Recent Posts
BitesizeBio
I also write technical articles for BitesizeBio to help researchers with technical aspects of science!
Check them out!:
- [Webinar] Decoding Cancer - Practical Advice for Working with Cellular Heterogeneity
In this webinar, you will learn about the process for genotyping cells—particularly tumor cells—and practical advice for analyzing the resulting data. The main points that we will cover are: Practical advice and methods for sample collection and preparation for your genotyping experiments An overview of the available data analysis methods for your genotyping results
- Denied: How to Deal with Rejection in Research
It is amazing to get that “Eureka!” moment or finally get that assay to work, but the downside of those moments is that we do face a lot of rejection. Scientists push the envelope of human knowledge and that means we have to deal with a fair amount of negativity in our line of work
- Overhang PCR
Have you ever “accidentally” forgotten to add the Kozack consensus sequence to the start of a coding genes? Or forgotten to include the stop codon? Did you clone something, then realize you wanted to tag it with something? Or you just want to add restriction enzymes to your PCR product to make it easier to clone into a plasmid? Overhang PCR may be your answer!
- How to Light Up your Life - Tips and Tricks to Troubleshoot your Luciferase Assay
What is a luciferase assay and what is it useful for? A luciferase assay takes advantage of the innate bioluminescent properties some organisms exhibit, most notably the firefly. The firefly can convert luciferin to oxyluciferin in the presence of the enzyme luciferase to emit light
- Control your error! How to minimize pipetting error and get low SDs in qRT-PCR
Variability is the Achilles’ heel of research. It can often confound our results and lead us astray searching for solutions. There are two kinds of variability, the first is biological variability. This represents the stochastic nature of the sample you are working with and the inherent differences between samples from the same conditions.
- Keeping onto of Housekeeping Genes
Want to measure how much mRNA you have in a particular sample? Easy! Make some cDNA, add some fluorescent DNA-intercalating dye, pop it into a quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) machine and Bob's your uncle! You have your result! Easy right...? Not so fast. As with any scientific assay, qRT-PCR requires some optimization
- How to become Immortal: Generation of Immortal Cells
Normal cells are unable to replicate past several rounds of proliferation (termed the Hayflick limit) as with each round of proliferation the telomeres shorten. When the telomeres reach a critically reduced length, DNA damage is triggered leading to cellular senescence.
Therefore, if you tried to culture a primary cell population it would eventually die unless the cells were manipulated in some way to circumvent the process of senescence and become immortal. Here we discuss various ways to overcome the Hayflick limit and induce immortality in cultured cells.
Ghost-written articles (on behalf of sponsors)
- Science on Wheels: How to Bring Science to the Masses with a Mobile Lab for Lumenera Corporation
- Decoding the Genome: Applications of DNA Sequencing for Thermo Fisher Scientific
- Need to clean up PCR products? Now there's a faster solution with HT ExoSAP-IT Fast Reagent for Affymetrix
- Quenching to Success with BHQnova probes: Turn to the Dark Side for LGC Biosearch Technologies
@realscientists
I also spent a week as curator for the @realscientists twitter account, which was a ton of fun! If you are a researcher or scientist in any capacity, I strongly encourage you to volunteer to curate!
Here are a few things from my experience:
- From farting cows to breast cancer research: Dr Anna Wronski, everyone! [Intro page]
- How to culture cells with Dr Anna Wronski [Storify on cell culture]
- PCR in pictures by Dr Anna Wronski [Storify on PCR]
- The result of Dr Anna Wronskis' plea for science blogs [Storify collecting amazing science blogs!]
- Part 1 and Part 2 of RealScientists with Dr Anna Wronski [Storify collections of all my tweets and interactions as curator]
- Masterclass in genetics over - Thanks to Anna Wronski [concluding page]
Other posts/blogs:
- Denying Science: All A Big Miscommunication [guest post for MostlyScience]