...I first became a manager. Know your people Each person is unique and should be managed accordingly.  I...role is not to do all the work yourself anymore. Personally I found this to be particularly challenging. ...important” tasks my schedule. This was bad for 2 reasons. First, it soon became obvious that I didn’t have...accordingly -  but think of it as an investment: once the person is trained you will have more time to focus on ...identify what to delegate and to whom (make sure that person has time for it!). Then schedule a meeting to discuss...Unless you’re delegating a recurring task to a seasoned report, there should be questions! Remember that...learned to embrace them after one ended with the person in front of me saying “I’ve been doing some of ...

...the Deverman lab at the Broad Institute and the Wilson lab at the University of Pennsylvania independently...unlikely receptor for PHP.B, and how the Deverman and Wilson labs determined LY6A was a receptor used by PHP.B... PHP.B CNS permissiveness Both the Deverman and Wilson labs determined LY6A, also known as stem cell antigen... role in viral susceptibility. The Deverman and Wilson Labs independently identified LY6A as a receptor...was a likely player in PHP.B permissiveness. The Wilson Lab also looked for the gene variant responsible...require galactose and AAVR to transduce cells. The Wilson Lab generated results similar to the Deverman Lab...’s transduction of 293T cells. In addition, the Wilson Lab also tested the ability of PHP.B to transduce...

... of your lab that you see in person, and helps improve your interpersonal relationships with people you...emailing documents to one person at a time. Just be sure there is a point person responsible for incorporating...replicates how you’d interact with team members in person, and improves overall communication.  Maintain...out if any milestones are missed. Spend time in person Presenting the results from my lab exchange...having collaborators spend time with each other in person. One possibility is to do a lab exchange, where...

...to our guest blogger Lydia Morrison from New England Biolabs. Lydia Morrison is a biochemist by training...This post was contributed by guest blogger Lydia Morrison from New England Biolabs. What is DNA assembly...multiple methods of DNA assembly available, including: Gibson Assembly®, BioBrick® Assembly, Golden Gate Assembly...Assembly, and NEBuilder® HiFi DNA Assembly. Gibson Assembly allows the production of scarless DNA constructs...opens the door for new opportunities in the field.  Gibson Assembly® is a registered trademark of Synthetic... Addgene Blog Learn More about Gateway Cloning Gibson Assembly and Other Long-Homology Based Cloning ...

...This post was contributed by guest blogger Chris Richardson, a Postdoctoral Researcher in Jacob Corn’s lab...and yet unanswered) question. Our recent paper (Richardson et al 2016) revealed some of the biophysical ...binding to the cleaved DNA duplex. Image from Richardson et al., 2016. We next wondered if we could...interaction with the Cas9-DNA duplex. Image from Richardson et al., 2016.   dCas9 enables sequence replacement...Results from our lab and others (Lin et al 2014, Richardson et al 2016, and Kim et al 2014) have shown that...transcribed sgRNA, and optional donor DNA. Chris Richardson is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Jacob Corn’s ...worked on this publication:         References 1. Richardson, Christopher D., et al. "Enhancing homology-directed...

...called GMAP (Gibson assembly-based modular assembly platform). GMAP is based on the Gibson Assembly method...Parton DL, Hanson SM, Rodríguez-Laureano L, Albanese SK, Gradia S, Jeans C, Seeliger MA, Levinson NM, Chodera...as individual plasmids shipped as agar stabs. Iverson, et al. ACS Synth Bio. 2015. PubMed PMID: 26479688...30-40bp overlaps). To expand the capabilities of Gibson assembly and make a more modular platform, the ...context-dependent human fitness genes, the laboratory of Jason Moffat at the University of Toronto has created ...Vectors Available at Addgene: Lab Plasmids Dan Carlson RCIscript-GoldyTALEN, pC-GoldyTALEN Tom Ellis...pTAL7a, pTAL7b Michal Zurovec pBlue-TAL Nathan Lawson pJDS Series   Superglue proteins with SpyTag...

...is. If the person makes time for you, as needed, this is a strong indicator that this person cares about...limited job opportunities in academia - the main reason most people enter postdoctoral training. Similarly... the postdoctoral mentor, and at least one more person that knows you and your research well. Who could...and skilled speaker. There's a more fundamental reason to give presentations - networking! People get ...unpublished information and reagents. Part of the reason I got my first faculty position was because the...institute about me, even though I had not asked this person to write a letter of reference. The group leader...not take time off when you are a PF. Here is my personal list:   Exercise - nothing dissipates stress ...

...Johnny Kung, Director of New Initiatives for the Personal Genetics Education Project (pgEd). Advances in...exacerbating existing inequalities and injustices. The Personal Genetics Education Project (pgEd), where I currently...conversations about both the benefits as well as the personal, social and ethical implications of genetics. ...cultural or religious affiliation, and ethnic or personal identity. We do this through a variety of activities...activities, including creating educational materials and lesson plans that are made freely available online; running...translating all these into social media and blog posts, lesson plans, or information briefs for policymakers. ...Kung is the Director of New Initiatives for the Personal Genetics Education Project (pgEd). He is broadly...

...labelled with horseradish peroxidase (HRP; Kristensson and Olsson, 1971), plant lectins (wheat germ agglutinin...24336151. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4004172. Kristensson, K., and Olsson, Y. (1971). Retrograde axonal transport...difficult to accurately map network connections (Lo & Anderson, 2011). In the past two decades, several virus...PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4324159. Castle, M.J., Gershenson, Z.T., Giles, A.R., Holzbaur, E.L., and Wolfe...29, 363–365. PubMed PMID: 4107258. Lo, L., and Anderson, D.J. (2011). A Cre-dependent, anterograde transsynaptic..., J.S., Hyman, B.T., and McLean, P.J. (2009). Comparison of transduction efficiency of recombinant AAV... V., Thiry, I., Deroose, C. M., Mortelmans, L., Wilson, J.M., Debyser, Z., and Baekelandt, V. (2007). ...

...students who are unable to attend in-person interviews for a variety of reasons (logistical, financial, etc…)...visit in person, things like sickness or scheduling issues can and do interfere with those in-person plans...COVID-19 and standards for hybrid, virtual, and in-person events change seemingly daily (and are inconsistent...about the program and having the time to ask personalized questions might be difficult. However, an online...Even if you had planned a campus visit and the in-person portion got canceled, taking advantage of virtual...

...a price of a few dollars per reaction. By comparison, Gibson assembly can cost over $15.00 per reaction...In today’s post, we will focus on a high-level comparison of popular cloning methodologies, with a special...as 30 minutes! Alternatively, you might consider Gibson cloning. In this technique, you first perform a...reaction if you purchase a pre-made mix. Nonetheless, Gibson assembly is a highly versatile and efficient way...propagating. The ligation-independent methods like Gibson and SLIC are also quite efficient; although efficiency...them are some of the homology based methods, like Gibson or SLIC, since one can pool the components and ...

...used to call copy numbers should be as small as reasonably possible and set using the variance seen within...negative for each reaction, math happens (this time, Poisson statistics), and the readout gives an absolute ... through concentration values, rather than by comparison to a standard curve, and most results can be ...7778-9_9. PMID: 29717442. Arya M, Shergill IS, Williamson M, Gommersall L, Arya N, Patel HR. Basic principles... S., Hollox, E. J., & Boon Peng, H. (2015). A comparison of assays for accurate copy number measurement...journal.pone.0116791 Providenti MA, O'Brien JM, Ewing RJ, Paterson ES, Smith ML. The copy-number of plasmids and ... Rachel Leeson...

... of a two-part interview with Vini Mani and Amy Gilson from Science in the News at Harvard University....your science, we sat down with Vini Mani and Amy Gilson from Science in the News, a graduate student organization...Podcast Many thanks to our guests, Vini Mani and Amy Gilson. Vini Mani is a graduate student at Harvard University...News, and member of the SITN podcast team.     Amy Gilson recently received her PhD from Harvard University...SITN podcast team. You can follow Amy on twitter @aigilson.   Special thanks to our sound engineer/producer...McFadden Learn about SITN's work at DayCon 2015 5 Reasons to Use Reddit for Science Communication ...

...changes in specificity than AAV-PHP.eB. For this reason, the Gradinaru lab anticipates that high-dose AAV-PHP.AX...happy transducing! This post was written by Rachel Leeson, with significant contributions from Cynthia Arokiaraj...Altermatt, M., Dobreva, T., Chen, S., Wang, A., Thomson, M., & Gradinaru, V. (2021). Deep Parallel Characterization...s41565-023-01419-x Deverman, B. E., Pravdo, P. L., Simpson, B. P., Kumar, S. R., Chan, K. Y., Banerjee, A....., Wang, Q., Katz, N., Buza, E. L., Bell, P., & Wilson, J. M. (2018). The Neurotropic Properties of AAV-PHP.B.... J., Bell, P., Raymond, A., Stanford, W. L., & Wilson, J. M. (2019). The GPI-Linked Protein LY6A Drives...journal.pbio.3002112 Jang, M. J., Coughlin, G. M., Jackson, C. R., Chen, X., Chuapoco, M. R., Vendemiatti,...

...out their own novel experiments in semester two (Knutson et al., 2010a,b).      Fig. 1: Undergraduates...capabilities and laboratory and critical thinking skills (Knutson et al., 2010a,b). Classroom-based research projects...before a CURE trainee goes on to win a Nobel!   Jason Pellettieri is Professor and Chair of the Biology...Einstein Discovers America. New York./  Callahan, K., Peterson, C., et al. 2022. External collaboration results...planarians. Developmental Biology. 457:119-127. Knutson, K., Smith, J., Wallert, M., Provost, J. 2010a....and Molecular Biology Education. 38(5):317-323. Knutson, K., Smith, J., Nichols, P., Wallert, M., Provost...Education. 38(5):324-329. Kowalski, J., Hoops, G., Johnson, J. 2016. Implementation of a collaborative series...

... is adapted from the 1979 Patterson Protocol. When published, the Patterson Protocol was shown to purify...DNA gel extraction method described in Kim and Morrison is nearly identical to that of commercially available...Purify DNA using glass filters. Image: Kim and Morrison, 2009. This method provides DNA yield and quality... kits for different purposes, with the Kim and Morrison method, you can just adjust the number of glass... protocol video library References Kim, Y., & Morrison, S.L. (2009). A Rapid and Economic In-House DNA...://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30316-w  Zou, Y., Mason, M.G., Wang, Y., Wee, E.J., Turni, C., Blackall,...

...them for use in your lab. Structural Comparison Functional Comparison Advantages of Nanobodies How to Use...for a comparison of nanobody, HCab, and traditional IgG antibody structures. Functional comparison Strong...Nanobody Toolbox Find Nanobody Plasmids Structural comparison As the name suggests, nanobodies are smaller ...Large: Advantages of Antibodies One of the main reasons antibodies are great indirect immunodetection tools... antibody incubation. See figure 4A below for comparison of this one-step staining with nanobodies vs ...

...troubleshooting as advised by the technical support person. This delayed the progress of the project. After...familiarize yourself with technical support. Even having personal experience with technical support through the ...general positive attitude, and an open-minded personality. These traits will help you deal with any incoming...and there are also differences in customers’ personalities and their expectations. If you are willing to...is essential for success. For possibly this same reason, it can be one of the more constant and safe corners...simple way even if you don’t exactly know why. Personal and professional development in technical support...support gives you the opportunity to develop interpersonal and communication skills. Problem solving and...

...therapeutic applications. piggyBac (PB) transposon: The PB transposon is a mobile genetic element that transposes...heterogeneous iPSC cell lines, which can complicate comparisons made between lines. Incomplete silencing of transgenes...heterogeneity between clones. This can complicate comparisons made between samples, i.e. transgene expression... into cells as a donor plasmid containing the transposon, along with a helper plasmid that expresses the... is that genomic alterations can occur at the transposon insertion site, so sequence-verification is required... pluripotent mouse stem cells by the piggyBac transposon." Nature Methods 6, no. 5 (2009): 363-69. PubMed...Central PMCID: 2677165. 3. Jia, Fangjun, Kitchener D. Wilson, Ning Sun, Deepak M. Gupta, Mei Huang, Zongjin ...

...multiplex (Thellwell, 2000). See Table 1 for a comparison of features of several commonly used chemistries...sixfold variation in expression levels reported (Biassoni, 2014), so you’ll want to ensure that your reference...genes - and it is well worth your time to do one (Biassoni, 2014). At the bench As a highly sensitive technique... See Table 2, (adapted from Wong, 2018) for a comparison of different analysis methods.   Method ...defined log-linear phase   Table 2: A comparison of different qPCR analysis methods. Table adapted... master. References and Resources  References Biassoni R; Raso A. (eds.), Quantitative Real-Time PCR:...doi.org/10.1016/j.bdq.2017.11.001.Bustin SA; Benes V; Garson JA; Hellemans J; Huggett J; Kubista M; Mueller ...

... of a two-part interview with Vini Mani and Amy Gilson from Science in the News (SITN) at Harvard University...half of our conversation with Vini Mani and Amy Gilson from SITN, we discuss some of the many things you.... Many thanks to our guests, Vini Mani and Amy Gilson. Vini Mani is a graduate student at Harvard University...You can follow Vini on twitter @vinidhra.     Amy Gilson recently received her PhD from Harvard University...SITN podcast team. You can follow Amy on twitter @aigilson.   Special thanks to our sound engineer/producer...Science Careers 10 Steps to a Perfect Science Talk 5 Reasons to Use Reddit for Science Communication ...

...arise as a result of existing professional (and personal) relationships. However, most job seekers will...pile, it may never even be reviewed regardless of personal connections to the hiring group.  Read here for... Concern” as you will not likely know the exact person monitoring submissions (usually a Human Resources...mutual connection. If the organization is small, any person at the company might be able to help you. If the...LinkedIn is one great way to find an appropriate liaison, but you can use alumni databases, friends, and...make a difference. Having your resume forwarded personally gives you a much better chance at an interview...

...competence procedures Threats to personal standing – including undermining personal integrity, destructive innuendo... analytic scientists seem to toss data-driven reasoning out the window when making decisions. We think...think scientists make choices based on logic and reason, but often our decisions are based on emotions and... these labs in the first place. This is another reason to do your research and choose wisely. From the...members fight it out PI intervenes if there are interpersonal conflicts PI has no idea who is dating whom ...choose a grad school or postdoc lab. Having a comparison can be very helpful in uncovering strengths and...

...University of Alberta studying with the Szymanski lab. Reasons to study how a phage recognizes its host Bacteriophages...molecules in molecular biology labs (for a review, see Simpson et al., 2015). Visit Addgene's MIcrobiology Pages...following is a description of a technique published by Simpson, Sacher, and Szymanski in January 2016 in Viruses... for physical shearing exist as well, such as sonication and needle shearing. Essentially, any method ...Callum J., Mohammadali Khan Mirzaei, and Anders S. Nilsson. "Adapting drug approval pathways for bacteriophage-based...27536293. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4971087. 3. Simpson, David J., Jessica C. Sacher, and Christine M. ...Chemical Reviews (2016). PubMed PMID: 27319741. 3. Simpson, David J., Jessica C. Sacher, and Christine M. ...

... James M. Wilson New serotype pENN.AAV.hSyn.Cre.WPRE.hGH AAV2 Recombinase James M. Wilson New serotype...James M. Wilson New serotype pENN.AAV.CamKII 0.4.Cre.SV40 AAVrg Recombinase James M. Wilson New serotype...FLEX-rev:: hM4D-2a-GFP AAV1 Chemogenetics Scott Sternson New viral prep pAAV-CaMKIIa-hM3D(Gq)-mCherry...resources!   This blog post was written by Rachel Leeson and Brian O'Neill.  More resources on the Addgene...

...PMC4246457. 4. Davidson CJ., et al. "Improving the limit of detection for Sanger sequencing: a comparison of methodologies...although this has been improved in some studies) (Davidson et al. 2012, Tsiatis et al. 2010). As the field... approaches can provide the researcher with a reasonable level of certainly that the effects they see ... PhD candidate in the laboratory of Prof Steve Jackson at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge...Vouillot, Léna, Aurore Thélie, and Nicolas Pollet. "Comparison of T7E1 and surveyor mismatch cleavage assays...PubMed Central. 5. Tsiatis, Athanasios C., et al. "Comparison of Sanger sequencing, pyrosequencing, and melting...

...be a graduate student, postdoc, professor, etc. Reasons to pursue a visiting role The main motivation to...can’t obtain at your current institute. A common reason is hands-on training in a technique that only a...hard to find, or inaccessible to you for another reason. Visiting would allow you to train and acquire ...data you need on the new instrumentation. Bonus reasons Visiting gives you access to possible new collaborations... willing to host you! If there is someone you personally know or your lab collaborates with that can fulfill...work together to ensure your expectations are reasonable, your reagents are onsite before you need them...

...Non-science favorites  The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson "The Mistborn series is the first 3 books of a...funny, bittersweet, and shocking at times."     - Jason Snair, Product Designer Sarum: The Novel of England...skeptical reader of historical fiction (I can personally attest to this!). Following history from the ...participated in a book club before, but I had a few reasons for launching this one. On a purely selfish level...contentious, discussions. I presented the first book, Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist. The book ended up literally...Prejudice, and some more obscure treasures, like Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver. There have been books that ...

...such a resource when updates depend on a single person. With thousands of scientists routinely using and...Protein Property Visualization allows for visual comparison of FPs and how they relate to one another. .  ...you or your lab use frequently) for the sake of comparison or ease of retrieval.  These collection pages...of your choosing!), and they can be downloaded in JSON or CSV format to quickly retrieve all of the information...store and represent within-study photobleaching comparisons.  We very much appreciate feedback, so try out...plasmids Find plasmids for FRET Check out the Michael Davidson Fluorescent Protein Collection ...

... Connelly JP, Pruett-Miller SM, Blanc V, Davidson NO, Madison BB (2017) A stable but reversible integrated...assaying CRISPR/Cas-stimulated HDR activity) The Madison lab created SRIRACCHA in 2017 to enrich and identify...Wen et al., 2018). SRIRACCHA uses the Piggybac transposon to stably integrate a reporter gene that contains...your cells.  A plasmid that contains Cas9. The Madison lab also created an inducible SRIRACCHA system ... experiment that targeted the gene NFE2L2, the Madison lab found that H2B-GFP expressing cells exhibited...

...If cloning methods had personalities, SLIC (sequence- and ligation-independent cloning) would be a true...also be beneficial. SLIC is most often compared to Gibson assembly, a cloning method also based on homologous... recombination. The higher temperature at which Gibson assembly takes place may limit formation of secondary... of fragments. The major advantage of SLIC over Gibson assembly is cost, as T4 polymerase is much less...less expensive than the enzymes required for Gibson assembly. SLIC is a standardized method for multi-fragment... Addgene Ligation-Independent Cloning Protocol Gibson Assembly Blog Post Choosing a Molecular Cloning...

... think more favorably of scientists they know personally Scientists in your field will know about grants...Job hunting outside of academia is all driven by personal connections What can you do to get the most from...whose company they enjoy on a professional and personal level.  Here are some tips to get out of the rut...free places to order cards. There are a few good reasons to have a card but two of the best are: if you ...with a more general intro until you know if the person you are talking to is really in your direct area...attend. Meet some people online to follow up with in person. Email lab members that have moved on to see if...

... https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.6b00031. Iverson, Sonya V., et al. “CIDAR MoClo: Improved MoClo Assembly...proteins, then the CIDAR Kit is an excellent option (Iverson et al., 2016). CIDAR offers a one-pot reaction ...developers noticed that studies frequently made comparisons between CRISPR components expressed from different...nature of the Fragmid system allows for direct comparisons of CRISPR parts. The Fragmid system was used ...fungi, bacteria, protists, plants, and animals (Chiasson et al., 2019). Many plasmid elements such as promoters...Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100519. Chiasson, David, et al. “A Unified Multi-Kingdom Golden...

...requests without a personal message and they may report you as spam or “I Don’t Know This Person.” If that happens...Contact info" link right below their photo. 2) Personalize all connection requests LinkedIn is a place to... to build relationships. If you don’t add a personal note, you waste an opportunity to start things out...Connect.” If you click this box, it will send an unpersonalized, generic invitation. Don’t try to connect from...have had success with this and as long as you personalize the invitation with your intention for connecting...

...CRISPR-Cas systems.   Four years later, the Sontheimer and Davidson labs discovered three anti-CRISPRs for ...Amrani N, Chen JS, Cofsky JC, Kranzusch PJ, Sontheimer EJ, Davidson AR, Maxwell KL, Doudna JA (2017) A Broad-Spectrum...Hidalgo-Reyes Y, Lee J, Edraki A, Shah M, Sontheimer EJ, Maxwell KL, Davidson AR (2016) Naturally Occurring Off-Switches...

...your next project. Gymnotiformes and Mormyridae (Jason Gallant) Weakly electric fish are excellent systems... 60 °C soils. Dendrobatidae (Lauren O’Connell)  Poison frogs are great for studying parenting strategies...generate cardenolides that tastes yucky (and is poisonous) for bird predators - birds eat a caterpillar ...of a pigmentation gene.   Genus Microtus (Zoe Donaldson) Voles have fascinating social behavior. For example...Claudio Mello) These very cute birds learn their songs like humans learn speech. Finches must learn early...system to rapidly identify recombinants. Arthropods (Jason Rasgon) This lab is developing tools for pan-arthropod...

... make sure to get that person’s contact information and again, make a personal connection! Even if you...does, however, offer you an opportunity to make a personal connection; the importance of which will be elaborated...first for companies at which you’ve already made a personal connection. That way, once you’ve identified an...email with the relevant info and they just might personally hand your credentials to HR, greatly increasing...information and establish a connection with that person before ever asking them for work. Addgene’s very...

...difficult to find solutions to. There are many reasons why client situations might be especially challenging...skills is a must to be successful in this field. Personally, I have greatly benefited from and appreciated...when their teams are facing a crunch, and using lessons from previous cases to better staff future teams...conflicting work styles, team situations, and personalities. Teams striving to achieve a lot of great output...coach and counsel employees on the different personality and work styles (e.g., Myers-Briggs). Staff are...teams, to leverage the preferences of different personality types, and to devise strategies to be prepared...

...BRET= Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer CRET= Chemiluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer    Interesting...now well-known FRET, aka Fluorescence (Förster) Resonance Energy Transfer, technique which allows the detection...have any cross-talk but you also don’t have any resonance transfer. You have to find a balance between FRET...downloads/modules/FRET_teaching_module.pdf Day RN, Davidson MW. Fluorescent proteins for FRET microscopy: ....201100098. Sekar RB, Periasamy A. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) microscopy imaging of live...

...the question of how much data was necessary and reasonable. PLOS has since clarified their data sharing ... in having exclusive access to data and enjoy reasonable time to make sense of it, with their decision...The real cost of making data accessible A more reasonable concern with the data policy was raised by researchers...how results were obtained and this alone is a reasonable motivation for increasing both data accessibility...published data. The importance of data sharing The reason this topic is important to my lab is three-fold... welcomed. However, expectations must also be reasonable, sensitive to the data type and made as facile...