The classic…
I just got done reading Ernst Mayr’s The Growth of Biological Thought, which is on the history and philosophy of biology, from Aristotle to ~1980 (written in 1982). Of particular interest to me was the section on the Modern Synthesis, where the views on evolution of the geneticists and other experimental biologists were reconciled with…
This is a story that could strike fear into your heart if you use UV light to visualize DNA that you later intend to clone. Read on if you dare. A while back I was doing a project where I had to make a mutation library of a plasmid. There are a number of ways…
Whether you need to get your plasmid DNA to a lab on the other side of the world, or a few hundred miles down the road, it’s important to make sure your precious sample gets there, it is not degraded, and you don’t end up in jail. Here’s the Bitesize guide on how to send…
With the recent development of transparent Zebrafish, allowing scientists to directly view its internal organs, and observe processes like tumor metastasis and blood production after bone-marrow transplant, it seems appropriate to describe Zebrafish as a model organism.
Continuing with the recent theme on model organisms, there is the nematode (roundworm) Caenorhabditis elegans. This organisms is particularly useful owing to the fact that it has very defined development patterns involving fixed numbers of cells, and it can be rapidly assayed for abnormalities. Further, strains are cheap to breed and can be frozen. When…
Please read and pass this life-saving information on to your friends. A chemical that all of us use in the lab has turned out to be highly dangerous. It is an asphyxiant, can cause severe burns and is a contributor to the greenhouse effect. Medical organizations all over the world confirm it to be responsible…
Another popular model organism is the African Clawed Frog, Xenopus laevis, which is extremely useful for studying development and cellular physiology, owing to its particularly large and easy manipulable oocytes and embryo.
As noted in the previous post on Model Organisms, Dictyostelium discoideum is a popular model for studying fundamental aspects of cell-cell communication and chemotaxis. This is a soil-living social amoeba grows as separate, independent cells that interact to form multicellular structures when challenged by adverse conditions such as starvation. Up to 100,000 cells signal each…
The term “model organism” is often used in research, to describe species that are extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena. We say “model,” because there is usually the expectation that discoveries made in the organism model will be representative of related taxonomic groups. In particular, model organisms are widely used to explore potential causes…
A while back I wrote a post on a T4 DNA polymerase dependent ligation independent cloning method. In the comments, Max asked if anyone had a protocol. Since there does not appear to be a simplified protocol available on the web, I thought I would post mine for reference. It is adapted from a 2006…
Random mutagenesis is an incredibly powerful tool for altering the properties of enzymes. Discover 8 different approaches.
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