...this very blog (you’ll have to let me know how I’m doing a few months down the line!) and to visit scientists...with none of my old friends to fall back on. While doing and presenting undergraduate research at BU, I realized...knowledge. In addition, this position allows me to do another thing I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed: travel...support academia but the skills researchers gain doing PhDs (i.e. technical writing, teaching, presenting...

...they do well and where they need to improve, and they’re also clear about how the person is doing overall...would your plan be? If you could do the thing all over, what would you do differently? Beware of indirect...

...how little pre-work most PhD students and postdocs do to ensure the advisors they choose will be ones that...are a common reason for scientists to change labs – do as much as you can to ensure a good fit in advance...ensure the PI will be a good role model and teacher. Do you admire her management style? Does he have ethical...academic bullies are hard to stop – the best thing to do is not go into their labs in the first place. The...

...laboratories this holiday season want the work you are doing to have an impact, to move science forward, or perhaps... perhaps even society. One obvious way to do that is and has been to publish in journals with a high “...access on scientific impact Partly, the story has to do with online accessibility. It is now about as easy...

...researchers do these things with nefarious goals in mind. Indeed, it’s not always obvious that we’re doing things...reagents with the confidence that they aren’t simply doing an experiment wrong. However, even simple procedures...researchers to share data thereby enabling you to do modified analyses on published data if you need to...confirms their hypotheses even if most other scientists do not. These scientists with positive results have ...biases and goals from effecting our experiments. How do we engender better experimental design? The summation...transparent about the reasons we alter these designs if we do so. The most extreme version of this (and possibly...

...wages, overtime tracking? What are institutions doing? Institutions are now preparing to comply with the...postdocs resource on what institutions are actually doing (using the list of 340 institutions with postdocs...institutions that have not yet announced what they are doing, however, may face greater challenges. Current salary...most of) MIT and the University of Colorado are doing, and are checking with Yale that they are raising...institutions they're thinking about applying to, are doing - for example, your benefits may be changing. Please...of time and a lot of work - but they were able to do so on their own terms. They must feel very relieved...

... consider the order of your narrative. Scientists do this all the time, you just need to figure out how... deliver a great public presentation if you are doing it for the first time? Practice talks also help ...sakes, label all graphs and data professionally). Do remember the fine points of visual aids. Here’s a...say you will get back to them with an answer, and do so if you can. 9. Resist the urge to say everything...of talk length, and then I cut a few more slides. Do not run over your time—the audience’s attention will.... One good topic or story is all you need, if you do it well.  Resist the urge to show all or even a lot...

... hear you saying “We know this already!” But, you do need to be able to research and write your application...money so you need to make it clear that you will be doing your research in a group or facility that is a world...it would be helpful for them to know what we are doing and why. I always ask kindly friends and family ...to my area, a line about the research I will be doing, and a line about what I hope to discover. This ... you get some critical insight into what you're doing wrong. All this helps to improve your application...

... blastp searches do not filter low complexity regions by default, meaning that you do not have to remember...compared to other types of BLAST searches. If you do not know the exact reference sequence for your result...truncations. A primary advantage of blastx is that you do not have to decide on a reading frame for your sequencing...pairwise_sequence_alignment_psa Happy BLASTing! Do you have any tips for using BLAST to confirm your...

...81. PubMed . Tet systems : Science and Technology Do you have suggestions for other plasmids that should...

... homology arms and EGFP are available at Addgene. Do you have suggestions for other plasmids that should...

...proteins, respectively. A plasmid's copy number has to do with the balance between positive and negative regulation...showing the standard features of a plasmid. So, how do you choose? Addgene Senior Scientist Marcy Patrick...have only one plasmid type in your cells at a time? Do you want to make a lot of your plasmid? Is the gene...for optimal results always pick a single colony and do not subculture directly from glycerol stocks, agar...

...leaving academia, but don’t quite know what you do want to do or even what careers are available to scientists... Science in the News Don't stumble into a career, do your research Once you have identified possible careers... part of team? Will you be coordinating projects? Do you need computer programming skills? Other things...

... is not far enough along, scientifically, to be doing in humans; We have not had a broad, public conversation...reproduction, the relevant document for the question of “how do we move forward” is the June 2012 report on the ethics...ethically fraught rapidly emerging technology. We could do this for CRISPR/Cas9 – or any other germline editing...adequately proven to be reasonably safe and effective. We do that through a standardized process of good research...

...identify ourselves as part of a network of independent Do-it-Yourself (DIY) biology laboratories working towards...involvement and provide all our members the opportunity to do molecular biology, we’ve developed community projects...publish protocols so that anyone can engineer yeast to do similar things. The focus is to make yeast engineering... few yeast plasmids from Addgene and are eager to do our first yeast transformations! Dennis Oleksyuk,...

...given sequence. You want to choose enzymes that: Do not cut within your insert Are in the desired location...(usually in the Multiple Cloning Site (MCS)), but do not cut elsewhere on the plasmid Bonus: It is helpful...GAATTCATGTGGCATATCTCGAAGTAC-3'. Many restriction enzymes do not cut DNA efficiently at the end of a linear piece...any 6 bases, but you should ensure that the bases do not result in the formation of a hairpin structure...

...engineering of its function." Once scientists can do that, they will not only understand how the brain... neural basis of violence or aggression, it might do a lot to explain more difficult aspects of human ...decision making, to cure a human patient. We can't do it all by ourselves. Getting these tools out into...cells in arbitrary patterns in the brain. Addgene: Do you have any special tips or tricks for someone looking...

.... In the most practical terms, what GreenGate can do is “save you half a year,” in comparison to more ...sensitive protein,” he says. “There is nothing you can do about it but be gentle. If it no longer works, just...blocks will be available, making it easier for us to do our work.” References 1. Athanasios Lampropoulos...

... easily separate out your target population. How do I know if I will need compensation? To know if you...on another.  What does spillover look like and how do I fix it? When plotting two channels against each... two channels. It is something your computer will do for you to better analyze your results; it does NOT...samples. With time and practice, you may be able to do your compensation setup on your experimental samples...compensation to your experimental samples In order to do compensation on your experimental samples, you will...

...will turn yellow. Do NOT change the media (add 2-3 mL of fresh media once a week), and do NOT harvest the...transgenes, transduce quiescent and dividing cells, and do not integrate into the host’s genome. The main challenge...test for the presence of RCA in the viral stock by doing a plaque formation assay on A549 cells . Alternatively...at -80C. Purification and concentration kits that do not use CsCl are commercially available. Titer calculation...