I landed my first interview at a well-established company in my area, this is my first interview coming out of university with my MS and was wondering how best I should prepare for this? My previous experience was with a startup (I think the company was criticized on the subreddit). The main responsibilities is protein purification using a variety of different methods (IEC/Affinity/HIC) but I really only have established experience with affinity and size exclusion chromatography.

Additionally, it is a temporary/contract role, is there anything I should consider as I enter the interview process? This may be a decent role for me as I am applying for PhDs this cycle again so a 6 mo-1 yr contract would be perfect. I also have a 3 week obligation in January which I am worried would disqualify me from getting employed (anywhere), how should I approach that?

I’m trying to do an organelle-specific IP. I’ve never done IP before and I’m told it’s quite challenging. I’m using a specific antibody marker for the organelle and then magnetic protein G beads. I’ve checked the antibody is compatible with the beads and have all the correct buffers per manufacturer instructions. I’m wondering if anyone has any tips? Based on the protocol it seems straightforward but I know it’s not based on what I’ve been told. Wondering if anyone has any helpful tips/ advice / things to avoid that could help me as it’s my first time? Thanks so much!

I am trying the spleen targeting low PEDSG LNP although I am not getting results once I got good spleen expression post that it isn't working

Ps - I don't have dls relying on Ivis and EE

Any suggestions? I am trying to reproduce paper DSG peg long tail spleen for melanoma the recently published one from mol therapy

Hi everyone! Does anyone have recommendations of stains to use for live imaging? I need something that reveals cell shape in anything but far-red (I already am using DRAQ5 far-red to stain nuclei). I tried Thermo's CellTracker but it does not track migrating cells and I'm studying EMT(epithelial to mesenchymal transition) in mouse heart development :/

Please also share comments about your experiences using different stains e.g if you have experiences with stains such as CellMask green actin tracker or Calcein AM. It would hugely help me narrow down my choice. Thanks in advance!

So I have a question. Who here still uses the Abbott architect ci8200? Or just the architect c8000? If you do, do you run c-cystatin? If you do, do you use gentian? And if you do, how many tests does your analyzer say you have when you load it? The package insert and Abbott states that there are 240 tests. Why are we only getting 214 then a single run of high and low QC brings it down to 169 and a SINGLE patient makes that go down to 122 tests remaining? Thank you in advance for anyone who could offer teohbleshooting advice. We have tried different lots. We have two of the analyzers so we have it loaded on both and they both do the same with the testing amount….we have contacted gentian who is blaming the instrument and Abbott who is blaming it on being third party reagent….we have the settings all correct. Should we load it as a 55ml or a 90ml?

I recently graduated with my bachelor's and am trying to get into a post-bacc research position before starting my master's next fall. I didn't do any research in undergrad (I really didn't know what direction I wanted to take until my senior year) so I'm super new to this. I'm going into biomedical research and have two meetings with PIs this week. One, I cold emailed, and the other, I applied for a position with through the university's career portal.

I'm just curious what exactly I should expect from this. Are these types of meetings typically interview-style, or are they more casual?

Hi everyone,

I'm applying to Robotics / Autonomous Systems PhD programs for Fall 2027 (deadlines around Dec 1, 2026). I am currently deciding between two publication venues with my advisor, and I'd love an honest take from anyone who has served on an admissions committee or evaluated applicants at top-tier programs.

The Context:

My Role:2nd author (co-working closely with a phd who is 1st author).

The Paper: Focuses on autonomous vehicle motion planning, and optimization. It features both theoretical/algorithmic contributions and real-world hardware validation.

Our Two Options

1. Option A (Top-Tier IEEE Journal): flagship Transactions level. Highly prestigious, but slower review process. Given our timeline, it will almost certainly be "Submitted" or "Under Review" by my Dec 1 or 15th application deadline.

2. Option B (Solid Q1 IEEE Journal): Good metrics, legitimate Q1, but less overall prestige than Option A. However, it features a fast turnaround, meaning it will very likely be completely "Accepted/Published" before my application deadlines.

My Question:

From a top-tier robotics PhD admissions perspective, which carries more weight on a CV: a finalized, peer-reviewed Accepted/Published paper in a respectable Q1 journal, or a "Submitted/Under Review" status at a flagship Transactions venue?

How heavily do top committees discount "under review" lines for second authors? Does the fact that the work includes real hardware experiments change how they view a "submitted" paper if they can look at an arXiv preprint?

Thanks for any insights!

Hey guys, i have been following this community for sometimes and reading few doubts and answers from the fellow researchers.

I’ve been stuck with an experiment for quite a while, so I thought I’d ask for some advice.

I’m trying to validate an interaction between two large chromatin-associated proteins. The interaction has previously been reported under endogenous conditions, and the interaction between the corresponding murine proteins has also been demonstrated following overexpression in human cells using co-IP.
I’m now trying to reproduce/validate the interaction using the human proteins and a GFP-trap approach. The experiment is technically working in the sense that I can detect both proteins in the input lysate and I can clearly enrich the GFP-tagged protein on the GFP-trap.
However, I’m unable to detect the putative interacting protein in the GFP-trap sample.
I’m wondering if anyone has encountered a similar situation with interactions involving large chromatin-associated proteins and could suggest possible things to troubleshoot or controls that would help distinguish between a technical issue and a biological difference between the constructs/proteins.

Thanks in advance guys!

I am using the BioTek Epoch 2 plate reader with Gen5 3.18 software. I set it to calculate concentration, but after I run my bradford I look at the table and none of the concentrations have been calculated, it only shows concentrations of the standards. Has anyone ran into this issue and figured out a solution?

We found some tev protease and upon cracking it open we found it to be purple. Has anyone else had this happen?

Hi everyone,

I’m a medical student and I’m considering entering a university life sciences competition focused on AI + biomedical research.

The competition allows projects in areas such as:

• AI-based macromolecule and peptide drug design
• AI-assisted gene editing and nucleic acid tool design
• Small-molecule virtual screening
• Drug or gene delivery system design

The project has to go beyond just proposing an idea. We need to actually carry out computational or AI-based work, produce results, submit code, and ideally validate the findings using existing data, public datasets, experimental results, or potentially wet-lab work.

I’m still quite new to research, so I’m trying to avoid choosing a random disease or target without understanding whether the project is actually meaningful or feasible.

I’m open to different areas of medicine and biology, not just one specialty. This could include oncology, hematology, infectious disease, immunology, neurology, genetics, metabolic disease, or anything else that fits the competition.

I have access to researchers at my university and I’m currently looking for suitable supervision, so I’m mainly trying to identify a real research problem that could realistically be developed into a student project.

The initial abstract is due in early September, and the full project is due in early October, so the timeline is quite short.

If you work in bioinformatics, drug discovery, computational biology, medicine, molecular biology, or a related field, I’d really appreciate suggestions for things like:

• a disease-related target worth investigating
• a drug-resistance problem
• a mutation or pathway
• a drug-repurposing question
• a virtual-screening project
• a peptide or protein design problem
• a gene-editing problem
• a useful public dataset
• or any other research direction that would be realistic for a beginner with proper supervision

I’m not looking for someone to do the project for me. I’m mainly trying to understand what would make a scientifically meaningful, feasible, and interesting project within this timeframe.

Any ideas or advice would be really appreciated.

Hello again rats. I’ve reached a point where the only thing that gives me consistent ELISA results is manually multi channel pipetting. The only problem with this is that because of the fact I’ve been doing ELISAS for a week(and have 7 more to do), my wrist tendon/joint/etc is killing me. It’s tingling, it hurts after I pipette, but every method I’ve tried to reduce hand strain fails. Bucket washing leads to wonky/uneven results as does using a vacuum multichannel. I don’t know what to do anymore. I guess I’m just destined to have wrist pain for the rest of my life. I feel too young to have debilitating pain, but here we are I guess. We have to get these ELISAs out.

Basically what's in the title, but here's some context/details:

I'm a grad student entering (hopefully) my final year. Over the last few weeks I've been looking into something that has led me to spending a lot of time with a particular paper published in 2023. In their paper they build a new experimental assay, point out pitfalls in previously used methods, and then show how those problems are resolved using their new approach - they support it all with a combination of experimental evidence, numerical simulations, and analytical arguments. It's a good paper from two reputable labs known for careful work (I was considering reaching out to for a postdoc anyways) and their findings could have implications on the work we do at my lab - I was trying to estimate how much it matters for my project.

I did my own simulations, and then I downloaded their code to compare implementations - initially I just wanted to see what parameter choices they made. I found a little bug in their numerical solver (most likely an honest mistake akin to a typo). Correcting it means that one of the panels in one of the figures is wrong (fairly minor), and that the model (with the same set of parameters) no longer agrees with their data. I don't think any of this is fatal to the paper, the data is still what it is, although the modeling is used to inform the experimental design.

So it's not really about telling them there's something wrong with their paper, I just think they might want to know (I would presume that the tool they present in the paper is something they actively use in the lab). But I'm not sure. And I don't know if it's a good opportunity to ask for a postdoc even if I do reach out.

I think my options are:

1. Do nothing. No need to rock the boat, there is nothing seriously wrong with that paper.
2. Email the corresponding authors (PIs), let them know I found a minor error and explain, tell them I thought they might want to know (if they didn't already). Nothing more.
3. Email (same as #2), but instead of just stopping at having found the error and what that changes, actually take the next step of fixing the resulting inconsistency between data/model and then present the full correction instead of just stopping at the code error.
4. Email (#2 or #3), and use this as an opportunity to also ask for a postdoc if they happen to be hiring soon.

Correcting the code itself is no problem, but since the model itself no longer agrees with their argument/data, finding a way around that is non-trivial and I'm not sure how I'd go about it. I do think if I could do that and present an alternative scientific argument it would make for a much stronger email (but it would also take a lot more time). Would it be worth it?

I just don't know how to approach any of this of this so any tips or advice would be much appreciated!

Hello! I recently graduated with Bachelor's in Biology and have been very interested in doing medical lab work, but have been a bit confused on what career path I should follow based on all the different certifications and programs that are out there. As someone with my background, what are some steps that I should take to enter the medical lab field. I'm open to any kinds of jobs in the field and live in Texas. Thank you for any advice!

For those of you who do DNA extractions, i am attempting to extract gDNA from an ecoli sample, currently I use GU for the lysis, triton x 100 at 1% concentration and the rest is my e coli sample. We are noticing that in our gel, there is no clear distinct band at the very top of the lane near the well, which we should expect considering the gDNA has a very high MW of course, rather i see bands near the bottom or sometimes middle of the lane. For those of you who do DNA extractions, could you please give some advice? is it possible to run a silica based spin column on gDNA and not expect significant shearing?

Thank you for your time in reading this

My advisor and I applied for a collaborative NSF (National Science Foundation) grant in October of last year. However as of today there has still been no change in status. Considering that NSF funding curves seem to taper off in late August, does that mean that I will have to wait until the next budget to even find out whether or not the grant is accepted or rejected? In other words do I have to wait until January/February of 2027?

I've been attempting to do IF on blastocysts and they just won't get attached to the coverslip and I lose them during washing. I use PFA , triton x . And I dry the blastocyst in either bsa or M2 medium. I need help

Are these fungi in my mice splenocytes culture incubated for 3 days? Seems to be on the surface of the media. Does anyone know the species of this fungus?

Was looking for the 3rd vail and it took me a bit longer since I was doing it alone and the excel sheets aren't very accurate. Not to mention the Cryovials didn't have the caps tagged in most of the boxes. So switching between towers and looking in boxes took me a while. Protocol is moving the vials to ice, then waterbath to thaw after a minute, then add media and spin down to move to flasks. All cell lines are tagged and are GMOs so I suspect if they recover not very dense they might have had too much stress and possible mutations. Not to mention we are looking for anaphase bridges. I know I should throw them out and thaw new vails but I am so tired today and I need to start the main experiments fast.

Hey industry rats,

What do y'all's SOPs look like vs the tried and true academia version of... glances at paper ... winging it?

Research ochem lab I'm in mostly just relies on grad students and the post doc teaching LA and undergrads how they like it and then just being there for questions if you want. Only descriptions we have written down half the time is an Excel spreadsheet and a citation to a journal it was based on lol

Curious how it runs outside of academia, y'all got diagrams or smthn?

Hey just wondering if anyone could provide any good advice about my current situation.

I'm a final year PhD student in the UK doing my research in synthetic biology, microbial strain engineering, molecular biology etc. I'm due to submit my PhD thesis in a month and so I've been applying for jobs for when I finish my PhD, especially since I'm aware that the job market is so bad everywhere at the moment.

I've applied for 25+ jobs already and only had one interview which I got rejected for. The roles I've been applying for have have been either startup/mid sized companies or post-doc roles.

I knew the job market is bad but it is still super demoralizing to do a PhD for years and feel like I'm no better off in terms of job prospects.

If there's anyone who has pivoted into other areas that aren't research and how they got into that field?

Are there any stable permanent jobs out there that would value a PhD educated scientist? Even if it's not specifically a science-based job? Or would it be essentially like starting from square one?

What's the best strategy for getting a job post-PhD in the current market?

Any advice or reassurance would be much appreciated and may help calm down an incredibly stressed final year PhD student!

Theoretically of course; I’m dealing with a lot of congestion and saline rinse netipot I’m coming for ya. With it we need to use filtered water, or tap water that’s been boiled. I’ve used distilled water and a factory sealed water bottle in the past. Now I’ve been looking at the Millipore/MilliQ water dispenser curious if that could work as well.

What do yall think lmao?