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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.
There’s piloting a brand new technique for the first time. Then, there’s jumping through hoops trying to get an established lab technique to work. The former, in contrast to the latter, is expected to be fraught with hardships. Yet troubleshooting an old lab technique that isn’t working anymore, is frustrating at a whole new level….
Need a simple, error-proof protocol for using immunohistochemistry to stain your slides? Here’s a protocol to try – from dewaxing to mounting.
If you google “What’s hot in medicine,” you will see the word “gut microbiome” popping up in every corner of the webpage. Microbes keep your body functioning in balance – from digesting complex carbohydrates to fighting off foreign pathogens and educating your immune system. They have even been linked to maintaining brain function as well….
Flow cytometry remains unparalleled as a single-cell analysis technology. The ability to analyze 14 or more fluorescent parameters on a million cells or more allows for detailed understanding of complex biological processes. The Problem With Traditional Flow Cytometry One limitation of flow cytometry is the reliance on fluorescent tags. Even with careful panel design, loss…
How long has it been since you checked your lab freezer? Remember that plasmid you designed? How about that cell line you developed that now sits idly in the vapors of a liquid Nitrogen tank? And the novel peptide or enzyme from a few years ago that remains buried in permafrost? It’s time to revisit…
To isolate your protein, you are going to need to tag it with something that will allow you to fish it out of the bacterial protein soup. This is where transition metals can help you out!
Mass Cytometry is a relatively new technology which has recently featured in many high-impact journals. You may have read about instruments including the CyTOF, CyTOF2, and more recently, the Helios. With these instruments becoming more widespread, you might find yourself asking, what is mass cytometry, and what can it do for you? The Basis: Conventional…
Scientists today depend heavily on many molecular biology techniques to perform their research. For example, with the advent of next generation sequencing (NGS): scientists are able to look at very minute details, right down to individual genetic sequence variations. However, the increase in experimental complexity means that every extra step becomes more crucial than…
What do you use if antibodies are too large for super resolution microscopy? Aptamers. These are small affinity reagents (~ 2 nm!) that interact with their target in the same way as an antibody, but without the hefty backbone attached.
Ever wonder what those small colonies, like satellites, surrounding a larger E. coli colony on your LB with ampicillin plates were? Or why, when you picked that colony, it never had the plasmid you just transformed? Well, it’s because those satellite colonies are “protected” from the ampicillin by the big colony. Read on for more… Ampicillin…
Anchored multiplex PCR (AMP) is a powerful method for amplifying minuscule amount of nucleic acids. Combined with Next Generation sequencing, AMP just might be what you need to identify genetic mutations.
Flow cytometers and cell sorters were designed with blood cells in mind. This means that commercial cell sorters are optimized for sorting cells typically smaller than about 20 µm in diameter. However, it turns out that many cell types, including those of mammals, are larger than 20 µm. So what are your options if you…
One of the key characteristics of cytotoxic cells (i.e. CD8+ T cells, natural killer cells) is the presence of pre-formed cytoplasmic lysosomal granules. These structures house perforin and granzyme; two molecules that are essential for the lysis of target cells. Upon effector cell activation, granules are polarized toward the target cell and the contents are…
Do you work with plants? Are they genetically engineered? Do you know where and how? If not, you could experience problems. After all you do not want your transgenic gene cassette to disrupt genes that would affect your phenotype of interest. In this article I will tell you about Agrobacterium-mediated transformation – a widely used…
I’m sure many of us are aware that the world of cancer research is exploding with the idea of cancer stem cells. This exciting hypothesis suggests that there is a small population of cells in the tumor that have stem cell-like properties. These stem-like cells are able to proliferate and differentiate into all the different…
Whether you’re already in the field or an undergrad looking to enter the scene, here are some great places to keep up to date with the latest news and trends in stem cells. Listen About It For auditory learners, or people that listen to music on their way to the lab, you could switch it…
When you first start out using a microscope, you might only adjust the eye pieces, objectives, and the focus controls. However, you shouldn’t overlook the microscope condensers as they are an important part of the whole optical system of a microscope.
The Boom method, or Boom nucleic acid extraction method, is a solid phase extraction technique for isolating nucleic acids from a solution of biological matter. This is just a fancy way of saying you use this technique to expose and remove the nucleic acids from a cell. First developed by William R. Boom, the Boom…
Genomic Science has come a long way since the early days of Sanger sequencing in the 1970’s. Today, there are jazzy new sequencing technologies that include fragment analysis, epigenetic sequencing, RNA/transcriptome sequencing and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). Increasingly these technologies are becoming more accessible, but they still require highly specialized (read: expensive) equipment. Unless your…
It strikes fear into the hearts of new cytometrists. Compensation. More fights have started over the proper way to compensate at meetings than anything else. This article will strive to shed some light on the principles of compensation, and equip you with the tools necessary to achieve compensation mastery for your research experiments. Compensation is…
You’ve tried all the usual stuff, and checked the primer sequences twice, but still can’t get that PCR fragment amplified. It’s time to enter the strange world of PCR additives. Over the years a variety of additives have been shown to enhance PCR reactions in certain situations. Here is a summary of some of the…
The ability for DNA polymerase to copy a long stretch of DNA is becoming increasingly important. Why? It has to do with the advances in our sequencing technologies. Our next generation sequencing (NGS) technology requires the DNA polymerase to copy a long stretch of DNA (sometimes up to 50kb) as NGS is churning out genetic…
As a protein biochemist where bacteria were mere workhorses, imagine my surprise when I began work in a bonafide micro lab! I discovered that bacteria could be much fussier than my good ol’ cloning and expression friends E. coli DH5ɑ or BL21. One broth would not do for all, some even required blood! No, no,…
Imagine trying to build a house without power tools: It’s completely doable – after all, people did it that way for centuries – but it’ll take you a lot longer and has limits. Similar to this, modern day biology now has its own set of “power tools.” So while you could do biology the old-fashioned…
We can, however, use special dyes or engineered proteins to bind to calcium, indicating where in the cell it is. The trick is determining which probe is most suitable to your cells and application.
After you’ve generated your mutuations using CRISPR-Cas, the next step is to identify those cells that have been successfully edited. There are a few different ways to check for the mutations. I’m going to discuss some of the more popular ones.
Recently, I have witnessed the uprising of various next generation sequencing (NGS) platforms and it’s quite interesting because each platform uses a different method. Previously, I’ve written about the exciting possibility of nanopore sequencing—a new sequencing technology based on the “signature” electrical currents generated as a single strand of DNA passes through the nanopore. The…
If, like many people, you use fluorescent proteins to view your transfection efficiency or your CRISPR gene editing, you can also isolate cells with different expression levels of fluorescent proteins. Here are 5 ways to improve your sorting experiment.
Does your lab have a closet full of white elephants; once expensive instruments that are no longer fit for purpose, or have broken down? In many cases, all of that wasted money and resource could have been saved if the buyers had made smart choices about matching the instrument more closely to their needs. A…
Before I get into today’s topic, please allow me to digress a bit and start with a few sentences that sum up the polymerase chain reaction (PCR); the grand-daddy of molecular biology. PCR, a method that is at the heart of modern day molecular biology discoveries, is a process that amplifies genetic material through our…
Predicting how proteins will fold in vivo is a Holy Grail of proteomics and theoretical chemistry. Current hopes are that this can be achieved by designing an in silico platform that can predict protein folding, either de novo (a.k.a. from scratch) or using known proteins as a guide. What would we need to do, why…
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…
At a meeting recently, I asked two PhD molecular biologists about the last time they used a Southern blot. After nearly a minute of unrestrained laughter, they asked “Who on earth still does that?” “Maybe for a very, very specific use,” conjectured one of the scientists. When I asked the scientist who taught me the…
While it is true that there are some useful websites like SNPedia, or NCBI that can help you find rs codes for genetic variants, sometimes you need that info coming straight from the oven – particularly when you want to look at atypic SNPs or substitutions that have not been validated. So, in this post I…
Have you ever wondered what a cell’s life is like? Do they constantly communicate to each other or do they just go on their own daily business? There is an easier way and it involves super advanced molecular “crayon” technology.
Say you just joined a lab and have been assigned your very own project to work on. As part of your new responsibilities, you have to breed and maintain the mutant (or transgenic) mouse line which you will be using for your experiments. An integral part of mouse genetics experiments is determining the genotype of…
We have already looked into the different types of viral expression systems and when you might use one over another in my previous article. But why would you use viral transduction over similar techniques like plasmids? Just a reminder: Transfection is a lab technique where nucleic acids or proteins may be introduced into cells. 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….
While overexpressing a gene of interest can provide a look into its role in a cell, sometimes it is necessary to control the expression of a gene. You may want to dictate the timing of the protein’s expression or lower its expression level to adequately understand its function. This is particularly relevant when studying genes that…
Having trouble with your cloning? It might be to do with the DNA gel extraction. Get our top 10 DNA gel extraction tips to help you out.
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