...college, I knew I wanted to try research, but had no idea what to expect. I had a lot of help from my peers...scientific endeavors. I hope that this post can provide some perspective and advice to any undergraduate...no biological or biomedical scientists and had no idea what the daily life of a scientist was like. The...importance of research in basic biology, medicine, epidemiology, public health, and more.     A few of the...professional training after earning a doctorate Considered a "stepping stone" position to become a professor...future. How do I get started with research? I had no idea what my scientific interests were or what I wanted...is good advice, and it is ultimately up to us to decide whether we want to take it or not. Choose wisely...

...dumpsters outside the open windows in the middle of your talk. Technical difficulties turn your slide deck ...interest incorrectly on slides 8-16. Your notes disappear. The wrong version of your slide deck gets uploaded...hard. Aside from the diving board charades, I doubt anyone but me remembers any of the incidents above–and...Addgene blog Transferable Skills Guide: Time Management Transferable Skills Guide: Conflict Resolution Transferable...stand up in front of an audience and convey your ideas clearly and strategically is powerful in almost ... allows you to share and build support for your ideas, invite others into decision making processes, and...help me achieve my purpose? Should I go over this slide again? Say, 'Oh, I forgot to mention X, so let's...

...first-timers. That's why we gave our written protocol a video companion! Follow along as Addgenie Meghan and Abi...protocols on our Protocol page, and find our protocol videos on our YouTube page.     ...

...reinforcement but is considerably simpler than ICSS. The test chamber is divided into two halves that ...s post, we’ll discuss some of the important considerations you should think about when developing optogenetics...the animal perceives through taking a drug. The ideal behaviors to test reinforcement are ICSS and place... of the type of behavior, certain technical considerations still apply. Testing stimulation First, In ... controls without Chr2. c-Fos is a reliable and widely used molecular marker of neuronal activation and...be possible to use c-fos expression to get the evidence you need. For example, as shown in this study ...benefits from collaboration and the exchange of ideas. The rapid spread of optogenetics throughout the...

...endonuclease (Cas9) and a single stranded guide RNA (gRNA). The ~20 nucleotide targeting sequence within the gRNA...reagents are available for genome-wide screens? The goal of a genome-wide screening experiment is to generate...) and "hits" are identified using next-generation sequencing (E). Considerations and tips for successful...underlying genetic cause is not entirely known. Identifying which genes are important for a phenotype can...CRISPR libraries are being used to perform genome-wide screens and highlight some of the reagents that ...to target Cas9 to virtually any genomic locus, provided the target is unique compared to the rest of the...CRISPR technologies, check out Addgene's CRISPR Guide. Figure 1: Like this jar of jellybeans, a...

...Science in Boston, where the entire Blue Wing was set aside for the event. As guests arrived, some gravitated... Me Maybe.” After cocktail hour, we feasted on sliders, hot dogs and a mashed potato bar (complete with...well as plenty of delicious desserts. We enjoyed a video highlighting the changes at Addgene over the last... great!) time. Ten years ago, Melina Fan had an idea and her family helped bring it to fruition. The ...Plasmid Sharing Or read more about what happens Inside Addgene   ...

...database of common features, and devising rules for identifying a feature even when the match is imperfect. SnapGene's...catalog every variant of a feature. Instead, we identified common variants, and then crafted a detection...reasonable rule is to require at least 96% sequence identity when detecting a reference feature. For a coding...match even when the DNA sequence has changed. Identifying plasmid control elements Coding sequence features...original literature, some of it decades old, to provide reliable feature annotations. Even with these extensive...that have different properties. To prevent misidentification, we augment the database with new fluorescent...protein variants. The future of DNA feature identification What’s next for common features? We plan to...

... it! Further Reading and Outside Resources http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-job-fairs...your lab, right? Wrong! While it is clearly a good idea to be diligent in your research, remember that you...themselves, resources are often scarce and difficult to identify. So what specifically should you do? What follows... elaborated on later. As for what job fairs to consider, some of the best options are the Naturejobs Career...most relevant experience at the top. You may also consider visiting any of the employer’s career pages to... apply for the position. This post on Business Insider nicely summarizes good job fair practice. Career...and other online career resources Once you’ve identified places you’d like to work, get online and take...

...journal club. Sorting out the logistics Once you decide on the topic, there are a number of administrative...notice for the first meeting so that people can set aside time in their schedules and read the paper (PS: ... on single papers could be more important.  Any slides, presentations, recordings, and other materials... ensure that the journal club is useful for the widest audience, you should get feedback from those who...everyone to offer thoughts you may not have even considered. These questions should be tailored to the group...priority for the participants. Perhaps people feel confident in their own knowledge of the field. Perhaps interest... not actively participating, it may be time to consider ending the meeting. This is a common failing in...

...2) creating a pictorial guide for our engineers (Fig. 2). Creating this guide was relatively easy. I took...different interpretations of what we discussed and decided. I needed to a) figure out the sources of miscommunication...non-scientist friends and family is going to vary widely. The way you communicate your science at a poster...collaborations with other scientists within and outside your field, and any number of interactions with...the context you do, which means you’ll need to provide that context yourself. Simple words are not so...the same question and asking can help the team identify possible points of confusion in the future. Improving...

...very excited to debut our brand new Addgene Videos page! Videos are a powerful tool for communicating scientific... first video, featuring Outreach Scientist Jessica Welch, can be found below: How-to videos Our How-To...Videos can save researchers time by quickly relaying key points about an unfamiliar topic or lab process... page, we have neatly organized the educational video content from our website, blog, and YouTube channel...questions you might have about Addgene. The page is divided into three main sections: Protocols To complement...written protocol materials, we have also created video protocols.  These feature step-by-step instructions...various lab processes.  Our most recent protocol video detailing Streaking Plates for Single Bacterial ...

...plasmid rap video for us (If you’re new to plasmids, we highly recommend checking out the video). Tom has...Beautifully filmed video about colony collapse disorder.     5. Plasmid Rap Plasmid rap video made with support...has made many more Science rap videos to teach students around the globe and is pushing SciComm further...Rock Anthem One of Tom's earliest and most popular videos. Describes fossil rocks and their importance in... Check out Our Protocol Pages for New Protocol Videos View Our Molecular Biology Reference Pages ...

...majority of cells failing to develop the desired identity. The development of single cell technologies, ... RNA-seq (scRNA-seq), now allows scientists to identify the gene expression patterns unique to the few...Morris Lab at Washington University in St. Louis provides a combinatorial indexing strategy that simultaneously...simultaneously tracks clonal history and cell identity at the single-cell level, thus linking ancestral gene...Biddy et al., 2018). Tracking lineage and cell identity at the single-cell level with CellTag CellTagging... region. The variable region acts as a unique identifier for individual cells. Each cell is labeled with.... The fixed region acts as a library-specific identifier and allows cells to be tagged with different ...

...developers of many of these probes, we decided to write this quick guide to help researchers choose the probe...supplied (Baloban et al., 2017).  It is important to consider effective brightness of NIR FPs in cells, in addition...binding of endogenous BV.  When imaging NIR FPs, consider using light sources that produce enough light ...NIR. Usually, mercury lamps are suboptimal, metal halide lamps are better, and xenon lamps are the best ...apparent cellular brightness than previously reported widely used dimeric iRFPs (Table 1). In general, the monomeric...O.S. et al. Single-domain near-infrared proteins provide a scaffold for antigen-dependent fluorescent nanobodies...

...educational science videos is tough. Is the content accurate? Are we conveying complex ideas in the easiest... production standpoint, it wasn’t ideal for our Lab Protocol videos. It’s really nice to have a scientist...perfect height (Fig. 2). We recorded video using a simple, external video recorder and a mic clipped to her...pulled it off! Check out the PCR Primer video! Learn: Producing videos like this would prove to be difficult..., and as a video control center.   Cycle 2: Zooming Forward Design: We produced a video celebrating... cues. We had two options: Film outside at a distance, or film inside with one person in a room. I wouldn...protocol videos?   Figure 4: The remote directing setup, complete with wireless video receiver,...

...I led. It’s divided into the key takeaway themes and customer pain points we’ve identified. I can’t wait...software product management, I confess that I had no idea what software product management was either. Coming...

...but it isn’t just for lab specimens — there is evidence that lightning can also promote gene transfer ...While these plasmids can be dangerous, they also provide researchers with new means to deliver DNA and other...resistance to toxic substances like heavy metals or pesticides, enabling their hosts to survive where others... T. M., & Simonet, P. (2001). Laboratory-scale evidence for lightning-mediated gene transfer in soil. ...

...questions, data, and conclusions should be clearly identified and interpreted in less than a couple of minutes...Tips for designing your poster Check conference guidelines To begin, you should always follow conference...poster at all times, so other participants can identify you. You may also wish to make creative use of...three, or four column style, and in all cases the idea is the same; the reader will navigate the poster... to low, some of the poster will naturally sit outside of the reader’s field of view because of its length...to read. The Thompson Rivers University Library provides useful tips on how to craft this type of poster...doctoral student at Michigan State University. The idea is that the main research finding is written across...

.... The video abstracts provide a brief introduction to the research and, after watching the video to determine...platform that provides links to the videos, keeping the copyright and control over the videos with the researcher...others. Improving science communication through video     Video abstracts about research, especially published...view count and videos published, YouTube reported a total of 865,995 views for the 926 video abstracts identified...attention for their work, a video abstract may be a useful tool for turning video views into online article...few years, I decided to look at what online tools people generally like to use to share ideas – with the... online video market ever since. The take home message of all of this appears to be that video is the ...

...reverse transcriptase) together with a prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA). The pegRNA consists of a target-complementary...on the website or offline via GitHub. The model provides users with different designs of pegRNAs, ranked...and test them in their labs. Figure 2: Guidelines to predict pegRNA efficiencies with pridict.it...computational prediction models. In addition, we provide options for nicking gRNAs (used for PE3 and PE5...self-targeting screens such as PRIDICT/PRIDICT2.0 provide valuable insights into pegRNA editing efficiencies...Brinkman, E. K., Leemans, C., Vergara, X., van der Weide, R. H., Morris, B., van Schaik, T., Manzo, S. G....Addgene.org CRISPR: PRIME Edit Collection The CRISPR Guide Empty gRNA Expression Vectors...