Mentors at Your Benchside

#45 — Taq polymerase is a fantastic all-rounder for standard PCRs, but what do you do if you need something a bit more specialist? In this episode of Mentors At Your Benchside, we share the varying world of DNA polymerases. Whether you are looking for a powerful proofreader or need help amplifying long or GC-rich sequences, we know a polymerase that can help.

Visit the original article on DNA polymerases to get links to the enzymes listed in the episode. [1] Want more information on proofreading polymerases? Read our Short Primer On Proofreading Polymerases. [2]

Don’t need anything fancy in a Polymerase? Save money and learn how to make your own Taq or Pfu polymerases. [3] And for a glace into the polymerase past, read the original article about the isolation of Taq polymerase. [4]

Resources:
1. Get To Know Your DNA Polymerases. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/24551/get-to-know-your-dna-polymerases/
2. Mind Your P’s And Q’s: A Short Primer On Proofreading Polymerases. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/8080/mind-your-ps-and-qs-a-short-primer-on-proofreading-polymerases/
3. Free PCR for 5 Years (or How to Make your Own Taq and Pfu Polymerase). Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/10423/free-pcr-for-5-years/
4. Deoxyribonucleic acid polymerase from the extreme thermophile Thermus aquaticus. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8432/

#44 — So you might be wondering why you bothered with all those years of failed experiments, committees, overbearing supervisors, thesis writing, and thesis defending. Well, no matter where life takes you, you can now call yourself "Dr" whenever you want. And that can be more useful than you might think.

Listen to this episode of Mentors At Your Benchside to discover 10 ways to use your Dr title, ranging from funny to downright evil.

Don't forget to visit the full article to leave a comment on how you use your Dr title. [1] For more entertaining and lighthearted reading, check out the 14 Funniest Fruit Fly Gene Names, [2] and The Top 10 Worst Lab Smells. [3]

Resources:
1. 10 Ways to Use Your “Dr” Title for Good and Evil. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/10370/10-ways-to-use-your-dr-title-for-good-and-evil/
2. 14 of the Funniest Fruit Fly Gene Names. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/23221/14-of-the-funniest-fruit-fly-gene-names/
3. The Top 10 Worst Lab Smells. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/6935/top-10-worst-lab-smells/

#43 — DNA extraction kits. A magic black (or red or blue) box that helps you isolate DNA without you even thinking. That's great—until things go wrong. Then you have to know what's happening. So in this episode of Mentors At Your Benchside, we're going to explain how DNA extraction kits work in the lab.

Check out the original article to read how DNA extraction kits work. [1] Why not learn how to troubleshoot RNA isolation [2] and discover in detail how alkaline lysis works [3] while you're at it?

Resources:
1. How DNA Extraction Kits Work in the Lab. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/25018/how-dna-extraction-kits-work-in-the-lab/
2. Troubleshooting RNA Isolation. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/2345/troubleshooting-rna-isolation/
3. Lab Basics: How Alkaline Lysis Works: https://bitesizebio.com/180/the-basics-how-alkaline-lysis-works/

#42 — There are a lot of humorless scientists out there. But thankfully, some do their bit to make science a bit more fun by adding a splash of imagination to the names of their discoveries. That, or they think about these things too much.

Don't believe me? Need a laugh? Listen to us countdown fourteen cheeky fruit fly gene names!

Visit the website to read the full article [1] and learn how to sex a fruit fly as well! [2]

Resources:
1. 14 of the Best Drosophila Gene Names, Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/23221/14-of-the-funniest-fruit-fly-gene-names/
2. Gender Reveal: How to Determine the Gender of Drosophila Larvae. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/43147/gender-reveal-how-to-determine-the-gender-of-drosophila-larvae/

#41 — Keeping your lab balance clean and calibrated will make your bench work a lot easier. In this episode we give you useful tips to maintain your balance, literally!

Visit our website to read the full article. [1]

Read more about accuracy and precision [2] and the types of statistical error [3] you can avoid by calibrating your lab balance. For more information, see this guide on cleaning and maintaining balances. [4]

Resources:
1. How to Clean and Calibrate Your Lab Balance. Available at https://bitesizebio.com/24193/how-to-clean-and-calibrate-your-lab-balance/
2. How to Measure and Improve Lab Accuracy and Precision. Available at https://bitesizebio.com/55470/accuracy-and-precision/
3. Types of Statistical Errors and What They Mean. Available at https://bitesizebio.com/7642/types-of-statistical-errors-and-what-they-mean/
4. How To Clean and Maintain Precision Balances and Analytical Balances. Available at https://www.grainger.com/know-how/equipment-information/kh-how-to-clean-an-analytical-balance 

#40 — Are you struggling to write the discussion section of your paper? It can be daunting to put your results in context and to thoughtfully consider limitations and future experiments, but we've collected some useful advice to help you on your way. 

Visit our website to read the full article. [1]

If you need more help with your article, check out some of our other resources, such as this guide on writing an abstract, [2] preparing figures for your paper [3] and choosing a journal to submit to. [4] And if you want to know more about the publication process in general, you can learn about peer review. [5]

Resources:
1. How to Write a Thoughtful Discussion for Your Scientific Paper. Available from https://bitesizebio.com/31855/write-discussion-paper/
2. How To Write an Awesome Abstract. Available from https://bitesizebio.com/13661/how-to-write-an-awesome-abstract/
3. How To Make Figures Right The First Time. Available from https://bitesizebio.com/8110/how-to-make-figures-right-the-first-time/
4. Choosing the Best Journal for Your Paper. Available from https://bitesizebio.com/webinar/choosing-the-best-journal-for-your-paper/
5. How Does Peer Review in Science Work? Available from https://bitesizebio.com/60954/peer-review-in-science/

#39 — Oil immersion microscopy can help increase your resolution in light microscopy. Which, in turn, can lead to better images; and who doesn’t want nicer microscopy images? But do you know why we use immersion oil and objectives for high-power magnification? And do you know how to use an immersion objective correctly?

Listen to this episode of Mentors At Your Benchside to understand the theory behind oil immersion microscopy and get six easy tips on perfecting your oil immersion microscopy.

Visit the original article for advice on how to get better microscopy images using oil immersion. [1]

To learn more about microscopy basics that can boost your imaging, check out our articles on numerical aperture and optical resolution. [2,3]

Resources:
1.How Using Oil Immersion Microscopy Can Increase Your Resolution. Available at:
 https://bitesizebio.com/23421/the-why-and-how-of-oil-immersion-microscopy/
2. That Other Number –The Meaning of Numerical Aperture in Microscopy.  Available at:
https://bitesizebio.com/13450/that-other-number-the-meaning-of-numerical-aperture-in-microscopy/
3. Rubbing your Microscope’s Eyes: A Guide to Optical Resolution.  Available at:
https://bitesizebio.com/13415/rubbing-your-microscopes-eyes-a-guide-to-optical-resolution/

#38 — Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, is changing the way we analyze images and data in biology. But what exactly is AI?

Listen to this episode for a brief primer on AI and to understand the differences between AI, machine learning, and deep learning.

We'll discuss how biologists use AI to enhance their data analysis, simplify their image processing, predict their protein structures, and more!

Make sure you visit the original article, which contains lots of helpful links to get started incorporating AI into your research! [1]

We've also included a list of handy AI resources for biologists that can help you get started in AI. 

These are:

• Fast AI: Making neural nets uncool again [2]
• Deep Learning: Build deep learning models today [3]
• Deep learning specialization: Become a deep learning expert [4]

Resources:
1. Artificial Intelligence in Biology. Available at:
https://bitesizebio.com/64186/artificial-intelligence-in-biology/
2. Fast AI: Making neural nets uncool again. Available at:
https://www.fast.ai
3. Deep Learning: Build deep learning models today. Available at:
https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning-nanodegree--nd101
4. Deep learning specialization: Become a deep learning expert. Available at:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/deep-learning/?siteID=EBOQAYvGY4A-CZk7TATLvBfdZnDu2EmtDg

#37 — How do you measure how good you are as a scientist? How would you compare the impact of two scientists in a field? What if you had to decide which one would get a grant? One method is the h-index.

In this episode, we discuss the metrics involved in measuring scientific performance, focusing on the metric of choice for many funding bodies, the h-index, and some of its limitations.

Visit the original article for more resources to help you understand what the h-index is. [1]

To learn more about the h-index, read the article that first proposed it. [2] Find out more about Publish or Perish, a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations, [3] and how the various online resources and h-index calculators compare when it comes to providing an accurate and comprehensive picture of the scholarly impact of authors. [4]

Resources:
1. Does Your h-index Measure Up? Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/13614/does-your-h-index-measure-up/
2. Publish or Perish: Explains the use of Publish or Perish and its metrics. Available at: https://harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish
3. Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102
4. Meho LI, Yang K. Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science versus Scopus and Google Scholar. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20677

#36 — Don't let an inaccurate pipette ruin your experiments. In this episode of Mentors At Your Benchside we’re talking about how to check the accuracy of your pipette, so your results are reliable and repeatable.

You can find the full article on our website. [1]

Read more about cleaning [2] or calibrating pipettes [3] or learn how clean and calibrate your lab balance. [4] For more information on accuracy and how it differs from precision, see our article "How to Measure and Improve Lab Accuracy and Precision". [5]

Resources:
1. How to Check the Accuracy of Your Pipette in 7 Easy Steps. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/21218/how-to-check-the-accuracy-of-your-pipette/
2. Take Care of Your Tools: Cleaning Pipettes. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/20270/cleaning-pipettes/
3. Performing Pipette Calibration Yourself. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/40766/performing-pipette-calibration-yourself/
4. How to Clean and Calibrate Your Lab Balance. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/24193/how-to-clean-and-calibrate-your-lab-balance/
5. How to Measure and Improve Lab Accuracy and Precision. Available at: https://bitesizebio.com/55470/accuracy-and-precision/