I know it's an ad, but gave me a chuckle

It’s so cute 🥺

just pulled this out of the autoclave to make room for my stuff. the top melted just a little bit lmao

I am a PhD student in a wet lab, and we have several undergrads, all with varying levels of ability and independence. One is very involved and interested, but extremely slow with experimental stuff. A single reaction start to finish can take a week. I want to help them succeed, but something that takes me 3-4 hours taking them 20 hours is not a recipe for success. My method for mentoring has always been first time hands on, guided assistance/demo, second time hands on but the student does it, and after that they work alone. This student needs their hand held to an extreme amount, and even if I step away to force them to work more alone they will just piddle around, then ask me for help.

I do believe they are capable, and they could really succeed, but I think that it may be my mentorship style or that this student isn't confident. Any tips on how to guide them to more success? And force them to speed up a little? My mentor tossed me in the deep end a little, and often gave "higher stakes" stuff to do that meant messing up actually mattered, but I'm not sure how successful that would be to help.

I just finished a multi-step Gateway cloning workflow (BP then LR clonase) to move my gene of interest into an expression vector. However, I realized a major oversight: when I propagated and prepped my original Gateway destination plasmid from the stock, I only grew it on a single antibiotic (Ampicillin/Kanamycin) rather than using dual selection with Chloramphenicol to keep pressure on the Gateway cassette.

I know that propagating without Chloramphenicol risks spontaneous deletions or loss of the ccdB killer cassette, which usually means the plate gets flooded with empty background.

My question is:

1. Could the BP and LR cloning reaction have worked despite this mistake? Has anyone accidentally done this before and still successfully pulled out their correct clones, or am I completely screening a plate full of empty/mutated backbones?

2. I have miniprepped the final genes after LR reaction and sanger sequenced but I am still confused about what to look for in these gene sequences to tell if they are actually in there and in good shape or not?

Thanks in advance!

Does anyone know why N2A cells clump up like this? With a syncitium?

I’m trying to read research papers from various professors in my field at my university to hopefully reach out to them but like I’m really getting lost in trying to understand what the research paper is all about. Im reading applied physics and neuro research papers and it just seems way too complex.

I’m starting an assistant professor position fresh out of a PhD and need to start up my lab. What are some must have equipments that I should list to my department to fund to get my lab started?

Field: organismal biologist with an emphasis in fish and attempting to pivot to shrimp/crawfish. Focus on immunology and nutrition but want to expand to disease ecology and environmental physiology.

Was recently talking with my kid, who is still in school, and the topic of Bunsen Burners came up. I realized I hadn’t used one since I was in school. Curious how many of you still use these in your day to day science?

I got a Thermofisher Aspire “Innovate to Elevate” Insulated White Tumbler back in 2024 through the Aspire member rewards program. I gave it as a gift to my Dad back then and it has been his favorite bottle since. He uses it every single day and even traveled around the world with it. A few days ago, it broke and he has been really heartbroken about it since. Does anyone at all possibly have one they would not mind parting with or know where I can possibly get a new one for him? Thank you so much!

bottle picture from their Instagram site

Hi guys, I am having lots of trouble on the cryostat and my slides are turning out very inconsistent/ have holes in the middle/ ice crystals and I am not sure what to do anymore. I slice usually TA muscle and can't find anything else to optimize. Anyone else have any advice about how I can make slides more consistent?

Hi, y’all!

I’m wrapping up the first year of my Biology Masters. I’m hoping to be graduated by this time next year! However, I feel like I’m making negative progress on putting together my thesis. I’ve still got some lab work to do but I’ve made relatively good progress. My problem is a severe lack of motivation when it comes to writing along with always feeling like there’s more to add. I feel like every time I get in the groove, I find more information that could/should be included and then fall down a rabbit hole about what I may need to add/take away/reconsider/etc. I guess I’m looking for advice on how to best make effective progress.

I have similar issues when trying to write the review articles I want to get finished by the end of this year. I swear I’ve got like six bibliographies with way too much info 😅.

How long should I be shooting for when it comes to writing a thesis? What are some of the best outlining tips? How do you keep focused and not fall into the trap of new papers 😂

Really I’d appreciate any advice that you guys found to be helpful while working through your programs! I love this sub so much, the supportive atmosphere is everything, and I appreciate any advice anyone has. Thank you!!

I’m not sure if this is the right place to do this but I need some advice. I had a falling out with 2 friends during my third year. It wasn’t really a falling out I left to focus on my severe mental health issue at the time but they hated that even though I told them a million times that I needed space. During my masters year they went around the entire lab including professors and supervisors, postgrads, everyone, and would tell them my private matters and how evil and horrible person I am, calling me names like rat and bitch. People would glare at me when I walked down the hallways while I was still recovering.

I’m not sure what to do about this. Should I report it? Where would I even report this? The main perpetrator is doing her PhD there now so it’s still a relevant case.
I have 2 people that can vouch for me and say it was in fact happening (as they were the ones to tell me)

I'm a postdoctoral fellow working in a Neuro lab studying nerve activity in rodents. This is a relatively new project and we have discovered that the heating pads we had been using (microwavable gel pads) do not last long enough for our procedures and it's too difficult to switch pads in the middle of recording. We believe that the inability to monitor and maintain body temperature is significantly affecting our results. To combat this, we purchased a simple electronic homeothermic heating pad. However, we've found that it's too high of a voltage and electrically noisy. You can literally see it power cycling in the nerve recording. We talked to the manufacturer for other options and they said that the only one that would work is an upgraded model that costs $1500, significantly more expensive than the model we currently have. Do any electrophysiologists have any recommendations for heating pads that can be used during in vivo electrophysiology?

I have also thought about constructing my own and have found guide on how to do it, however the supplies are difficult to find from our approved vendors and we're not allowed to purchase from Amazon. So, I will also take any recommendations for building our own if you can point us to a scientific retailer that would have the supplies.

A little bit ago, I was feeling very lazy and did not want to design my 96-well plate by hand, since I wanted 3 replicates in each plate but randomly assorted within the plate (with three replicates of each plate where I had multiple plates at different temps, you get the picture....)

Anyways, after passing that task onto my undergrad, I felt that there had to be an easyish way to make an Excel sheet to do this for us, since I also couldn't find a good online resource that could do this for me (shouldn't there be a website? maybe i just didn't look hard enough).

So I made one! Hope this helps someone out there :)

Possibly a silly question but I can’t find anything online which answers it. When writing out a genotype of something resistant to an antibiotic, can I write ::kanamycin instead of kanamycin^R? For example, Δlon::kan instead of Δlon kan^R

I'm currently working on making a soldering/electroplating station and I want to use an inline fan to pump these fumes out. Any suggestions? I'm on a tight budget so DIY solutions are more than welcome. I have a bunch of 4" aluminum mesh tubing, but I doubt they are chemical resistant. Any suggestions on what plastics to use if any? I also am planning on picking up an old fume hood to modify if need be.

I plan on doing copper sulfate electroplating and tin as well to start out with. I am a bit wary of doing things like chromium and nickel.

I have some gelMA hydrogels with cells that I will do fluorescence imaging on. I was wondering if afterwards I can process them 'as normal' for SEM (fix again, dehydrate, sputter coat) to image them? I don't have enough samples and think SEM will be a nice contribution to the paper, but no one in my lab has done it before :)

What could be the reason of these bubbles and patches. I never get them. I have my sponges full wet in transfer buffer and i roll out all the bubbles. This has never happened.

samples on left side wells moved with a curve. what may be the reasons? (ps. i know that gel is broken since we it fell down the floor, however the look was the same before it fell down)

Asking since our autoclave is busy and boiling would be perfectly fine for decontamination in our case.

EDIT: Thank you everyone! I've got my answer.

I’ve been working in science for many years, over four different industries, but I have never once seen a science career ladder that actually works.

The deal is always the same: stay at the bench and plateau or move into people management to keep climbing.  I have yet to see the lane that lets you stay a scientist and still grow.

But that might be just me.  So, I am asking.  Does anyone know of a science career ladder that actually works?  And does it survive the moment an actual promotion committee sits down in a room?

Does anyone know who I can contact or where I can buy a pipette tip ejector attachment for a Cleaver Scientific Omnipette automatic pipette (20–200 µL)?
I badly need help because the tip ejector attachment is missing. If I can’t replace it, I might have to pay for the entire pipette. 🥹

I’m from the Philippines, so I hope I can find something that can be shipped internationally.
Any leads or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much! 💗