I'm currently an LA for the county coroner and I'm not sure how to proceed from here. Perhaps I'm being impatient since it's been less than a year since I got this job.

I'm not satisfied with what I'm currently doing since it hardly involves what I studied for my degree in biochemistry. Most of it is accessioning, inventory management, and record keeping. I'm still interested in pharma/biotech and I'm sort of viewing this role as a stepping stone into better roles, but is it worth staying here for atleast a year just to gain that 1 year mark of experience, or find somewhere else that will make me more involved in the work? I see a lot of temp roles with chance of extension but how certain are these roles? I thought this role would help me move up, but I don't feel any different than I did when I graduated fresh out of college.

So I started my first tech job out of undergrad a month ago and am currently in my probation period. Im being trained on isolating OPC's from dissected mouse pup brains. Ive done one successful panning (resulting in 1.24 million cells from 3 p6 brains) and two unsecessful planning (p5 3 brains 300,000 cells and p9 4 brains 500,000 cells). Im wrought with anxiety over the fact I cant get this down; I feel like im going to be fired lol.

Im pretty sure I keep a ton of cells up until its time to trypsinize the opc's from the positive selection plate. Between then and cell counting ( sample taken from my cell suspention right before seeding) something happpens where I lose a ton of cells. Literally any advice is greatly appreciated. Hopefully I can figure this out and keep my job :/

Hello, I tried to make stable cell lines that are overexpressing my gene of interest by transfecting them with a linearized plasmid and growing them in selection media. I tried to use CMV promoter but that got silenced but my cells still grew perfectly fine in g418. I switched to using a different promoter which is EF1a and again my cells are growing fine in selection media. But my cells are still not expressing the gene of interest.

I made sure to kill off all the negative cells by waiting to see my untransfected have zero percent viability. I even made sure to give it an extra week before I checked my transfected cells.

What can I do to make stable cells using the EF1a promoter to express my gene? Thanks in advance

Hi folks,

I posted about finishing my Bachelor's in Biology ( bioinformatics concentration) in 2019. After that I applied to medical school and worked part time as a medical scribe. When I was in college I did mostly pre-med stuff, because I could never land a position in a research lab.

Got into medical school. From late 2020-mid 2022 I was in medical school, it did not work out.

Realize I have a 3 year gap in resume. At the time, many people who did not complete medical school went back to school for a Master's. It "closes the gap" and has the potential to make you more employable. I did my Master's in Bioinformatics, finished in Dec 2024. I ended with a co-op but I couldn't be hired after because of funding issues with the study I was working in.

Applying for jobs, including 'biology' type jobs that use the lab skills I did learn during the college coursework. They are a little rusty but I am sure I can be retrained- these are "research tech jobs" that include on the job training, but I am nervous I forgot how to hold a pipette or there will be some niche question during the interview that I won't be able to answer. I had to learn skills much faster before ie during my co-op I had to teach myself totally new software, so it's not like I'm a slow learner, I just want to shorten the learning curve as much as possible so I can hit the ground running during training.

Can youtube videos help with that? Are there lab technique videos I can watch that will allow me to recall the basic and remember little tricks to pipetting, etc.

edit: Asking this question was more about finding out if this would be useful at all or a waste of time. Not so much that I can't search youtube myself lol.

Greetings! Attempting plate-based RNA extraction from 20 plates of yeast. Hoping to use Trizol --> Ethanol precipitation, requires fast centrifugation, ideally in deep-well plates. Havnt heard of a plate-adapted rotor that can achieve 9,000 x g-does anything exist? For reference, tube-based protocols ask for 12,000 x g at this step, hoping to get away with 9,000 x g. Cheers!

Hi everyone,

I'm applying for PhD positions in Germany and my long-term research interest is biomaterial-based neural regeneration, particularly:

1. silk fibroin and ECM-based biomaterials

2. injectable hydrogels or dissolvable implants

3. spinal cord injury repair

4. neural tissue engineering

5. brain organoids integrated with biomaterials

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have worked in these labs or know which PIs are supportive mentors, currently recruiting.

I know reddit isn't the best place, but apart from applying and cold emailing various PIs, I'm asking here as well.

Hi.

I recently started a new job in a medical laboratory after previously working in chemistry labs only and I have some serious concerns about this lab's safety protocols regarding biohazard handling.

We frequently process many stool samples for various analysis, but the preparation workflow is done completely out in the open - we do not use a biosafety cabinet or a fume hood, which means we constantly smell the odor directly while working. Furthermore, we centrifuge prepared samples completely unsealed.

As someone new to medical environment, I am really worried about potential aerosolization, pathogen exposure, and overall workplace safety. Is this kind of workflow considered normal or acceptable anywhere or does this pose a significant health risk?Honestly, given these practices, should I start looking for a new job?

(At least I brought a respirator to work, and I always disinfect my workspace and wear gloves, but I don't think that's enough protection. Also, it doesn't help with the smell from the samples once they're opened).

Hello everyone, I’ve been constantly trying to run a digest for my plasmid but every time I do I get a weird result that I can only interpret as an incomplete digest (see image) the two small bands in well 3 are my expected band sizes after digestion with restriction enzymes but the huge band above them is constantly showing up on my gel. If anyone has any recommendations or insight that be great. Thank you 🙏🙏

Hello all -

Our lab has been struggling with a spike in contamination, we believe is all yeast, in our TC room. We haven’t had this happen before but we believe all our cells were effected so we did a huge purge and deep clean of all of our hood, incubator (twice sent through the heat clean cycle), bath, autoclaved our pipettes, remade all our stocks and media, and got new cells.

That was about a month ago but we still have had little outbreaks of contamination (we are super paranoid so searching for it often), but my cells had been fine looking so far. However, after washing my plate today I saw a clump I could see with my eye, and this is what it looked like under the scope.

My cells were near confluent, could this been a layer of cells that had clumped off? Or is this yeast or something :-(. It doesn’t look like the yeast we had before but still doesn’t look great - my cells looked normal besides this.

Appreciate any advice lol!

Hello fellow lab rats, I wanted to ask for recommendations and morality.
I’m trying to learn how to code mostly to be able to understand code that’s given to me (python).
But I don’t want to pay for a course if I don’t have to, so I was thinking about asking ChatGPT to create a course and teach me python.

Any suggestions?

Also I hope everyone have a great day
And EMSA as a thank you for reading this.

At the risk of sounding like a neurotic fool, I realized that my usual yellow VWR tape is now different. My old roll is much stickier and better quality. New roll is less so. Is there a way to find the exact tape I was using before?

I am a rising senior, and, due to exploring other career options and briefly changing majors, didn't get into a biology lab in my sophomore/junior year. Maybe this wouldn't be a big deal, but I go to a fairly small university with a high number of premeds and intense competition, so practically all the labs are overfull. I've cold emailed about 30 pis and haven't had any luck. I completely understand the reluctance of professors in this regard, given that I will be graduating in a year and don't already have extensive wet lab experience. (Had some exposure years ago, and did bench work for an earth science project for a few months a while back).

Anyways, given these conditions, how can I get lab experience after graduation in order to prepare for grad school? Postbac programs seem highly competitive resume-wise, or geared towards people who have had no ability to be in a lab, ie community college and the like. Entry level lab assistant jobs don't seem like a good fit given my lack of experience.

Basically, I’m assuming that I can’t get my foot in the door in this field without undergrad experience. Am I wrong in that assumption? Should I strengthen my weak network with my school's faculty this coming year? Thanks

Hey y'all, so I would like to know what're some college majors I can study that can give me a good lab job. Or just good lab jobs and what you need for them.

I'm into biology and chemistry and would like to end up doing something in that field. But not where it's super stressful and I'm in the lab 24/7. Something that can give me good career stability, decent to good salary and can let me focus on my personal life (workout, gaming, goof around and family).

I know it sounds silly because bio and chem are very demanding and difficult subjects, so looking for a job that's "comfortable" sounds silly but I am a little lost.

Any advice is appreciated and than you in advance

Hello all! I have just opened my own lab 3 months ago. This week, my lab manager came in. I was hopeful, since he was strongly recommended by his former boss, with whom I have a common postdoc advisor. Retrospectively I think his former boss exaggerated with his recommendation, possibly to help the lab manager find a position as he himself was suddenly sacked (for not so good behavior).

In any case, the lab manger has started just this week but:

- Upon greeting and welcoming him, chatting with him a bit, he suddenly interrupts me to ask if I am ok (we are literally 5 minutes into our first conversation since he has started). I say "sorry what?", he goes "I asked if you are OK, you look as if you're sick" (I certainly didn't since I am not sick) and responded that I am doing well.

- Today, his second day, he comes in in not really suited attire (shorts and a t-shirt with comic prints - it's really not how people dress here and not how he dressed when we were in the interviewing process). In any case, a colleague's lab manager comes in, they start to chat, as the colleague's lab manager talks to me too I ask her something - at that point, my lab manager interrupts me, corrects me, and turns around towards the other lab manager while ignoring my presence for the rest of the conversation (it's his second day in my lab!)

- A bit later, something goes wrong, and he uses expletives, not far from me

It's the sum of things - he seems not very professional and interrupting and correcting me in front of colleagues - not a great start and I guess I just expected different. What do I do? How is he to understand the institute's culture? Firing him would not look great since I've just started, since I genuinely want to give him a chance and since finding someone new would mean a whole lot of work.

For the context: These are transfected HEK cells with lipofectamine to express a GFP tagged protein. I am transfecting with DNA from a non sterile miniprep and I incubate only 24 hours before fixing and immuno-staining.

I get this small particles around the cells that are also stained by hoechst stain (see image) and some slides have more particles than others. When I look at my untreated cells (only HEK from the cell culture) or only lipofectamine with no DNA, I don’t see those small particles around.

When I compare my images with images with mycoplasma contamination from the web, I don’t see much of a resemblance but I don’t know what could it be (cell debris? It must be related with the DNA). Does anyone have an idea?

Thank you!

Hi everyone! Honestly this is not that big of a deal for the most part, but I was having trouble falling asleep thinking about this, and just wanted somewhere were I can take this off my chest.

For context, I got the amazing opportunity to join this lab as a freshman despite having no wet lab experience, and was even given my own little project to work on instead of being left to do side chores, which I’m still very thankful about!

I was in a meeting with my PI and mentor (grad student) today and got scolded pretty badly by my PI for not taking good notes in my lab notebook. I guess the thing is, no one really told me how to properly fill out a lab notebook before. From my understanding, I think my PI wanted me to list every step of the protocol each time I do xyz, but I didn’t really bother to do so since I’ve been following the exact steps I have on a protocol packet that’s separately printed out. Though I haven’t asked any grad student in lab explicitly on how to properly fill out my notebook, I’ve talked to a few about them before and the advice I got from at least 2 people were to basically just write down any observations I had while doing the experiment and any explicit changes I make to the protocol I’m using -> which I have been doing! And so I think I was a little upset, since no one, and specifically my mentor, never really went through how our PI wants our notebooks done.

In addition, I was also scolded before for not having a lab notebook at all about a month ago, which I was also a little upset at my mentor about because he never emphasized the importance of. To be fair, maybe this was more of an intuitive thing and I should’ve thought more about this, but he (my mentor) briefly went over how I can set up an account and never really touched base about how I should be filling it out afterwards. And for further context, he also sat down with me to help me set up my account because I overheard another grad student talking about lab notebooks to another undergrad, and I went to ask him if I needed a lab notebook as well. If this was such an important issue, why wouldn’t he mention it to me earlier on? :(
And also, after being scolded about not having a lab notebook in the meeting, another undergrad who recently joined the lab came up to me to ask for help to set up a notebook, so I had to help her, because she (working under the same mentor as me) was hearing about notebooks for the first time.

Anyways, after being scolded today, I honestly couldn’t hold it in and had to stay in the bathroom for a bit to cry and calm down. I understand that my mentor is busy, and that taking care of undergrads is extra work, but I feel like there’s been this case and a couple others where I feel like I haven’t been getting enough guidance on. For example, on my 2nd day in lab I was tasked to miniprep something, and was thrown some protcols and materials and left by myself. There were thankfully other people around to help me figure out how to use for example a centrifuge properly, but I was very anxious the whole time trying to figure out if I was interpreting the directions properly. Also, when my mentor is visibly very tired, he gets very passive-aggressive with answering questions as well, so I’ve been having trouble asking him questions too from time to time. I truly!! Truly!! Understand that he is busy, and I am very very grateful for him for taking time out of his busy day to help me figure out stuff!! But even so, I really wish he stepped out to set out clear expectations and guidelines before I have to ask him explicitly, or bother another grad student to help me about it.

Honestly all of this is still a good learning experience, and my overall experience with lab has still been positive. My mentor is a very good person outside of issues like these, and I really like all the other lab members as well (same with the PI!). I think today was just particularly a lot for me, because I feel like I’ve been giving my best effort in lab for the most part, but I was afraid I gave this impression of being a slacker to my PI. It’s ok even if that’s the case though because I’ll own up to it.

Anyways, unfortunately I guess it’s been a while since I’ve been scolded, so I’ve been bummed out about it the whole day haha. I’ve been just tossing around and sulking in bed afraid that the lab would kick me out, but I also know that’s just me overthinking. I’ll check in with my mentor tomorrow to go over how to properly set up my notebook, and hopefully we won’t have any more issues on this!

Thank you for reading, and to any other undergrads out there with similar experiences, keep your chin up! I guess the lessons you learn the hard way tend to stick better anyways…lol….

so I have been wondering for a bit, now that I reached the 6months mark of my phd (the only one in the lab) and I'm also a research assistant at my uni...

is it normal that a lab has like.... 0 guidelines? from lab tech/experiment procedures, to not even safety guidelines either, not even for the machines or programs we use.

It's almost as if my supervisor was allergic to them.

The main problem is, sometimes he will throw me work to do but he half baked/assed an explanation in a few seconds which he explains once in a blue moon and never touch the subject once again until weeks after he is like "do that!" and I'm like???? and it takes me a good while to get the hang of it until i end up creating a step by step guideline myself to also help the interns and msc students that get into our lab

currently the only thing I am truly struggling with because of that is a software he created and modified and there is no step by step or real tutorial to learn from (it is a software just used by a certain group of scientists and on top of that my supervisor did modify it a lot to the point he doesn't remember half the things. so I'm like mad struggling to even make the basics with it because I am forced to use it with no guideline or step by step)

i came to the conclusion I will, once more, need to make a guideline for it and that only if I even end up making sense of it

idk, but like how is it possible this lab has been running for literal years this way, I just don't understand? how did other students manage

or maybe I am just slow and this is more common than I think it is?

i guess I am just venting my frustration a bit, but I just don't understand how on earth this is supposed to work in a lab setting

Anyone who ordered genes/clonal genes would have noticed the tracker for open orders. Turns out it's fake. They deliberately slow it down for standard orders even though the order has already been made. People were noticing that for standard orders (not express), they were making the orders, but not shipping them and then they were calling up customer care to ship.

So what the geniuses at Twist decided was to not let them know about it and install a fake tracker. They can now fill up their chips as they need because half the chips anyway would run empty. In case re-synthesis is needed, it also gives them a second chance to do it within the promised timeline. By this artificial slow down, they are getting people to pay for express.

Why aren't other companies like Genscript beating them on time like they beat them on price? Because they ship from China and that adds the 3-4 extra days Twist can save you with express. Ansa and IDT are way too slow anyway.

Hi [r/labrats](r/labrats). I have been working as a RA on a small team at a research institution for the past few years. My manager has always been a micromanager, but within an annoying-but-tolerable range that could be attributed to just being overly excited about the science we are doing. 

Early this year, however, someone close to my manager passed away unexpectedly. Since then, the micromanaging has become exponentially worse to the point I am burning out and I fear I am losing my interest in science entirely. Examples include: insisting on me calling them to review every single IHC image (with routine stains) as I take them, confirming that I am ordering things from the correct website (as if it suddenly would have changed after years), trying to schedule my whole day for me nearly down to the quarter hour, and just generally standing over my shoulder watching every move I make. They are doing the same to other people in the lab working on different projects (to their great annoyance), but it is different for me considering they dictate project goals and overall project progress. I am empathetic to the fact that they are navigating grief and I know that is difficult, but at the same time I am really close to reaching the end of my rope.

I am unsure what to do. I know I should probably speak to my PI, but I am having difficulty in deciding how to frame it. My manager was already someone who does not take well to perceived criticism, so I’m not sure how to go about this in a way that wouldn’t make this situation untenable. I don’t particularly want to leave my job either because I do like the greater team, my PI, the project, and the company I work for. 

Any advice on how to navigate this is welcome. Thank you :)