Arpita Das
Arpita is doing her PhD in Molecular Biology at Universität Bremen, Germany. She is working on gene regulation in plant roots upon ectomycorrhizal symbiosis. She has a BSc (Honours) in Microbiology from Calcutta University and MSc from Vellore Institute of Technology, India. After her masters, she worked in a biotech company for a year. She is a mountaineer, a football fan and a travel buff.
Articles by Arpita Das:
Entering your Lab: Know the Biosafety Level
Starting work in a new lab is exciting. You’re ready to begin doing awesome science and making new discoveries. However, safety comes first. You need to protect yourself, your colleagues, and your environment from the biological organisms and agents that you work with in the lab. Biosafety levels are a way of classifying the precautions you…
5 Things You Should Know About Agrobacterium Binary Vectors
You can create stably transformed plants expressing your gene of interest; be it for the subcellular localization of your protein or simply for the in planta protein expression and purification. Whatever it is, you can do wonders with plant transformation. Sound difficult? It isn’t. Just like there are millions of microbes that interact with us,…
P19 to the Rescue: How to Increase Protein Expression in Agroinfiltration
Plants are just not green gods—they can be more. You can cost-effectively express your recombinant complex proteins in a plant system. More interestingly, plants are ideal systems for producing functional monoclonal antibodies, enzymes, and vaccine components! They can also be used for protein localization studies. To save time, you can transiently express your protein using…
Science Research at the Crossroads: Academia versus Industry
Academia or industry? Basic research or applied research? You are thinking of what to do next. What is right for you? Honestly, it is a never ending discussion. So what should you do? Here are some insider tips from a person who has worked in both biotech industries and universities. The Freedom to Manage your Own…
Safety Comes First: Common Laboratory Signs
Our laboratory is full of signs isn’t it? Be it the chemical bottles or the signs near the basin, they are everywhere. But that’s a good thing and is important for our safety. These signs tell you about the properties of the product you are about to use so that you can be cautious while…
Overview of In Planta Sub-Cellular Localization by Agroinfiltration
Agroinfiltration is a method for the transient expression of your protein of interest in a plant system. You can use it for the production of recombinant proteins or simply to determine the sub-cellular localization of your protein.
Designing Luck: 8 Basic Concepts for Designing Primers for a Standard PCR
I think we all have been through those my-PCR-product-didn’t-get-amplified days. Sometimes, playing around a bit more with the PCR-conditions brings luck, or sometimes it doesn’t work at all. These days we have access to many different types of DNA polymerases, ultrapure and buffered nucleoside triphosphates, and other necessary starting materials in convenient concentrations; but still…
