Nick Oswald
After obtaining his PhD from the Dundee University School of Life Sciences, Nick Oswald moved into to industry, first working in a small team that designed Sophion Bioscience’s prototype Q-Patch system and then developing industrial bioprocesses with Ingenza Ltd.
His time at the bench gave him the feeling that a) he would like to move into writing and publishing and b) he had something to offer in helping researchers to share their professional know-how to make science more efficient, more successful, and more enjoyable to be a part of.
So while still working in the lab in 2007 he started BitesizeBio.com and began writing about what he knew himself. His first article was titled “5 DNA Ligation Tips” and was quickly followed by further articles about laboratory techniques soft skills and life skills gleaned from his experience in the lab. As researchers found his articles on Google, some came forward to contribute their expertise in articles and so began the growth of Bitesize Bio into the huge and vibrant knowledge-sharing community it is today.
Bitesize Bio became Nick’s full-time job in 2010 but prior to that, while growing Bitesize Bio, he cut his teeth in publishing and marketing with stints of work with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press and the journal, Neuroendocrinology.
These days Nick is focused on the further growth and improvement of Bitesize Bio as a knowledge-sharing hub, other projects within his company Science Squared Ltd, and assisting biotech companies to market their products and services with genuinely useful educational material via Bitesize Bio and the Life Science Marketing Society.
Articles by Nick Oswald
Don’t be confused by Ct values! We’ll guide you through what they are, how to calculate them, and troubleshooting issues.
How do you measure how good you are as a scientist? One way is the h-index. Discover what this is, and learn about the pros and cons of using it to assess your scientific career.
Do you fully understand why enzymes have the best catalytic activity within a specific temperature ranges? Find out in our handy guide.
Not sure what FRET is, or just need a refresher on how FRET works? Read our short guide to understand the usefulness of FRET for studying protein-protein interactions.
Working in a lab can be a smelly business. Let’s countdown some of the worst lab smells! Then, you can suggest your own.
Understanding the basic (and simple!) chemistry behind DNA ligation will help you get better DNA ligation results. Learn all about it here.
This article reassesses the dangers of using ethidium bromide and compares some supposedly safer alternatives
Phenol extraction is a common method for removing proteins from nucleic acids. Discover how phenol extraction of DNA works.
Making good quality electrocompetent E. coli is very easy. One morning’s work (with a bit of work ahead of time) is all it takes.
Discover what you need for successful DNA precipitation and how to choose between ethanol and isopropanol solvents.
Knowing how SDS-PAGE works means that you can troubleshoot any issues in your experiment and tweak the setup to get publication-worthy figures. Find out how it works here.
Alkaline lysis for plasmid isolation? That’s like the ABCs in a molecular biology lab. Read this detailed article to understand the process behind this common technique.
Using ethanol precipitation to isolate or concentrate your nucleic acids? Find out how this routinely used technique works, and get tips to produce the best results.
Effective laboratory sterilization methods are essential for working with isolated cell lines. Read our guide to the top 6 sterilization techniques to banish those bugs.
Agar plates are the foundation of many experiments – make sure your plates are perfect every time with these 8 tips and start your experiment ready for success!
A scientific research poster can be a great tool for drawing people into a conversation at a conference. We’ve pulled together our 10 top tips to help you prep perfect posters.
So you might be wondering why you bothered with all those years of failed experiments, committees, over-bearing supervisors, thesis writing, and thesis defending. Well, no matter where life takes you, you can now call yourself “Dr” whenever you want. And that can be more useful than you might think…
Getting publication perfect confocal images can be tricky. If you are struggling or just want to ensure you’re capturing the best images possible, check out our top 7 tips for confocal imaging.
Discover how structured illumination microscopy works can help you see things in greater detail.
Resistance to the antibiotic ampicillin is commonly used as a selection marker for plasmids in gene cloning and protein expression in E.coli and other bacteria. While it can be incredibly useful tool, there can be problems using this selection marker that you need to be aware of if if you plan on using it. This…
Antibiotics are used in a wide range of techniques in molecular biology including molecular cloning and are important for treating pesky mycoplasma contamination in cell cultures. They can also be used to maximize your plasmid yields by reducing protein synthesis, in certain circumstances. The aim of this post is to provide an easy reference to…
Over the past few decades molecular biologists have developed procedures to simplify and standardize cloning processes, allowing vast arrays of artificial DNA structures to be more easily assembled. Are you familiar with all the cloning options out there? Let’s look at five different cloning methods you can use to get your construct. At the end…
Continuing from our first article on lasers for confocal microscopy, we will now discuss two specialized types of lasers: lasers for two-photon excitation and tunable, white light lasers. We will also discuss the applications of the two lasers. Lasers for Two-Photon Excitation The two-photon absorption phenomenon was first described for microscopy in 1931. Here, the…
![How to Avoid Accidental Plagiarism and Academic Fraud [BMA Podcast]](https://bitesizebio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/academic-fraud-150x150.png)
In the modern research environment we have all of the information we need to work with right at our fingertips – just a cut and paste away. And that makes it very easy for even the most well-meaning scientist to accidentally stumble into plagiarism. Most of us think of plagiarism as simply copying someone else’s…
Look around you in your lab, your institution, and even in the world in general and you’ll see how much we all gravitate towards stress and overwhelm. Stress is just the workplace norm. Overwhelm means you are working “hard enough”. Being so occupied that you are frantically buzzing around from one task to another means…
One of the major roadblocks to the development of novel therapies is the lack of robust and reliable animal models. Selecting and validating animal models that mimic human conditions is challenging, especially when faced with chronic multi-factorial diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Acknowledging this problem, the National Institutes of Health initiated the Animal Models…
Lasers were once called “a solution looking for a problem.” The word—which is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation—used to conjure up images of deadly weapons from Sci-Fi movies and TV series. However, their increasing use in everyday life, first in CD players and then in barcode scanners and pointers, have…
Without good planning and preparation, writing your thesis can be a nightmare. Here are some tips on how to make the process a whole lot easier.
Routine PCR? Let’s be honest, there’s no such thing. Even with the simplest PCR reaction things can go wrong, so you need to have a good checklist of ideas for PCR troubleshooting and rectifying the problem. Today I have brainstormed all of the ways I can think of to approach problems with standard PCR reactions.…
This is the first in a three-part series on the transformation of E.coli. By the end of this, you should be an expert on E.coli transformation and on which strains to choose for different applications. If you’re already an expert, I hope it’ll be an enjoyable refresher for you. In either case, please comment below…
One of the most crucial steps in any cloning procedure is the preparation of the vector. Get it wrong and your chances of success will be drastically reduced. The overall aim for a good vector preparation is to obtain a fairly concentrated stock of undamaged, fully digested plasmid DNA that is free from contaminants. Missing…
The human brain autofluoresces—a funny thought next time you see a cartoon character with a bright idea and a light bulb over his head—but not so funny if you are attempting immunofluorescence analysis. But there are some significant advantages to using fluorescence detection over chromogenic methods. In this article, I will cover the advantages of…
When we are doing a double labelling, it makes good sense to choose two fluorophores with spectra widely spaced apart to avoid mixing. Why combine GFP with Rhodamine, when you can combine it with Texas Red?
Unless you are one of those rare breeds that do organization naturally, setting a system in place to archive your experiments takes practice and perseverance. It’s hard to imagine when you are doing an experiment for the 100th time that you will ever forget how to do it; but a year down the line, when…
Here’s a tip that you may find useful if you are expressing proteins in E.coli using a lac promoter-based expression system, e.g. pET, in LB medium (L-broth). Lac expression systems are typically induced in the lab using IPTG (isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalacto- pyranoside), which is a non- hydrolyzable analog of lactose, the natural inducer of the lac operon.…
Are you stuck in cloning hell?, Tired of doing ligations that don’t work? Want a faster, more efficient cloning procedure? You should try ligation independent cloning. A growing number of researchers swear by ligation independent cloning methods because they are simpler and more efficient than conventional cloning and as a recent convert to their ranks,…
The resolution of any microscope is related to the numerical aperture of the lens and the wavelength of light used to form the image, and can be calculated using Abbe’s law. This, however, is the ideal situation – the best case scenario. In real life, resolution must be defined in terms of contrast, and there…
The most comprehensive way to evaluate DNA concentration and purity is to use both UV spectrophotometeric measurements and agarose gel eletrophoresis. This quick reference guide gives an overview of the information that can be derived from both. UV spectrophotometric measurement of DNA concentration and purity DNA itself, and most of the common contaminants found in…
Quantitative PCR (qPCR) uses fluorescent dyes or probes to visualize the amplification of specific DNA sequences as it happens (i.e. in real time). The dyes or probes fluoresce when they bind to newly amplified DNA, and the amount of fluorescence emitted is proportional to the amount of DNA (or mRNA) present in the original sample. By detecting newly synthesized DNA…
Greetings, I’m a research student and I’m having a lot of trouble in finding the right antibodies for my study, because I need both monoclonal and polyclonal. And I need to start addressing some other international scientists. The problem is that I don’t know how to address the situation. If they indeed have antibodies that…