Directory —
Technology —
Blog Details for "The Molecular Biology Blog"
The Molecular Biology Blog The Molecular Biology Blog Tech tips, technology updates, news and comment from the molecular biology field Articles
Biotechniques is 25
2008-04-29 10:24:00 Today’s issue of the Biotechniques journal is well worth a read. The journal celebrates 25 years of existence with a series of retrospective articles covering developments in various fields over the same period. Among the picks are: Twenty-five years of quantitative PCR for gene expression analysis Bacterial genetics: past achievements, present state of the field, and future ... More About: News , History
Pimp Your Plasmid Growth Medium
2008-04-28 12:47:00 I often wonder why it is that molecular biology researchers stubbornly refuse to change 40 year old methods that, while they work, are not as good as newer, faster and cheaper methods out there. I suppose rational scientists have often irrational superstitions. One example of an old method that could be improved is the ... More About: Pimp , Growth , Medium
Around the Blogs
2008-04-25 11:06:00 Let’s see what’s been going on around the blogs, shall we? Personal Development From one whose dream of tenure track just came true: In Which the Werewolf is Admitted to Paradise - An amusing tale of motivating students to ask questions during a teaching evaluation. The end result - paradise - the coveted tenure track job. And from ... More About: Blogs
Structured Digital Abstracts - Easier Literature Searching But Not Democrat
2008-04-24 07:24:00 FEBS Letters is this month carrying out an interesting experiment that could make literature searching easier for both human and computers. The experiment centres on Structured Digital Abstracts (SDA). SDA are extensions of the normal journal article abstracts that describe the relationship between two biological entities, mentioning the method used to study the relationship. Each sentence ... More About: Literature , Democrat , Searching
What is your Life Changing Book?
2008-04-23 13:28:00 Leading scientists in a variety of fields gave their recommendations on life changing books at New Scientist yesterday. This makes pretty interesting reading - and certainly throws up some ideas for adding to your bookshelf. Among the 17 recommended books were volumes as diverse as Animal Rights by Peter Singer, which turned Primatology expert ... More About: Life , Books , Book , Changing
How to shut off background lac promoter expression in LB
2008-04-22 07:24:00 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- hydrolysable analogue of lactose, the natural inducer of the lac operon. Tight control ... More About: Services , Kits , Background , Shut , Reagents
Perfectionism: Are you on the downward spiral?
2008-04-21 12:51:00 Do you fear failure every time you do an experiment? Do you feel constantly stressed about obtaining poor results? Do you feel personally culpable when an experiment goes wrong? If you answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, you may be suffering from perfectionism. For a scientist, this is a particularly damaging trait that needs to ... More About: Cell Biology , Self-help , Molecular Biology
Around the Blogs
2008-04-18 14:27:00 It’s Thank Gradschool It’s Friday (TGIF), which means it’s time to peruse the various other blogs out there. Personal Development Grad Student Solidarity and Speaking Up in Seminars and Journal Clubs - Should postdocs and grad students ‘go easy’ on each other in seminars and journal clubs? Heck no! Also see Honesty, diplomacy, independence, and ... More About: Blogs
Evolution: 24 Myths and Misconceptions At New Scientist
2008-04-17 14:58:00 Well, I don’t have time to write a proper article today, so for your reading pleasure I’d like to point you to a great article posted yesterday on the New Scientist website by Michael Le Page. It covers some misconceptions commonly held by the general public about evolution, and dispells some of the myths that ... More About: Evolution , Myths , Misconceptions
Climb The Career Ladder Faster With These Cover Letter Tips
2008-04-16 13:11:00 Cover letters are possibly the most important documents you will write in your career because they can open or close the door to your dream job. But, surprisingly, people often under-estimate their importance and assume that they are just the lesser companion to the CV/resume. Of course, that’s not the case. Your cover letter should “cover”, but ... More About: Science , Tips , Letter , Career , Cover
Recycle Those DNA Extraction Columns
2008-04-15 08:27:00 You know those ridiculously priced and throw-away DNA mini, midi and maxi-prep columns? Well the good news is that you can actually re-use them if you are reasonably careful at regenerating them, with this simple and cheap method described in detail by Nagadenahalli B. Siddappa in Biotechniques in 2007. Apparently these columns can be reused up ... More About: Columns , Recycle
Control Your Lab Computers From Home
2008-04-14 08:20:00 If you have computers in the lab that you would like to access from home, this might be for you. LogMeIn.com offers a free remote desktop service that allows you to take control of a remote computer. Perfect if, while relaxing after dinner, you remember that you forgot to turn off the HPLC at work (yes, ... More About: Cell Biology , Software , Computers , Home , Control
Around the Blogs
2008-04-11 12:04:00 It’s Friday again, and here are some goodies from around the blogs, focusing on personal development, the science itself, and public aspects of science (the just-post-titles edition): Personal Development Thoughts on Tenure from the Tenure-Track Publish and/or Perish: When to Submit that Manuscript? Google Docs has pivot tables! The Science Itself Why Do Genome-Wide Scans Fail Fluorescence Nanoscopy Just Keeps Getting Better The ... More About: Blogs
5 Products That Could Make Your Lab Life Easier
2008-04-10 09:35:00 Today I was browsing through the “new technologies” section on the Biocompare website. Apart from the amazing but super-expensive automation equipment that most of us unfortunately have little chance of getting our hands on (at least at the moment), five products caught my eye as being useful for improving techniques widely used by researchers. I ... More About: Life , Services , Products , Kits , Make
Faster, Cooler DNA gels
2008-04-09 09:35:00 All over the world, molecular biologists are tragically wasting hours of their life running DNA gels using tris-based conduction buffers like TBE or TAE. These buffers are known to overheat at high voltages, causing problems with gel integrity, sample denaturation and more. Because of this, molecular biologists are forced to keep the voltage of their gels ... More About: Cooler
5 More Tips for DNA Gel Extraction
2008-04-08 07:55:00 Problems with DNA gel extraction can be a real show-stopper since this is such a routinely used procedure. But, even if you are having no particular problems, it’s always nice to try and pick up some information that might improve your technique just that little bit. Probably for these very reasons, Suzanne’s article 10 Tips for ... More About: Molecular Biology
Antibiotics as a Carbon Source
2008-04-07 13:19:00 Here’s the context: “Eighty years after Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin on a moldy culture dish, the battle against killer bugs is faltering. More and more bacteria - including insidious tuberculosis strains that have cropped up2 - now shrug off almost all antibiotics. Meanwhile, few new antibiotics are reaching the clinic. Medicine is on the defensive, ... More About: News , History , Source , Carbon , Antibiotics
Around the Blogs
2008-04-04 01:18:00 How to prevent grant funding, musings on career choices and brain doping for scientists. It’s all in this weeks Around the Blogs .
More on the Promise of Biomedical Breakthroughs
2008-04-03 14:04:00 Following up on my post last week about Emerging Biomedical Technologies and their Promise , Nature had a timely editorial in last week’s issue. In Broken Promises, the article describes precisely the phenomenon that I was referring to: Intense public support for clinical research can be a mixed blessing ? and the hunt for a vaccine ... More About: News , History
Quick and Dirty Screening for Cloned Inserts
2008-04-02 14:03:00 For identifying positive clones from a plasmid cloning procedure, the routine of performing a mini-prep and then checking the putative clones by restriction digestion is most commonly used. Of course, if you need to screen a large number of clones, another option is a colony PCR to identify positives, followed by restriction digests to confirm. However, ... More About: Dirty , Quick , Cloned , Screening
Management Skills in Science
2008-04-01 12:00:00 Amid growing recognition that a successful scientific career requires skills beyond scientific acumen, institutions are racing to provide management training for newly minted principal investigators. Young scientists spend years conducting complicated experiments and crunching data, but when they are finally given the keys to their own lab, they suddenly face tasks they were never trained ... More About: Science , Management , Careers , Skills
How To Become A World Expert In Your Field
2008-03-31 13:23:00 Only a handful of people ever become world experts in their field. The rest attain somewhere between a functional and world expert level of knowledge. So what makes the best better than the rest? Are they born with greater knowledge? Intelligence? Inner strength? Well, the latter is the more likely. Although some world experts are genuine geniuses, ... More About: World , Expert , Field
Around the Blogs
2008-03-28 12:32:00 It?s Friday again, and that means ?around the blogs.? Included are a few links to topics on personal development, science itself, and public understanding of science. Google Maps meets bacterial genomes - I had missed this for my Around the Blogs post two weeks ago, and am making up for it here - Sandra introduces “Genome ...
Lazy Cell Lysis
2008-03-27 11:35:00 For routine procedures involving cell lysis, it’s good for the lysis to be… routine. Of course there are many good and freely available lysis buffer recipes but for convenience and reproducibility you can’t beat pre-made lysis buffers. Focusing on lysis for protein extraction, here are some of the reagents available for fast and efficient lysis of ... More About: Services , Cell , Kits , Reagents , Lazy
Emerging Biomedical Technologies and their Promise
2008-03-26 15:04:00 Do you remember how around ten years ago, gene therapy was supposed to cure various inheritable diseases? Or how various discoveries herald the expected development of new vaccines (AIDS being a notable example)? Most scientists would agree that they try to ’sell’ their research to publishers and foundations by exaggerating the importance of findings or ... More About: News , History , Technologies , Promise
Church Scaremongering on Stem Cells
2008-03-25 09:41:00 Injecting human DNA into a non-human egg is a “monstrous” undertaking, of “Frankenstein” proportions, according to the Catholic church. Next they’ll be telling us that The Earth is flat. These comments, delivered in an Easter sermon by a high-ranking Cardinal, are part of the Catholic church’s recent campaign against The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, ... More About: News , Church , History , Stem Cells , Stem
Comments on Communicating Expertise and Knowledge
2008-03-24 11:04:00 Amid the misguided rhetoric of some who suggest that the science community cease trying to share their expertise and knowledge with the public, and the all-to-common response to expertise, I came across a thoughtful piece worth commenting on here. Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake Young posts on the problem of expertise. He writes: The problem of ... More About: News , History , Communication , Comments , Knowledge
Around the Blogs
2008-03-21 14:50:00 Once again, we bring together the best of this weeks posts from around the science blogosphere for your delectation. This week: Stress-sensing bacteria, mad biologists and how beer could seriously affect your publication rate. More About: Blogs
Genome Structure and Modularity
2008-03-20 11:53:00 A minireview recently in Genomics caught my eye with the title Coexpression, coregulation, and cofunctionality of neighboring genes in eukaryotic genomes that sounded just like a passage that I recalled from Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene: …the ‘environment’ of a gene consists largely of other genes, each of which is itself being selected for its ability ... More About: Books , Structure
3 More DNA ligation Tips
More articles from this author:2008-03-19 10:53:00 A while back, I wrote an article on 5 DNA ligation tips that could improve the efficiency of your cloning procedures. It proved to be quite a popular article so here are another 3 tips that might make your ligations even better! More About: Tips 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
|
