...intuitive, or logical to a biologist that are not at all obvious, intuitive, or logical to a layperson...from other sources. Mode of communication Different modes of communication take up different amounts of...your audience needs to understand what you’re communicating. While I’m sure that there are loads of ways...new languages!) Jargon has a place in science communication, but the more you use, the higher cognitive ...This can be obvious, in that a lot of science communication is helping people understand new concepts. You...layperson. When you’re communicating ideas that you think are clearly connected, step back and ask yourself, ...pick and choose what concepts and details to communicate. It’s okay (and encouraged) to leave blank spaces...

...ability to specifically recognize and bind proteins. They’re used in a number of research and clinical applications... antibody’s ‘Y’. They are often used in clinical applications. Fab fragments can be created in lab in ...Shahied, 2004). They are often used for clinical applications, including imaging.  Diabodies are ~60 kDa...deeper penetration into a tissue, useful for applications like IHC, or be able to access an epitope folded...that would size-exclude an antibody. In imaging applications, smaller affinity reagents means higher resolution...Designed ankyrin repeat proteins, or DARPins, are genetically engineered small affinity proteins, around 14...proteins known as ankyrin repeat proteins. DARPins typically consist of 3-4 repeats, have high specificity ...

...Much of today's biological research requires a close examination of specific proteins within a system...system. This can be pretty complicated given that a single cell has tens of thousands of proteins functioning...single protein? Oftentimes, they rely on protein purification. In this strategy a single protein can be isolated...this blog will focus on one of the most common, purification based on the polyhistidine tag. What is the ...purity (Janknecht 1991, Hochuli 1988). In this purification approach, the metal ions are immobilized on ... incorporation of a cleavage site and a post-purification cleavage step to remove the tag in order to ...2000).  One downside of polyhistidine tag-based purification, however, is the propensity for nonspecific ...

...conjugates (especially if you start to consider clinical applications). But there are a few other classes that... mechanisms. Most take advantage of chemical groups intrinsically present on antibodies, such as the primary...post-translationally. 4) Modifications made to antibodies, such as inclusion of non-canonical amino acids or peptide...Chemiluminescence, which is light produced by a chemical reaction, can be detected using specialized imaging...reactions produce a color change, so they are typically used in microscopy-based assays like immunohistochemistry...These properties allow for efficient signal amplification, making biotin conjugated antibodies good options...sensitive detection of low abundance targets with significant multiplexing potential. You will find antibody-oligonucleotide...

...resistance cassette, and the R6K origin of replication to allow replication only in hosts carrying the bacteriophage...Belarusian State University Series of Physiological, Biochemical and Molecular Biology Sciences. 9.1 (...Lambda Red recombineering, which uses enzymes domesticated from the Lambda bacteriophage, is arguably the...enzymes can also accomplish the desired genomic modification. This technique is frequently called allelic...recipient of interest. Because pDS132 cannot be replicated in the recipient, the only antibiotic resistant...They hypothesized that genes that had evolved specifically for toxicity would allow stronger counter-selection...exchange. To do this, we performed the following modifications to pDS132 (Philippe et al., 2004): Replaced...

... brainstorming new technological innovations. Let’s take a look at three historical techniques: southern...computers, cell phones, and cars become more technologically advanced leaving earlier versions obsolete,...that save both time and money. Yet, knowledge of historical techniques comes in handy whether you are perusing...comparison to a control sample. Southern blotting applications range from confirming the results of cloning...cloning or knockout experiments to forensics and clinical diagnostics. One example of southern blotting being...interest by recording DNA abundance throughout the amplification process, rather than just at the end as in standard...fragments of a DNA sequence of interest to create a physical map of the DNA. Starting in the 1970s, restriction...

...UCIBIO) focused on understanding the physiological and pathological roles of human cell glycans. Accordingly... biosynthetic pathway and have a wide range of clinical manifestations. PMM2-CDG is the most frequent ...reported that PMM2-CDG patients suffer from immunological defects. These are characterized by a predisposition...these lines to study how immune processes and biological pathways are altered in PMM2-CDG. These studies...reducing their risks for infection and other pathological conditions. References: Monticelli, M., Ferro... J., dos Reis Ferreira, V. & Videira, P. A. Immunological aspects of congenital disorders of glycosylation...Biology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado, USA. The primary focus...

...of the FRET pair. Since many biological processes occur within the typical FRET range, FRET efficiency ...nanometers of each other, or measure the tension in the helical structure of spider silk, or the activity of a ...Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer. Unlike the typical excitation and emission of an excited fluorophore...donor fluorophore to the acceptor fluorophore. The typical steps in FRET are: 1. Donor fluorophore excitation...decision easier. 1. Müller, Sara M., et al. "Quantification of Förster resonance energy transfer by monitoring...Experiments using intermolecular FRET probes are typically used for studying protein-protein interactions...with an intermolecular probe is often either impractical (for biomolecules that are not proteins) or would...

...supporters of science communication. To help you think about ways to effectively communicate your science, we...Scientist Jessica Welch Have Had to Explain Importance of Narrative in Science Communication Conversation...Conversation in Science Communication The Purpose of Science Communication #1 Mistake Scientists Make when Communicating...News at Harvard University. Effective science communication is required to promote public support for research... organization that works to promote science communication. Science in the News hosts a podcast, seminars...That’s right, #ActualLivingScientists, eager to communicate their science. In this first half of our two-...programs SITN runs and learn how they think about communicating science. Listen to the interview with Science...

...region you wish to stimulate 2) Fabrication and implantation of the optical fiber into the region of interest...run it? And, most importantly, what are the methodological and experimental limitations and considerations...numerous scientists at NIDA and some of the practicalities and considerations you may not find in the ...there of, depending on the opsin you use); the efficacy of optogenetics has already been proven. Therefore...region and cell type of interest is obviously of critical importance to any optogenetic experiment. There...pioneered the development of optogenetics, has genetically manipulated a number of the opsin genes to alter...optogenetics. Successful stereotaxic surgery relies on identification of the bregma and lambda sutures and subsequent...

...various time points. Measuring the optical density of the culture can indicate the number of cells present in...in-house protocol. DNA yields for this procedure are typically in excess of 100 ng/ul, more than enough DNA to...are, you’ll even have DNA left over for other applications, like PCR, cloning, transfection, or long-term...wash step or use a different strain. For most applications, Addgene uses and recommends DH5𝝰! This strain...cloning Bacterial strains adapted for protein purification use the cell’s resources to produce high levels...retransforming the plasmid into a strain meant for DNA purification. It sounds like extra work, but it will likely...your E. coli to ensure it is suitable for your application. We have previously reviewed many common lab ...

...light and chemicals respectively. Didem Goz Aytruk from Connie Cepko’s Lab at Harvard Medical School describes...although fluorescent proteins are incredibly useful, chemical fluorophores can still be used in a wide variety...variety of experiments. Read more to find chemical fluorophores for your next experiment. Nucleic acid based...systems that report the order in which specific chemical inputs are received by a cell. These so-called...report upon and/or engineer “temporally ordered biochemical events” such as those that occur during development...containing only the sequences required for viral replication and transcription as well as reporter genes. ...Membrane-Rupturing Microscopic Tools In this post, Jessica Polka, formerly a postdoctoral researcher in the...

...take to achieve a clean NTC: Have a dedicated bench with a dedicated set of pipettes for ddPCR set-up. ...absolute quantification of viable lactic acid bacteria in faecal samples." Journal of microbiological methods... we have used quantitative PCR to evaluate the physical titer of our preps. We often repeat this assay...factor of 2. This means that if you set up two identical assays with the same sample, you could end up ...would be valid. This is why the AAV reference is critical. It allows you to determine if your titers are.... Each droplet contains the ingredients for amplification of the target DNA. This partitioning reduces...detection of the product. As an added benefit, replicates are built into the technology. One well (containing...

...many CRISPR applications, and they’ve also had success in clinical gene therapy applications. Read on to... but this research is still in the pre-clinical/early clinical stages. Researchers are also working to...to learn more about the current (and future) applications of lentiviral vectors! Lentiviral vector history...original system, the possibility of creating a replication-competent virus via recombination between the...of recombination events necessary to create a replication-competent virus. Second, Tat is eliminated through...barcoding libraries have been used for complex applications like lineage tracing in heterogeneous tumors...2015: lentiCRISPR v2, used both for targeted modification and genome-wide screening.   Lentiviral vectors...

...terms of biosafety? A8: According to the American Biological Safety Association, "the two major risks ...lentiviral plasmids created for a variety of applications including cDNA expression, shRNA-mediated knockdown... looking for some additional information or clarification on these vectors. Read on to find the answers...scientists often refer to as “retroviruses” are technically gamma-retroviruses - another, separate member...differences may seem subtle they result in a key physiological difference between lenti- and retroviruses. ...transfer vectors for transient transfections? A2: Technically, yes. Will it actually work? That depends. The...when using a plasmid backbone that was designed specifically for transient expression (find some useful backbones...

...this approach has been adapted for the identification of physical materials that we use in our labs, including...RRIDs and the Resource Identification Initiative Compact identifiers for biomedical data How Addgene works...about which reagents were used? Unambiguous identification of a reagent is crucial for reproducibility...to identify and reference documents, files, or physical reagents. What are persistent identifiers? Perhaps...persistent and exist online indefinitely. PIDs historically referred to objects that exist online, but this...item. Given a specific Addgene ID # listed in a publication, you can quickly pull up the associated plasmid...plasmid page also helps researchers find other publications that have used the same plasmid through the ...

... a bacterial origin of replication (ORI) will not allow for plasmid replication in mammalian cells, for...Therefore, it is not always mission critical to make sure the plasmid replicates in the cell, as many of these... their bacterial counterparts, including how replication occurs and whether selection is necessary for... way. Selection methods, described below, are typically employed when creating stable cell lines and are...the nuclear genome, in the absence of plasmid replication, the foreign DNA will be degraded or diluted ...expressed in trans within the cell for effective replication. Cell lines expressing the Epstein–Barr virus...antigen (293E or 293T cells), allow for episomal amplification of plasmids containing the viral EBV or SV40...

...the amount of a given factor within a biological system. Basically, biosensors provide quantifiable readouts...biosensor?! You can do more than just ‘sense’ biological compounds and reactions; you can quantify them...of the biosensors used in research are very sophisticated, but at their core they can all be boiled down...pretty simply – they are systems that measure biological phenomena by generating an output which is directly...readouts for levels of different chemicals, hormones, proteins, etc., that you are interested in. The most...we will refer to as the analyte, needs to be specifically recognized by another factor, the receptor. ...fluorescence, pH, etc.). The transducer will generate a numerical value which represents the amount of analyte present...

...approach that has been the historical standard. Specifically, in our recent publications, we used the cancer ...result, how most of these “variants of unknown significance” (sometimes called “VUS”) function is unknown... if the majority of information on each cancer clinical sequencing report includes rare variants that ... variants across a large number of genes as systematically as possible. In developing these assays, we...tumorigenesis assays, drug epistasis assays, and morphological profiling can be used as generalizable strategies... are described in this paper Systematic morphological profiling of human gene and allele function ...pathway reference collection is described in this publication We also wrote an extensive review on the exciting...

...intended application - Remember, just because your antibody performs as expected in one application does ...why validation is so important. Antibodies are a critical component of the researcher toolkit due to their...major culprits in the reproducibility crisis of biomedical research (Baker, 2015; Bradbury & Plükthorn, ...strategies for antibody validation in different applications. Here, I want to highlight the general suggestions...intentionally generalizable and not specific to certain applications or antibody targets. That said, not every strategy...will be suitable for every antibody or every application. The goal is to show that your antibody has been...strategy to use will depend on your intended application and available resources.     Figure 1...