Tips and Tricks of the Trade

Want to know how to multiply reuse agarose gels? Researchers reveal their best experimental tricks or give advice on how to meet the typical demands of life as a scientist.

The free alignment programme STRAP (6.2009): Most Open Source Sequence alignment programmes do not support drag and drop to easily grab selected proteins and shift them to the target desktop application. The free alignment software STRAP is a striking exception to this rule ... more

Coloured agar plates (5.2009): Colours are used in nature and daily life as fast signals pointing at something without any further lengthy explanations. Just think of red and green traffic lights or biological colour signals. So why not use colours in the lab to distinguish agar plates containing different antibiotics? ... more

HTS-cloning with System-48 (4.2009): Any steps in high throughput (HTS) cloning of genes and expression of the corresponding proteins are usually done by robots or liquid handling stations. Well, almost any, since there is still a bottleneck at the plating step in HTS-cloning protocols. ... more

Bradford assay reloaded (3.2009): Challenging common belief is one of the main driving forces in research. One such example is given by Christous Georgiou and his colleagues at the University of Patras, Greece, who wondered whether the previously proposed mechanisms of the Bradford assay makes any sense. ... more

Soft-boiled yeasts (2.2009): Cell walls of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae are rather hard and thick, whereas the RNA inside the cell is extremely sensitive. Thus, isolating RNA from yeast cells is like cracking open a walnut shell without destroying the nut. ... more

Melting the way to cell colonies (1.2009): Culturing transformed mammalian cells in large plastic flasks rather then dishes hinders time consuming and frequent media exchanges. But how do you best extract single colonies through a bottle neck? Here's a brilliant but simple solution to that problem. ... more

Coomassie staining without alcohol and acetic acid (6.2008): Many researchers already leave methanol out of their recipes for Coomassie Blue staining of protein gels. However, Coomassie staining works even without ethanol and acetic acid. ... more

The BaCelLo Predictor (5.2008): The lab tips and protocols on the Nature Protocols website are usually lengthy and bone dry, only comprehensible by the experts. Recently, however, the Lab Times editor came across a notable exception to the rule. ... more

Cool glove trick keeps your fingers warm (4.2008): Everyone handling liquid nitrogen is familiar with that horrible feeling if the –196°C cold liquid seeps through to the fingers, freezing them to ice. There are, however, various tricks to avoid frostbitten fingertips. ... more

Control Laboratory Devices with Embedded Systems (3.2008): Using embedded systems instead of supercharged Windows PCs to control laboratory devices has a lot of advantages. With the advent of powerful and license-free Linux distributions like Ubuntu, the transition from proprietary Windows systems to embedded systems running on open software has never been easier than today. ... more

10 golden rules for creating good scientific websites (2.2008): The World Wide Web, as we know it today, is indispensable for current scientific research. Every scientist's daily work includes searching the web for the latest literature as well as conducting scientific discourse via email. To make things easier for people visiting the internet, some rules for good web-design practice are important. ... more

REACH (1.2008): Ever heard of REACH? Most probably not. Well, listen up! REACH, the brand new European-wide legislation framework that regulates the handling of chemicals inside the EU, may also affect "downstream users" in biological labs. Matthias Faix from the poison centre in Bonn, Germany, provides some basic information about REACH. ... more

Fast Lane to Microarray Probes (5.2007): While some molecular biologists still design their PCR primers by eye, designing probes for microarrays without a computer is almost impossible. Thomas Kern's group at the Research Center Hagenberg and Bernhard Ronacher from the Austrian biotech company Anagnostics Bioanalysis together with Christof Sohn and Gerhard Gebauer from the University of Heidelberg have developed a new free-of-charge online probe design programme called "hybseek". ... more

Homemade Protocol - Instead of DNA-Extraction Kit (3.2007): It's not always necessary to order the latest kit when planning the extraction of DNA. Eduardao Daniel Souza-Canada has developed a simple protocol for the isolation of genomic DNA from leaves. ... more

Cyber-Protocols (2.2007): The traditional way to learn science is by practicing it at the bench according to the advice dished out to the Lab-newbie by his mentor. However, in the Internet age it seems that students more frequently prefer to rely on protocols they find on the web. ... more

Post Processing Biological Data with EEGLAB (1.2007): Photographers usually post-process their photos. By doing this, they often change reality. This is not what a scientist really wants to do. However, some events have singular characteristics so sharpening raw data is necessary and could even reveal new concepts and ideas. ... more