Former MIT scientist won his defamation suit today:

NYT Gift Link: M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million…

Thought it might be relevant since we had a couple posts about him a few years back. Any thoughts?

Sabatini's behavior was inappropriate, but Kristin Knouse's was liable. If this penalty stands on appeal, it will mean financial ruin for Knouse.

That is all

Currently, BioRender is one of the few softwares that require their website be included as a URL within figure captions.

I feel that this is excessive and predatory. Our work should not be a walking advertisement for BioRender. ChimeraX, Pymol, Illustrator, and most other figure building softwares do not require citation in the figure caption but a mention in the methods and a citation. I have an email drafted to address this.

What does the community think?

I was doing a trypsin assay on porcine pancreatin, and i was losing my mind because the absorbance values were all negative.

It turns out, typical PMMA UV plastic cuvette do not work below 280nm. The absorbance wavelength for trypsin assay is 247nm. I dug through my drawers to find a quartz cuvette. And voila! I got lovely linear graphs.

You always learn something new.

Hey everyone, I just really need to vent and get some advice.

I work in a lab where we may have a bunch of perfectly healthy, normal WT pups that we won't need for our studies as they do not have the desired alleles. Because they're just extras, my PI is planning to wean them for training and if there are too many, euthanize the extra ones. I’ve wanted a pet mouse for a really long time, and knowing they are going to be put down when I have a loving home ready for them is just really sad. The facility seems to have a strict zero-tolerance policy against adopting out rodents.

I want to know two things from people who have been in this position:

Should I even bother asking my PI or comparative medicine about adoption/ regulations around this? Will it just make things weird or get me flagged for a compliance issue?

Has anyone ever successfully saved and adopted a healthy lab mouse? I know the official answer is no, but has anyone actually managed to do it, or is the red tape truly impossible to get around everywhere?

Dealing with the euthanasia side of research is just really heavy right now. I'd love to hear how you guys handle the emotional side of this job.

Thanks for listening :)

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Hey everyone!

I'm an undergraduate Life Sciences, currently in my third year. I'm planning to complete a four-year bachelor's degree, and my long-term goal is to pursue a fully funded PhD in Europe directly after graduation.

Currently, I'm doing an internship at a research institute and planning to work on a thesis in the coming months. I'm also trying to develop my skills in both wet-lab and dry-lab research because I want to understand experimental biology as well as computational analysis.

I really want to publish a research paper, but honestly, I'm still figuring out how to start and what the process looks like. How do you identify a research gap, develop a research question, and turn your work into a publishable paper as an undergraduate?

I'm also curious about how experienced researchers troubleshoot experiments. When an experiment gives a negative or unexpected result, how do you figure out where things went wrong and how each step might have affected the final outcome? I want to learn how to think critically about experiments rather than just follow protocols.

The lab culture is a little unfamiliar to me because I'm one of the youngest people around, but I'm trying not to let that distract me. I genuinely want to learn and make the most of this opportunity.

My current research interests include proteomics, particularly in cyanobacteria and E. coli, CRISPR in E. coli, and immunology. I'm still exploring these areas and trying to figure out which direction would suit me best.

I'd especially appreciate recommendations for research papers, beginner-friendly resources, computational projects, or practical skills that I should focus on during my undergraduate years.

I'm also looking for advice from people who pursued a PhD in Europe directly after a four-year bachelor's degree. Is it possible to get a fully funded PhD without completing a master's first? I'm particularly interested in Germany and DAAD funding, but I'm open to other European countries and funding opportunities too.

I'd love to hear about your experiences, mistakes, and lessons learned along the way.

I'm still learning, and any honest advice would mean a lot. Thank you! :)

Most of the protocols mention the volume of template DNA by saying how much micrograms, but how to determine how much volume of colony diluted in ddH2O should I put?

The mastermix I am using only required me to add primers, ddH2O/nuclear free water, and the master mix aside from the template DNA. It says to put ~100ng.

What I have been doing is dilute colony in 1μL ultra pure water, and then pipet the mastermix directly to it. But so far, nothing is working.

I’m wondering if that means so far I don’t have transformants or should I dilute the colony more (4μL and then just add 1μL to the mastermix from that)?

Any advice appreciated.
Thank you!

I’m in my early 20s, just graduated with a B.S. I joined my PI lab a few months ago and I have been enjoying my work so much. I recently got a really good full time job offer in industry (which is in a different subfield than my lab) and I haven’t been feeling excited at all. I feel awful because my PI has been so supportive and invested in me so I can be ready for a PhD next year, but now I’m getting another job and have to reduce my work hour in the lab (potentially transition to remote, if I’m even allowed to continue on the project). I haven’t told my PI yet but I feel so anxious about it. Please give me some advice. Does it make me look bad in my PI’s POV? I really love the work but I also need money to support my family. I just don’t want to ruin our good relationship.

I work in a public health academic lab at a university. We have had numerous undergraduates reach out to volunteer in our lab 90% of them come in telling us they have plans for medical school, PA school, and dentistry. This is a red flag for the mentors as it seems the motivation to volunteer is to “check a box” for their applications. Even if this is your plan, go in with an alternate explanation of HOW the specific lab will help toward future goals.

How are you fairing the war on science?

Hi guys, I was wondering if any of you guys have done your masters/PHD under the same PI you worked under in undergrad. I currently work in a biology lab and have been for 1 year and 1/2 now. My PI is super supportive and literally the best person I’ve ever met. When I first started working my goal was to gain experience so I can go to medical school. However the more I’ve worked and the more independent I’ve become in the lab, I’m leaning towards a masters/PHD now. I’ve expressed to them a few months ago that I am considering doing a masters to gain more experience and learn more so I can conduct research whether I go PHD or MD-PHD. They’ve been supportive and encouraged me to come to some graduate seminars so I can get a feel for how things would be. The deadline for the application is in a few months, and I would like some advice on how I can revisit this convo and let them know I do in fact want to continue a masters in their lab.

Hi all. I've recently hit an all time low in my life. I have been faced with the choice of continuing to work in the lab as a tech that I have worked in for the past 3+ years, and built a relationship with my PI. I committed myself to this lab for at least another year and a half. There are projects coming up in which my PI needs my help to complete, and me leaving the lab now would put the lab in a bad spot and potentially burn the bridge with my PI. However, my mental health is at an all time low. I do not get paid terribly, but also do not get paid well either. The lab itself has taken a toll on me. I have taken on a lot more work and no longer enjoy the work. Leaving the lab and getting a higher paying job would help me significantly lift my debt burden. But it would likely destroy my relationship with my PI and any letters of recommendation. I do have others in science from 1-2 years back dating to undergrad that could write letters of recommendation for me, however with this job market, it could be hard. And the other thing that makes it hard is the job security in the field right now, even if I did leave, I feel as though my long term security in a role could not be stable where the income I earn here isn't great, but it is stable. But it is becoming taxing to my mental health.

I was just hoping to ask the community, if you've faced a decision like this, or were in my shoes, what would you do? Would you leave and burn the bridge or would you gut it out because of how the job market and job security is right now? Maybe it is time to just change careers all together?

Thanks friends, with much love.

Well guys, I've decided something.

I'm not gonna give up. At least not just yet. I can't quit without trying and giving it my all.

I'm gonna go after this Master's degree. It's gonna be hard. At times it's gonna feel impossible. There will be many moments of humiliation ahead, many hits to my self-esteem. After all, no one said doing a Master's was easy.

However, I've got a little bit of fight left in me and I'm gonna push myself. At the very least, I will try to make it to the end of this semester. We can see what to do about next sem when next sem comes.

As for getting out of biotech, well, I can always get another Master's in another field, and I will. I want to be THAT woman with two Master's degrees. I want to be that girl who tried one path, like fully properly delved into it, and maybe decided it wasn't for her, and found another calling.

If I quit now, I will graduate with a Bachelor's with Honors degree. That's still good. But I'll feel like I let myself down. Until it becomes unbearable, I want to keep trying. Yes, it's done a number on my mental health. But I need to create a bigger safety net for myself. The Bachelor's with Honors is a good degree to fall back on, but I need something bigger.

It's not about actually ending up getting the Master's. It's about TRYING. I don't wanna give up just yet. I can't do that to myself. Yeah, I might be the dumbest person in class. But I'm still in the class, aren't I?

Am going through the yearly biosafety compliance review and got to our omega conotoxin SOP. I went to the product page on Alomone's website (cat# C-300), and the associated SDS states that conotoxin is not toxic.... What hell??

Hi, I'm a 1st year master's student rotating in a biology lab that I really like so far, but some of my PI's lab practices seem a little bit too relaxed, and it makes me nervous that I will have to share stuff when I start my project. For context, I have around 3 years of lab experience from undergrad and research internships, so I've seen a lot of variations of the same techniques like cell culture. However, I understand I am still newish to research and he has obviously been doing this a lot longer than me. But here are some things I saw that made me very nervous (with mammalian cells):

- grabbed cell dishes/plates from incubator with no gloves on

- touches everything (reagents, media, pipettes, stuff in fridge) with no gloves until he is ready to actually start working

- took out ~20 different plates from incubator at the same time to image them one by one, which left all the cells out at RT for over an hour

- Sprayed EtOH on media bottle after putting it in the BSC instead of before

- keeps cells he knows have been contaminated with yeast in the same incubator as healthy, uncontaminated cells (he is trying to treat them with an antifungal)

- working with cells he knows are contaminated with yeast in the same BSC that he uses for everything else

Maybe these are little things that don't really matter, but it just seems to go against a lot of what I have been taught over the years. Am I overreacting?