...Everyone in the room has likely just run in from some other commitment. An announcement of purpose can... will too. Even if you are meeting to discuss something difficult, be excited about the prospect of working...meetings short, informative, and pleasant. Email: Sometimes, the right meeting is no meeting at all. When ...checking in on the action items from last meeting. Use some positive peer pressure to make sure everyone completes... your meeting types (see above). We’ve provided some tips above for what works well at Addgene, but meetings... what worked well and ask the meeting leader for some tips. Before long, you will be running collaborative...

... a common big-picture goal. It is worth doing some some serious pre-work to find a lab that will be a ...go about selecting new hires. This is followed by some perhaps surprising, yet important, factors to consider...members to share short-term goals and chat about awesome science. Important factors in the search for a ...of a perfect "fit". How competitive is the lab? Some labs have only one author plus the PI on any paper...Things seem to fall into place frequently and you sometimes feel confident in your abilities. You have intense...

...novice (newb). In this post, I’d like to highlight some of the things that popped out to me as a novice ...the microbiome more often than not). If you’re someone who’s considering getting into neuroscience from...sequences of microbial DNA they all seem to require some mathematical know-how for analysis. If you’re looking... expertise to get into the field, there’s likely some way you can use the tools and skills you’ve developed... - if you’ve got a useful tool, there’s likely someway you can apply it in neuroscience. AAV tools from...the Addgene website and on the Addgene blog to get some ideas for future experiments and to find tools that...

...to share some of the tips and tricks and I’ve learned from numerous scientists at NIDA and some of the ...interest 3) Behavioral experimentation I’ll discuss some of the key features of each of these steps. Today...that have been published at this point.  In brief, some standard opsins (see table above) include Channelrhodopsin2...drive most of the constructs. As an alternative, some constructs have been engineered with a double-floxed... stimulation.  It is also important to note that some promoters are so robust they may actually cause ...optogenetics. In next week’s post we’ll delve into some of the important materials science considerations...

...Congratulations Mark Mellett! Siddharth Prakash: X chromosome genes involved in Turner syndrome Turner syndrome... a developmental disorder where one of the X chromosomes is partially or completely missing in women. ... cells from women who are missing an entire X chromosome (TS iPSCs), the lab observed abnormal cell migration...developmental defects. Eight genes from the X chromosome are expressed at significantly reduced levels...reagents will facilitate our aims to correct X chromosome gene dosage in TS cells as a first step to reverse...GNB1 mutations, the lab hopes to capture the signalosome of different receptors upon stimulation. “To ...

...quality of the plasmids we make available and provide some advice on the steps you can take to verify your ...incoming plasmids are sequenced at least twice, and sometimes more depending on the number of features we need...sequencing reactions. In the more complex cases, we sometimes have to design new primers to sequence the important...Remember, when designing a sequencing primer, you need some space between your primer binding site and the first...feature you want to verify is within this range. Read some of our other blog posts for more tips on sequence...have your own best sequencing practices or maybe some tips on how to get better sequencing reads? Tell...

...applications; however, in some cases, your advisor may choose to allot some if not all grant duties to... should offer in order to build upon and address some, if not all, of the limitations of current methodologies.... Now is the time to make bold statements. While some of the statements may be slightly far reaching, ...items to include for the next application. Although some comments may make it clear that the reviewer misunderstood...comes with continual practice and exposure, here are some additional links that offer more advice on writing...

...plasmid’s page. Sometimes we’re missing a piece of the plasmid There are regions of some plasmids that ...acceptor, contains sequence that is over 80% GC. Some IRES sequences also contain regions that are GC ...assemble correctly. Due to these issues, NGS for some plasmids will not result in one complete, circular...with the heading "Addgene Partial NGS Result." In some cases, there will be more information about our ...make available as part of our OpenBio Repository sometime soon. Stay posted!     References Guerin K, ...

... agar. I’ll also provide you with some tips on how to automate some simple processes in your own lab. ...certainly felt this way at Addgene so we’ve been putting some work into finding robots that’ll take a little labor...automate and optimize more protocols in the future - something that will be key for our future growth. One of...developing ways to prep large quantities of DNA because some countries just can’t receive bacteria through the... can take to automate processes in your own lab. Some things your lab can do to get into the robotics ...

...unfortunate experience of witnessing…nothing. For some unclear reason, cells are not getting transduced...five hail Marys that have helped me troubleshoot some technical obstacles when working with virus: 1. ...diagnostic restriction enzyme digest and compare it to some reliable controls. 2. Viral stocks may be sensitive.... If the virus will be used in a couple of days, some researchers prefer to store freshly harvested virus...If you have low titers (which is unavoidable for some vectors) you can concentrate your virus by ultracentrifugation...fluorescent if they were infected. While there may be some low-level fluorescent protein or resistance marker...

... the ribosome performed in his lab. RNA is a structural and functional component of the ribosome complex...made time to go into the city of Guangzhou and see some of the sites. Most fascinating to me was the outdoor... least I could tell that they were mushrooms. In some cases I couldn’t tell if the bags contained flora...transcripts. I remember when small RNA was just something we ran off the bottom of the gel so it wouldn’...complex and Dr. Steitz quipped that RNA in the ribosome is in a complicated conformation “not like DNA which...

...region of chromosome 15. They both result from the inactivation of genes on one copy of chromosome 15 (the...histone proteins that compacts cellular DNA into chromosomes and reduces the risk of dangerous DNA damage....syndrome). In both cases, the other copy of the chromosome is normally imprinted and silenced, and so the.... In both diseases, genes from both copies of chromosome 15 are inactivated, but different phenotypes ... transposon methylation underlies the mantled somaclonal variant of oil palm." Nature 525.7570 (2015):...

...startup At some point, our ideas got pretty good. We started doing extracurricular research on some of them...on any challenge and quickly become experts in something, even if that thing is opening a pizza joint. ...start us down the entrepreneurial path. We threw some of our own money at this business and started things... little traction for quite a while, and even had some serious self-confidence issues about continuing ...analyze what we want out of our careers: to build something new and beautiful, to engage with the public in...

...isogenic AdVs encoding TALENs targeting the same chromosomal region. The CRISPR/Cas9-derived RNA-guided nuclease-induced... will interact with sporadic double-stranded chromosomal DNA breaks “that always happen naturally.” These...Gonçalves says that advantages of AdVs include their episomal nature and very efficient introduction of DNA ...also be used to deliver Cas9 and DNA templates in somatic cells of adult animals in order to create animal...Ventura A (2014) In vivo engineering of oncogenic chromosomal rearrangements with the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Nature...Weng Z, Gao G, Xue W (2015) Adenovirus-Mediated Somatic Genome Editing of Pten by CRISPR/Cas9 in Mouse ...

...visitation days can be, at times, very overwhelming. As someone who applied to PhD programs in Biology around the...speaking, the PhD application process tends to go something like this:   However, as simply as it seems laid...complicated process even more difficult. I’ve learned that some of the technologies that helped us navigate a global...program. An email to a potential PI should go something like this: Introduce yourself, brief educational...truly feel about the program and faculty. Here are some questions to consider for your online meetings:  ...prospective students; an online meeting can take some of that pressure off. This question and answer ...

.... Ribosome display The Seeger lab starts with a “pre-enrichment” selection step using ribosome display...which causes the ribosome to pause at the end of the mRNA molecule, forming a ribosome complex consisting... remain folded, and are often less abundant than some other proteins. The Seeger lab developed a robust...consisting of the translated protein (sybody), ribosome, and mRNA. During the screening process, displayed sybodies...

...how they work to overcome them, and why she spends some of her time engaging with others on Twitter, among...switching to Golden Gate is a conceptual barrier. Sometimes people don’t know how to start. They might want...protein-protein interaction work and we’ve gotten some tools back from Addgene recently to explore their...Most Sainsbury scientists are active on Twitter. Sometimes it’s a good way to find out what’s happening in...experiences, articles about women in science, and the sometimes stupid or uncomfortable things that have happened...plant science. I think their chances of doing something amazing will be equally high as for those who ...

...   Both gradients can be informative, so spend some time thinking about which type of gradient can help...to consider changing your incubation temperature. Some proteins aggregate at 95 °C, a common lysis temperature...Fill the time with smaller tasks, or simply enjoy some well-deserved down time while waiting for your timer... blocking, first check your antibody spec sheet. Some antibodies work better with specific blockers, and...overnight or room temperature for 1–2 hours, there is some evidence that antibodies may need longer to reach... washes — although this can be harsh and inhibit some detection reactions. Like blocking, you don’t want... to be the most straightforward. While there are some things you’ll want to consider (see our “technical...

...vector, but retroviruses have been developed into some of the most widely used tools in molecular biology...developed into lentiviral vectors. Lentiviruses are sometimes referred to as “complex retroviruses ” (Cullen... as the other components of the vector particle, some of the RT protein gets packaged inside of the vector...viruses and transduction by vectors (which we sometimes still call “infection” as a shorthand, although...double stranded DNA is integrated into the host chromosome, and this is where viral vectors and natural ...express. In the case of a natural virus, this new chromosomal locus is considered “proviral DNA” (Rowe et al...

...journal club. Some are led by a single individual who walks through the paper figure by figure. Some follow ...calendar. So you want to start a journal club? Here are some things to think about. Choosing a topic and gauging...software repositories, or other information needed by someone to critically discuss the paper.  Before the first...receive include the sense that people learned something new? Did the meeting begin and end on time? Did... their purpose has been served. I hope that with some of the information described above you feel empowered...