Farida Khan
Articles by Farida Khan:
The Luciferase Reporter Assay: How it works
The luciferase reporter assay is commonly used as a tool to study gene expression at the transcriptional level. It is widely used because it is convenient, relatively inexpensive, and gives quantitative measurements instantaneously. It has broad applications across various fields of cell and molecular biology – wherever you want to measure or track expression of…
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
The recent Easter holiday got me thinking again about the ultimate question……whether or not to go in to the lab! I have asked myself this question many times around national and religious holidays and I have come up with a list of the top 5 reasons why going to lab during these times is a…
A Tale of Two Lab Meetings
It’s common practice in many laboratories to hold weekly lab meetings, where all members of the lab discuss their exciting new results, experimental pitfalls, new papers published in their field, etc. For the last several years, our lab meetings have been very formal. By formal, I mean that whoever is presenting that day prepares a…
The Changing Face of the Graduate Student
As many of you may already be aware, one of the defining characteristics of a graduate student is his/her innate ability to locate free food. I, too, possess such clairvoyant abilities. Often, munching on free food comes under the guise of conversing with a guest speaker visiting the department. Lately, I’ve noticed a general trend…
How To Keep Your Mammalian Cells Happy And Healthy
There’s more to mammalian cell culture than just making sure that your cells don’t die. It is a lot like taking care of children. You have to feed them, make sure that they’re growing well, and keep them under constant supervision. If the cells are put through extreme conditions (over-confluency, media-deprivation, inaccurate temps, etc.), their…