Many factors affect light emission in bioluminescence imaging (BLI), which is why creating a kinetic curve is so important for experimental accuracy and reproducibility. But what is a kinetic curve? What factors impact your signal? How do you generate a kinetic curve?...

Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) has become an importantresearch tool for understanding biological processes in vivo and inreal-time. Some of the immediate benefits of bioluminescence imaging is the lowsignal-to-noise ratio (SNR), high sensitivity, and the ability for...

Choosing the right competent cell line for your assay and achieving a successful transformation are dependent on understanding genotypes and genetic markers. Here, we describe the nomenclature of E. coli genotypes to help guide you in choosing your competent cells.In...

Looming in a few months is your thesis deadline. In the hallway, your professor hunts you down, and asks for the first draft of your thesis. Your mind spins as you convince yourself that your writing will never be good enough for your professor.You freeze, abandoning...

Have you ever heard an old hunter’s tale about counting crows?The story is about three hunters waiting in a hiding place near a murder of crows roaming for food. Silently, crows watch the hunters from a safe place. After not seeing any crows in the predicted area, one...

Obtaining a graduate degree can be an arduous, long, and unpredictable journey. Sometimes when this journey becomes too difficult, it makes you lose motivation and direction. Consequently, all you can think about is quitting graduate school.In fact, if quitting has...

When browsing competent cells for your research, you might encounter some unfamiliar names of bacterial strains, terminology, and features. To help you choose your competent cells, this article provides you with information about some considerations, comparisons, and...

Without a doubt, protein purification has been an important process in protein research, particularly for investigating the function and structure of a protein. To help you prepare for protein purification, our article will guide you through the significance of this...

Purifying a target protein is an important step before investigating its structure and function. To purify a target protein from a mixture of substances, column chromatography is a useful technique due to its convenience and cost. This article provides a guide to help...

Managing conflict is an important skill you can learn in graduate school before entering the workforce. Mastering this skill is definitely useful to help you develop competency in interpersonal and communication skills. In addition, by establishing this skill, you...

Taking good lecture notes is important for your academic success. Certainly, you can also choose to listen to the lecturer without taking any notes and rely on recording the whole lecture.However, taking good notes forces you to process the information and understand...

Though you’ve used IPTG for your experiments, youmay be unfamiliar with the mechanism of IPTG induction. This articleprovides a quick review on the principle of IPTG induction, how much IPTG touse for induction, and protocols for IPTG induction.In this article:What is...

It’s common knowledge that scientific papers are – well sometimes hard to get through. Even as an experienced researcher who might partake in a journal club, you often struggle to completely understand a difficult paper.In this brief article, we’ll discuss our best...

Have you wished you could read a scientific article like reading a newspaper article? More often, it seems like a huge battle to tackle a paper and completely understand its content.To read a paper, you always start with the title and the abstract before going farther...

How do you make yourself feel better in the winter? The cold weather outside probably tempts you into making a hot drink and snuggling under a cozy blanket on your couch just to keep yourself warm.In a cold and gloomy winter day, nothing can lift up your mood like a...

For many scientists around the world, 2020 has been a challenging year. Nevertheless, let’s take a moment to appreciate many exciting technologies and inspiring breakthroughs in the fields of molecular biology and biochemistry from this unforgettable year.New Approach...

Bioluminescence imaging and fluorescence imaging are two very common preclinical optical imaging modalities (way in which imaging occurs). Both offer important advantages and disadvantages to consider. Therefore, this article briefly highlights the difference between...

Agrobacterium has the ability to transfer T-DNA, a part of a tumor-inducing plasmid or Ti-plasmid, into the genome of many plants. A T-DNA binary system is a unique system, which was developed based on this mechanism. This system has been widely used in...

Agrobacterium is nature’s genetic engineer. This bacterium has the ability to transfer a part of its DNA into the genome of the plant and uses the plant to provide nutrients for its survival. Based on this remarkable Agrobacterium system, scientists have developed a...

Underneath a forest lies a giant social network, although it's unnoticeable to us. Similar to how our internet connects us, this hidden network supports a whole community by connecting one tree to other trees.Forests are so much more than a large area covered with...

Bacterial transformation is a routine procedure in molecular biology laboratories. After transforming a ligation reaction into Escherichia coli competent cells and plating the cells, you only have to wait for your plate to grow a decent number of colonies on the...

It’s common for researchers to collaborate in science. By doing so, scientists can share expertise, obtain more publications and write a stronger grant proposal (Pain, 2018).Like most days in your graduate student life, you dedicate most of time to your lab research....

All plants require nutrients to grow. In addition to oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water, plants require at least 14 mineral elements for adequate nutrition.Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulfur (S) are called...