Another common piece of laboratory equipment is the balance. Sensitive balances can weight chemicals in the milligram amounts. Extremely sensitive balances can even detect earthquakes, or so Mettler Toledo reports. According to them, back in August of 2009, a lab in Texas noticed their balance was quickly fluctuating by +/- 1 mg, slowing down and [...]
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Ultraviolet light is commonly used to maintain a sterile environment in the cell culture hood. The shorter wavelength light breaks down harmful microorganisms that may linger on pipettes, dishes, and other labware used for work with cells. The danger lies in human exposure to the ultraviolet rays. Fume hoods warn us humans to avoid exposure [...]
Here is the most beautiful line written in an academic journal: “Light from the sun sustains life on earth” (Yang, Genes & Development, 2010). It is in reference to circadian rhythms, or the physiological oscillations cued by light not only regulating our sleep/wake cycles, but also maintaining blood pressure, body temperature, and metabolism. The delicate [...]
Epigenetics is a generalized term used to describe DNA modifications regulating gene expression. The individual bases of your genetic code remain unchanged, but chemical changes to the DNA or DNA packaging structures result in genes being turned on or off. These effects can also be inherited for generations to come.
1) If you want to sound [...]
Do you ever have those days where no matter how hard you try, experiments just don’t work? You can’t help but make mistakes only expected from summer interns? You can’t even seem to assemble in silico DNA sequences without inadvertently typing an extra “T” or “A” or “G” or “C”, making your translation sequence look [...]
Listening to the most recent episode of Futures in Biotech has me thinking more about bioelectronics. The body is the most efficient machine we have. Cells can produce massive amounts of information and perform many functions with a small amount of energy. How can we harvest this efficiency for man-made machines? The guest from episode [...]
From time to time, when the ideas have piled up so high that our brains might burst, we’ll be posting written blogs on the “Home” page. Be sure to check back from time to time and see what words of wit and wisdom we have to share. Also, feel free to share your own wit [...]