Laura Grassie
Laura received her PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Dundee before moving into the world of scientific publishing. She has previously worked as an Assitant Editor for the journal Genome Biology and has had various roles in scientific publishing. She is now a Managing Editor at Bitesize Bio.
Articles by Laura Grassie
It’s easy to let organizing your lab book slide down your list of priorities. Read our guide to easy ways to keep your lab book up to date and organized.
Thesis defenses are supposed to be grueling, horrific affairs that you fear for weeks beforehand, right? What if there was a way to get through your thesis without tears, torture, and perhaps even enjoy it?
DOIs got you confused? Find out what they are and how to use them.
Working from home but don’t have a garage lab? We’ve got 10 ideas to keep you productive while you’re working away from the bench.
Keeping a meticulous lab record of your experiments is a necessity. And it’s drilled into us to back up our computers, including backups stored in different locations to ensure vital records don’t get lost. But how do we protect the hard copy information in our lab books? You may not have given much thought previously…
You don’t need to be told about how next generation sequencing technologies have revolutionized the way we study the genome and the epigenome. Whether you want to look at transcription (RNA-seq), translation (Ribo-seq) genomes (DNA-seq), interactions of proteins and DNA (ChIP-Seq) or to study epigenetic features such as methylation (whole genome bilsulfite sequencing) there are…
When it comes to publishing your paper you want to show the world what excellent research you’ve worked so hard to produce. Part of that is providing enough detail so that others can reproduce your work and take it further. There are certain details you need to include in your paper; many, but not all…
Bacterial cultures may be much easier to grow than mammalian cells, but if your yields are suboptimal there are plenty of parameters to play with. Here we list a few of the things you should consider to maximize your culture growth. Shaking speed Shaking is performed to allow aeration of your culture, which is of…
A new year means new resolutions and a chance to improve ourselves. All too often, however, these changes last only a few weeks before we slip back into old ways. Why not make 2015 different and make a change that sticks? These changes don’t have to be huge, and often it’s the small changes that…
Christmas is fast approaching but if you haven’t yet found the perfect gift never fear, there is still time! We’ve put together some of the most fabulous gifts for those of the science persuasion. For the trendy scientist Have a lady scientist to buy for? Why not splash out and get a gorgeous silk scarf?…
Copyright is something that a lot of scientists only give a passing thought to. However, this is something that affects us all. If you publish your work, then you need to understand copyright, the different types of copyright, the difference between open access and copyright and what you can and cannot do under different copyright…
Figures play a central role in science not just as a way of displaying results, although this is obviously important, but also as a way of getting across complicated theories and processes in a relatively simple and direct manner. I’m a firm believe in the power of putting ideas into diagrams and spent a considerable…
So you’ve performed a test such as an ANOVA and have found that there is statistical significance in your data (lucky you!), however you now want to know where that significance lies. When you are comparing multiple sets of data it might seem like a logical thought to simply perform an individual t-test between each…
Last week I focused on the left-hand side of this diagram and talked about statistical tests for comparing only two datasets. Unfortunately, many experiments are more complicated and have three or more datasets. Different statistical tests are used for comparing multiple data sets. Today I will focus on the right side of the diagram and…
There are so may statistical tests out there it can be difficult to determine which is the right test to use. Below is a simple diagram to help you quickly determine which test is right for you. Although this is by no means a comprehensive guide, it includes some of the most common tests and…
The first hurdle in learning about statistics is the language. It’s terrible to be reading about a particular statistical test and have to be looking up the meaning of every third word. The type of data you have, the number of measurements, the range of your data values and how your data cluster are all…
I remember when I first learned about plagiarism during my undergraduate course. The lecturers were so firm in telling us that if we got caught plagiarizing we would face serious repercussions and that all our work, especially our dissertations, would be vigorously checked by plagiarism detecting software. I was so panicked that I would inadvertently…
This guide is full of very simple but effective tips so you can have a pleasant lab experience, and help create a happy lab.
Math is an important part of lab life, from making solutions to calculating protein concentrations, and miscalculations can cause mayhem for your experiments. Therefore it is important that your math is right, or you could spend weeks trying to figure out what’s going wrong in your experiments. I was hopeless at remembering how to do…
I was first introduced to Conrad Waddington’s epigenetic landscape when reading ‘The epigenetic revolution’, a fantastic introduction to epigenetics, and in my opinion, a must read for anyone who is looking for an entertaining and enjoyable introduction to this fascinating field. In his model, Waddington likens the process of cellular differentiation to a marble, which…
Keeping track of new literature can be a time-consuming process. Here are some helpful hints and tips to help you keep up to date.
Organizing your files is simple with Zotero; we’ve got the lowdown on functionality, usability, and access.
Learn more about the key features of Endnote to work out if it’s the right reference manager for you.
Discover more about how Papers can help you keep on top of your references.
My previous posts on reference mangers have discussed Mendeley and ReadCube. Today I will be discussing Papers, the reference manager I first encountered and the one favoured by many academics, including my PhD supervisor. For anyone who is a fan of Apple products, Papers is likely to be the software you are most familiar with.…
Learn how Mendeley allows you to organize a library containing your favorite articles and generate citations and bibliographies while writing papers.
Check out our rundown of the key features of the most popular reference managers to work out which one will be best for you and your research.
For those of you who read the previous post about LaTeX and are interested in giving it a go, but just don’t know where to start, this article should get you on your feet. I used LaTeX to write my thesis and was (mostly) self taught, so I know how scary it is to begin…
Labs are a dangerous place, full of nasty chemicals and harmful biological materials. Yet so many people are flippant about their own personal safety (and the safety of others) when working in this hazardous environment. One way in which people make lab work more dangerous is the misuse of personal protective equipment (PPE). Below are…
Staining proteins following SDS-PAGE or 2-dimensional electrophoresis is a very useful technique for visualising a global population of proteins or checking expression of your recombinant proteins, but how do you know which stain to use? This article explains the pros and cons of two of the most common protein staining techniques, silver staining and coomassie…
Co-immunoprecipitation is a method used to detect protein-protein interactions. While it can be wonderful when it works, there are many problems associated with this technique. One of the biggest problems that I have faced when using this method is contamination by the light and heavy chains of my precipitating antibody when performing western blots of…