Remember that when a hiring manager calls you, it is your first chance to make a great impression. With so many phone options available, using both cellular and land lines, you should be able to cover all bases and be ready to receive the knock of opportunity. You just have to think about it and set it up first.

You want the entire experience to exude professionalism. So to get you started, here is a list of “things not to do” when it comes to receiving calls from potential employers:

1. Be funny on your voicemail message. This is great when you’re getting calls from friends and family, but if you’re on the job market, now is not the time to try out your stand-up comedian skills on your voicemail. Keep it simple and clear – for example, “You’ve reached the voicemail of John Smith. I can’t take your call right now, but leave me a message and I will return your call as quickly as possible.” Boring? Yes. Standard? Yes. But it’s the only way to act when you are job searching.

2. Don’t mention your name on your voicemail. So many people have the automated message “You have reached 555-555-1234. Leave a message after the tone.” This type of message always makes me wonder if I dialed the number correctly, and if the person will actually get the message. It’s cryptic and unfriendly. Go with the option of having your real, live, human voice answering your phone when you can’t do so live.

3. Set up your phone with a nice ringback tone. Even a seemingly inoffensive song, such as classical music. It’s just not worth risking that the song you’ve chosen will offend the caller, or worse yet, that he/she has a negative memory associated with that song. Go with the old fashioned ringer.

4. Use your kids as an answering service. We really don’t like it when your roommate, spouse, or (this is the worst!) children answer the phone. If you have your resume on the market, direct calls to your cell phone, and ask your husband/wife/children/friends to let it go to voicemail if you cannot answer the phone yourself. Hiring managers (and recruiters!) often worry that the message will not make it through to the person we are trying to contact. It’s also easier for us to leave more detailed information on a voicemail than it is to do when someone is writing a message.

The general rule to keep in mind is, keep it professional. Now is not the time to showcase your creativity or comedic skills. If you wouldn’t do it in an interview, don’t do it on the phone.

How this all started

It began on a Saturday morning. After I woke up and fed my cat, and before making my own breakfast, I went straight to my computer to check which emails had come in overnight – this gives you an idea of my priorities as a postdoctoral scientist… (or maybe just a workaholic).

One email was an automated message indicating that @WhereBioBegins was now following me on Twitter.

“Spammer of the day” was my first thought, but, after looking at their feed, it was clear that their tweets weren’t automated offers for dubious discounts but were actually engaging and interacting with people they were following.

Curious as to whom this person (or persons) were, I clicked on the link to their website but this only served to generate further curiosity.

The beginnings of Where Bio Begins

Their website homepage www.wherebiobegins.com contains a huge timer on their site shows a countdown of approximately 20 days (at the time of writing this post) before their exact nature is even revealed. Tantalizingly, they also have a scrolling list of “bio” prefixed terms (e.g. biology, biomechanics, biochemistry, bioluminescence and biodiversity) are that Where Bio Begins will allegedly involve itself with, when it begins.

In the page title, “Where Bio Begins” refers to itself as “the future of life science.” Interesting.

So what exactly is Where Bio Begins?

I asked them that question in a public tweet on Twitter, as well as telling them that bio began for me back in high school when learning about the Miller-Urey experiment.

They confirmed the obvious: their lips are sealed for another 20 days, and I can’t get any answers until then. My guess for now: Where Bio Begins will likely be the latest in the explosion of social networking for scientists and/or professionals and/or higher education.

If that’s the case, I’ll add them to the list of networking sites I’ve already created profiles and accounts for: LabRoots, ResearchGATE, Academia.edu, and LinkedIn. And if that’s true, then what about Where Bio Begins would be different? Well, perhaps this: within less than a day of them following me on Twitter, they’ve asked me to thrust myself into the limelight of vlogging.

What wasn’t immediately apparent, you see, is that Where Bio Begins also has a YouTube channel. The link isn’t explicitly indicated on their website or within their Twitter bio- you need to look for it within the tweets on their Twitter feed. But once you arrive, surely enough, there are videos from seven scientists describing the origins of their interests in “bio.”

Ronny, a grad student in biology, started off in philosophy, but after taking courses in biology, found the arguments there to be much more compelling. Donell, a grad student, was inspired by a biochem professor who taught him to think outside of the box, and apply what was taught in class to his work at the bench.  Carlos was inspired in high school, learning about action potentials, and that encouraged him to go all the way through grad school and now look to begin a postdoc. Brandon, yet another grad student, had the rather unique experience of encountering an eight-legged fetal pig in a glass container while working as a summer intern, and wanted to know what in its development had caused that.

And, perhaps I myself- if I can find a webcam and some free time within the next week- will have a video of my own explaining how I was fascinated by learning about the Miller-Urey process, and actually thought it was a little cool to “play God” in that experiment… remember I was a high school student at the time!

So is Where Bio Begins another networking site? Is it networking with a new spin? Or is it something completely different? I’ll be waiting 20 days to find out, and I know that others will too. Surely it will be of interest to anyone who likes “bio,” particularly the readers of such as blog as Bitesize Bio.

While we are waiting, why don’t you tell us where Bio began in your life?

This is a good question because many things can cause differences in yields between plasmid preps.  Let’s resolve this mystery one point at a time and go over some reasons why you might get low yields when you prep plasmids.

1. Plasmid backbone

You prepped two plasmids simultaneously using the exact same protocol and had different yields. If the plasmids have the same backbone (that is, they are both pUC, or pBluescript, etc.) then the reason leans towards the insert playing a role. Some inserts can be problematic for bacteria. It might be that a protein is made that makes the bacteria sick (for example, DNase) or it could be that the insert is unstable (for example, repetitive sequences). To overcome the problem, try using a specialized competent cell line. For unstable inserts, try the STBL2 cells from Life Technologies and for growing clones with toxic proteins, try the T7 Express LysY/Iq Competent cells from NEB.

Another important point is how the insert size changes the copy number of the plasmid. Large inserts will reduce the number of copies of the plasmid.

2. Copy number

If the genes are cloned into different vectors then the issue could be that the plasmids are replicating at different rates. One may be high copy and one may be a medium or even low copy plasmid. Some examples of  low copy plasmids are ones using the backbone pBR322 and pACYC, which are older and not used often in cloning work today. Many vectors used for protein expression are medium copy. This is desireable because when producing proteins, sometimes if growth is too fast, it enhances the chance of the protein becoming insoluble or forming inclusion bodies.

3.  Culture issues and antibiotic

Nick went over the technique for growing bacteria to obtain a healthy culture in late log phase where you can get the most plasmid in our original midiprep how-to article.  This technique works well as does using a 1:1000 dilution of starter culture into a large scale culture (so 100 ul into 100 ml) if you want to grow the bacteria overnight for 12-16 hrs.  One important consideration is the antibiotic. The bacteria are going to break down the antibiotic while they are growing in the culture. If not enough antibiotic is added or if the stock is old and not at the correct strength, the antibiotic selection pressure may not last very long and you could end up having a culture that was antibiotic-less for most of the culture time. Plasmid yields will go down without the selective pressure to keep it.

As a reminder, the state of the culture is critical for high yields of plasmid. For maximal yields, the culture should be in late log or early stationary phase. If the culture overgrows, you will be harvesting more dead bacteria than live cells and this also leads to genomic DNA contamination in the prep. If the culture is undergrown, then of course, yields are lower than expected. You can mistakenly undergrow a culture by using old colonies from plates or starting direct from a frozen stock and not from a colony. The lag time for the bacteria to ramp up is much longer when you use either of these approaches.

Streak fresh colonies:

One more point that people forget when setting up their starter cultures or overnight cultures is the age of the plate you are using to pick your colony. If your plate is old, you may have picked a nice big colony but it will not be all living cells. And if there were satellite colonies sitting around the original colony where the antibiotic no longer exists, those will not have plasmid and will be introduced into your culture. So streak a fresh plate before starting to ensure the best result.

So let’s assume that Sonia’s plasmids were the same vector, same antibiotic, grown exactly the same, and each have different inserts that are not too large or unstable or toxic. What else can it be?

4. Processing steps:

If the culture conditions are not the problem, then we have to look at something with the downstream steps. Since we are talking about Midipreps, let’s discuss what can go wrong with the anion-exchange procedure next.

Nick covered alkaline lysis in great detail and typically these reagents in the kits are stable and fine. Solution 2 (the one containing NaOH and SDS) can break down over time with exposure to air, but in general, they work for lysing bacteria for the life of the kit.

The other area of plasmid preparation where DNA can be lost are the final steps after anion-exchange which is the final precipitation step in isopropanol and finding the DNA pellet.

Isopropanol quality:

Many labs have isopropanol in large containers that have been opened and closed over the course of a year. For the best result in the precipitation step, make sure the isopropanol used is not the old bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Use some isopropanol from a new bottle or a smaller bottle that is not who-knows how many years old. This makes a huge difference in the size of the DNA pellet you obtain after centrifugation.

Don’t lose the pellet!

Isopropanol pellets are glassy and clear and difficult to see. The best practice is to mark the side of the tube where you expect the pellet to form after centrifugation in a fixed angle rotor so when you decant the isopropanol, you know where to look for it. Keep an eye on the spot and look for the glassy material. Sometimes this is difficult because many people use the oakridge plastic tubes which are opaque. If you have glass corex tubes, this is a nice alternative and they can be baked to make them pyrogen free.

Sometimes, if you have concerns about losing the pellet, it is good practice to pour the isopropanol supernatant into a 15 ml tube to save it, just in case the pellet slipped off the wall. But this does not normally happen as long as you do not let the sample sit for long after the centrifuge stops. Once it is done, be right there to decant the sample. The only times I have seen a pellet come loose from the wall is when I was late getting to the centrifuge and it sat still for a few minutes.

Whether you use Oakridge tubes or glass, just note where that pellet should be. Once you wash with 70% ethanol, the pellet becomes visible.  When you are ready to resuspend your pellet, you’ll know exactly where to find it because you marked the tube.

Caution! It is not always a pellet!

Sometimes with fixed angle rotors, the DNA may not always form a nice tight pellet at the side wall. It can sometimes smear down the side. For this reason, I always use my resuspension buffer to wash down the side of the wall above my pellet to make sure I solubilize every molecule of plasmid that may be present even though I can’t see it.

It is a shame to do all that work and then lose the DNA pellet right at the end! More tips on perfect DNA pellet recovery is found here too.

We had a nice discussion about DNA precipitation in a previous article and it was the consensus that the most important factor in obtaining high yields is centrifugation speed and time. Don’t cut the centrifuge time short unless you can turn up the speed.

I thought it would be good to mention that many plasmid kit manufacturers have recognized that the pelleting step is problematic for some users so have developed kits that desalt the DNA using “precipitators” or silica disc filters. These are a fast alternative to centrifugation. However, you still need good isopropanol for these to work so always use fresh.

Summary:

Large scale plasmid DNA preps have a lot of steps where things can go wrong but in my experience, the problem is usually either the culture or the DNA precipitation.  To check if your culture is healthy, just take 1-2 mls out of your 100 ml flask and then do a quick miniprep on it to see how much plasmid/ml is there. That will give you a good idea of what you will get from the rest of the sample.

So remember to get great plasmid yields, do a little background first on your vector and insert to make sure there is no reason for the DNA itself to be a problem and then start with a fresh colony and a starter culture and fresh antibiotic. And at the end, fresh isopropanol will be key to a thorough precipitation of all the plasmid DNA.

That about covers it folks. If you have any more questions, problems, or concerns, send them our way and we will put our heads together to figure out how to help!

Answer: A surfing scientist turned businessman from Alabama with a passion for educating the world about molecular biology.

Andy is the CEO and founder of Yonder Biology, a brand new biotech company located in northern San Diego county here in California. I had a chance to speak with Andy about his new venture into personalized DNA art. I was really impressed with Andy’s passion for bringing science to the public and using his new company as a platform to further educate people on how science is impacting their lives.

You may recall Alex’s pre-holiday’s Bitesize Bio article on dealing with family stress when you’ve had to explain over and over “I’m not that kind of doctor!“.  Yonder Biology aims to help in bridging the gap between the kind of doctor that does molecular biology with the rest of the world and for him, the bridge begins with molecular art.

Andy received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham and went to work in biotech sales for Life Technologies, back in the pre-Invitrogen days.  Ten years after graduating college, he is ready to embark on his own frontier, taking a leading role in developing ways to make science understandable for non-scientists.

In my interview with Andy, we discussed his plans for the new company and advice he has for budding entrepreneurs who think they have a cool idea and want to try to be their own boss.

Tell us about your background?

On the science side I have a bachelors of science in molecular biology from UAB and have worked in the lab in industry as a associate scientist. On the business side, I worked in business development and sales. I’ve always been entrepreneurial and creative. While that hasn’t been my career, it is always my driving force. Now with Yonder Biology I get to blend the mix of creativity and science.

What were you doing before you started this business?

I was working for Bio-Rad in sales and I covered southern California and all of the pharmaceutical and large biotech accounts. Before that I was working for Sigma Aldrich in sales.

What gave you this idea to make art out of DNA?

I called a couple friends who have the creative and entrepreneurial drive too and when you explain to people not in science what you do, it’s always interesting and they have a hard time grasping it. We thought about how to bridge the cutting edge research going in in life science industry with the every day consumer: “mom and dad”. DNA art is a simple but meaningful way to involve them in science.

I really wanted to blend creativity and science together into a product and looking at what is out there now, we saw personal genomics, DNA chips, and next generation sequencing as areas where we wanted to be involved. But we took a step back and said “OK what can we do right now?” So what we did was create the personalized DNA art portrait and this is just the beginning. We are working towards incorporating next gen sequencing into our offerings and marketing that to the everyday consumer.

And not necessarily in art. We have bigger dreams. We are starting on the creative end but want to bring science to the average person.

Looking forward, we see this as a small educational step, where mom and dad can see what DNA looks like, to when personal genomics really enters the mainstream market and doctors are making decisions based on your genome. One area we want to go into is finding ways of presenting life science research to the public. So an education role is one option.

How did you get your company started?

We got a core group of people together who were all interested in these same goals and invested our own money as well as put some ads on Craigs list to get the core equipment, like a thermocycler and basic gel equipment and we built our own imaging system. We received a small amount of angel investor money to help us out. Currently we have a lab only and are looking at a few spaces where we can merge a lab with something like an art gallery.

How hard was it to get started? What does it take to start your own biotech company?

We got it up and running pretty quickly and we thought it was as easy as run PCR, run a gel, take a picture. Then we realized we had to design a website that was search engine optimized, we had to come up with a way to collect the DNA, then how we will package the final product, etc. So there are all of these little things that you need but don’t necessarily anticipate or think about when you first start out but you need answers for.

I would say that you don’t know the questions until you get started, when it is your first venture.

Where does the name Yonder Biology come from?

Interesting story.  I was out on my surf board here in Carlsbad sitting in the water with friends I grew up with from Alabama and we were pointing to something in the water and I said it was ”over yonder” and then I said it again. I went back and proposed it to a couple of the guys. I asked what  “yonder” means to them and they said “the horizon”, “beyond”, and “the future”.  We really liked these three themes on what “yonder” meant to us. So we stuck Biology on the end and we had our name.

How does it work? What methods are you using in the lab?

It is DNA fingerprinting. We’ll send out a DNA collection swab and you’ll rub on the inside of your cheek, send us back the swab in an envelope, and we’ll extract the DNA. We test the purity (260/280 ratios) and then we’ll do PCR to amplify the STRs. The specific primers pairs we use we are not disclosing but will tell people the general chromosome locations. We use particular ones and orient them the same on all the gels.

After gel electrophoresis and staining, we take the picture with our custom imaging system. The unique thing about our imaging system, is that it is so high resolution, we can essentially put the picture up on the side of a building without losing any quality.

We have experimented between saliva samples and swabs and we get a lot more DNA with saliva but we weren’t sure what we would get back from people so we thought it was more sanitary to use a swab. The DNA yields are more than enough.

Did you have any qualms about moving from hard science to science art?

Our company hasn’t taken our eye off of hard science. We see that as the core of what we are doing. For example, if any issues come up in the lab, we have to be scientists and use our background to solve those problems. And looking forward we want to grow in the personal genomics space so we are up on cutting edge technology such as whole genome amplification and next-gen sequencing technologies. While what we do is for consumers, we plan to make our name in personal genomics in the future.

How did your family and friends respond to your plans to quit your job and begin this venture?

Everyone that knows me probably thinks I am a little bit crazy anyway? But everyone in my family knows we have a plan for the company and we have milestones to make sure we are moving in the right direction so it’s a very calculated risk and my friends and family have been very supportive. We set timelines in place where we want to have certain things accomplished and if we are not on track, what do we need to do.

Have you had any unusual or fun requests (ex. pets)?

We recently opened up our DNA art to pets so we’ve done a handful of dog DNA portraits. We’ve also had a request for whole genome sequencing for whales. One other thing we’ve done is launch “Duet” and “Quad” DNA portraits- so a couples portrait or family portraits. Currently we can combine up to four profiles on the same canvas.

What advice do you have for other entrepreneurial scientists who think they have a novel idea and want to start a biotech company?

Surround yourself with the right people. You don’t have to know everything but it’s good to have people who know the things you don’t. Diversity is good. Going from web design to PCR, to even the legal aspects its good to have people who can contribute different aspects.

Also things sometimes take longer than you expect or cost more than you expect so you have to be prepared. My advice is to take a conservative approach when looking at financials and sales projections.

Thanks Andy!

It sounds like Yonder Biology has clear direction and goals and an exciting future ahead. At the dawn of personalized medicine, a company like Yonder Biology will be at the forefront of educating the public.

If you live or work around the San Diego area, Andy will be exhibiting at the San Diego Science Festival March 27th and will have some DNA portraits of UCSD professors on display at The Loft.

You can follow Andy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yonderbiology

Let us know what you think about DNA art. And if you have any questions for Andy about his products, or on starting a biotech company, please leave us a comment.

Its publication prompted the recall of a useful tip I learned from a post-doc many years ago,  one of those ‘magic-hands’ scientists where everything seemed to work first time. This tip of his is on the removal of the 70% ethanol in the final step of the precipitation process.

The usual wisdom is to carefully drain off the ethanol and leave it to either air-dry or place in a speed-vac. The problem is that air-drying can be too slow, while the speed-vac can be too fast meaning that you risk over-drying the pellet making solubilisation more difficult.

So here’s the tip: After draining or pipetting off the 70% ethanol, simply:

• recap the tube
• pulse the centrifuge to bring down the remaining ethanol
• remove this liquid with a pipette and 200ul tip – you can get right alongside the pellet if visible. Leave the tube open as you move to the next sample.

By the time you’ve finished your series of tubes (even if n= 3), the pellets are dry always enough to add diluent immediately. Job done. This saves time and give you samples are just the right degree of “dry”, every time.

Any other tips for ethanol (or even isopropanol!) precipitation would be great to hear. Meanwhile – thanks Michael.

Even if you are willing to pay their own way to attend interviews and are ready to move as soon as an offer letter is in hand, you can often be disqualified immediately.  The address on your resume may be eliminating you from consideration before anyone has bothered to review your skill set. In this job market, it can be very difficult to get companies to agree to meet with you if you live elsewhere, even if you are willing to bear the burden yourself.

What do to

It is critically important that you never lie on your resume as this can be grounds for dismissal and is generally unethical. However, just as with your experience, it is best to highlight the attributes that make you more appealing. Therefore, if you are open to moving yourself to anywhere you might apply, consider removing your address from your resume. Everyone has cell phone numbers that follow them around, and recruiters/hiring managers won’t think anything of a non-local area code. If you are targeting a specific metropolitan market - somewhere you know you will move as soon as you get a job offer - consider using a friend’s address or getting a mailing address in that area. While this will not eliminate the hurdles associated with relocation (you’ll have to get yourself to the interview, etc.), it will help ensure your background is reviewed instead of being screened out due to the address line on your resume.

Once you are past the first hurdle, how you handle this in a phone screen or interview is crucial. Tell the employer that you are definitely relocating yourself to the area; you are just looking for the right position, and you do not expect any relocation assistance. This is not as good as already living in the area, but it is darn close. If you can stay with a friend in the area if the company wants you to start ASAP, let the hiring manager know this.

Get the hiring manager to review your background and after they have developed an interest, you can discuss hurdles. If the hurdles are the first thing they see, the hiring manager will likely opt for an easier route and call other candidates.

What’s so good about Evernote?

This is a reassuringly simple idea, but the thing that makes Evernote so special is that the developers have put a lot of effort into making it really easy to capture and retrieve your data, no matter where you are (as long as you have an internet collection). Evernote for PC and Mac sit right there on your main computer waiting for you to drop in or retreive a piece of information as you work. Evernote web allows you to add or retrieve info from your database from any internet connected computer and the mobile versions (currently only for IPhone, IPod Touch and Android devices) let you capture notes and send them to your database while you are on the move.

Put this together and you have a fantastically versatile and powerful system that lets you keep your info organised in a way that was never possible before. For scientists, that is a boon.

Data capture has never been so flexible

I won’t go through the ins and outs of how to use Evernote as that has been covered elsewhere. A good place to start is on the Evernote website itself, where they have a great collection of videos that explain the whole thing.

What I do want to highlight is that the one thing that makes Evernote particularly useful for me is the variety of methods you can use to capture your data. Typing in your ideas to a new Evernote note, clipping a screenshot of a web article or PDF you have been reading to a note are the bread and butter ways, but Evernote also has a built in features that allows you to capture and send images taken with your webcam or (I/android) phone, or even record audio clips, and send them straight to your database.

When you add a new note to your database you can assign it to a project folder and tag it with keywords and text to make it easy to retrieve later. So with a bit of creativity, its easy to fit Evernote into your daily workflow and make your life much easier!

Here are some ideas on how scientists could use Evernote:

1. Capture figures, tables and important passages from papers as you read them. Now you don’t need to search through the whole paper to find the important parts, just go to your Evernote database and search for the topic you are interested in. You can also capture useful information from websites in the same way.

2. Record ideas on the fly. You are sitting at the computer or, even on the bus to work, and you have brainwave. No need to get your notebook out, just make a voice recording or a quick text note and send it to your database to pick up later whenever you want it.

3. Store links to useful websites and categorise them according to your projects. If a website or page is only relevant to a very specific part of your work, you don’t need to clutter up your browser bookmarks with it, just paste the URL into Evernote store it in the relevant project folder.

4. Easily capture your results in the lab. Gels, stains, blots even traces on the monitor of the clapped-out computer that runs the spec can all be photographed and instantly stored in the relevant project folder.

5. An instant protocols database. Whenever you receive or write a new protocol, you can use Evernote to create a database that will help you find it later. If it’s in electronic format, just paste the text in but if it is a hard copy you just need to take a photo. For an added touch of amazingness, if someone is giving you some advice on the protocol, why not ask them if you can record what they are saying, then clip the audio file to the protocol note for later reference?

6. Your work in the news. If your field of work (or even your actual work) is reported in the press then you could take clips of webpages, photos of newspapers etc to build a collection that will help you stay up-to-date with what is being reported about your work.

7. Take less notes at lab meetings. Just photograph and database the whiteboard. Remember, when you make the note containing the photograph you can tag it with keywords and enter text to say exactly when and where the lab meeting was.

8. Conferences to go. When you are attending a conference, create a folder for that conference and use Evernote to record all of the info you get from it. If you are at a talk, you could use your mobile device to record what the presenters are saying and photograph key slides. Just make sure you get the speaker’s permission first. If you take notes in a notebook, there’s no need to let them sit on the shelf gathering dust — just snap a photo of the most relevant pages, tag with key words and add them the conference folder. The same goes for posters — just ask the person who made it if you can take a photo. When you get home it will all be waiting in your database.

9. Business cards and info leaflets. What do you do when someone gives you a business card or leaflet with some useful info on it? I used to store them in a drawer somewhere and hope I’d remember where they were when I needed them. Now I just take a quick photo and store it in my Evernote database. Much less clutter!

As I mentioned before Evernote is completely free. There is a premium version available that has some more features that you might want to check out, but the free version is excellent. To get started with Evernote, click here.

Rather annoyingly, I can’t come up with a 10th idea for a use of Evernote for scientists at the moment. Can you suggest one?

Also, if you use Evernote, or if you try it out, let us know what you think about it.

“Read the F***ing manual” (RTFM), was the phrase (only used after we put the phone down of course). A bit naughty, but it was certainly an essential stress reliever! This article today is not about reading manuals, but research papers.

It is my appeal to everyone to RTFP.

I find that there is a growing problem, especially amongst newer members of the scientific community, of people reading ahead to the conclusions of the paper and taking them as fact without having read the methods and results  sections, or critically analyzing the data.   This is very poor practice for many reasons but the main point is that just because the article was accepted by the journal you should not assume that the work was reviewed stringently, carried out correctly or reported objectively.

The conclusions contain the take-home message of the paper but these other sections are just as, if not more, important. Here’s what you should look out for in each section.

Introduction:

The introduction builds the story and explains what previous research has shown and what this new research will add to the current knowledge base. This section helps you to determine if the authors did a thorough review of the field, and if it’s your field, you (should) know whether the authors left out any particular papers that are important to cite. If key papers are left out of the introduction, how careful were they with the rest of the paper?

Methods section:

The methods section should clearly and thoroughly outline exactly what was done.  Read it carefully. Are the controls described? Did they modify commercial kits, and if so do they explain how? Are they doing the right comparisons? Did they include enough data points?

If the data is qPCR, then take the time to look even more carefully. According to the MIQE guidelines, the authors need to explain the nucleic acid purification method, yields, and purities, which kits they used, how they determined the efficiency of their assays, and how many replicates they did. There are a lot of factors that can influence qPCR data and if the paper is leaving out some of the information, you can’t make accurate conclusions on the data.

Results section:

Here is the part where the authors interpret their data. Each figure is reviewed one by one. Read this part critically.  How do the controls look? How do the qPCR curves look? Are the Westerns clean? Is all the data in graphs and tables instead of allowing you to see how it actually looks? You do these experiments too and you know how data should look.  The quality of the data is as important as what experiments they did.

Conclusions/Summary:

Here is where the authors have the chance to pontificate on their work and tell you what they think it means.  They are making their conclusions based on the results. Now if you have read the whole paper, you are in a position to either agree or disagree. Do you agree with how they interpreted the data? Can you think of alternative explanations for their results? Are they being objective? You’ve looked at the results and you’ve reviewed their methods.  What do you think?

As scientists we all have our theories and we want our data to fit our model.  We want to be right. Sometimes the need to be right overrides accuracy.  It is human nature. I once had a PI tell me “If you want to prove me wrong, go find another lab”. The data didn’t fit his model and he wasn’t open to changing it, which was bad news.

The message in this article today is to please read your papers. Please, please do not just read the conclusions and take them as truth. They aren’t always the only explanation – you may not actually agree. Besides critical review of scientific papers is a necessary skill and will serve you well. Not only as a future reviewer of journal articles, but as writer of your own research.

Let us know in the comments — do you RTFP?

Straight out of the tap, water contains microorganisms, endotoxins, DNase and RNase, salts and other impurities that could gobble up your experiment in one bite. Of course we avoid this drama completely by using purified water from which these nasties have been removed. But how is this purification done?

Well in practice a number of techniques are used, each of which can remove a different set of impurities.

So here are the techniques:

1. Distillation. A technology as old as the hills (or at least as the stills that were hidden in the hills). Water is heated to its boiling point then condensed back to liquid. This will remove many impurities but impurities with a boiling point equal to or less than that of water will also be carried over in to the distillate.

2. Microfiltration. In this technique, pressure is used to force the water through a filter with pore sizes of 1 to 0.1 micron in order to remove particulate matter. Filter diameters lower than 0.2 micron removes bacteria – so-called cold sterilisation.

3. Ultrafiltration uses even smaller pore sizes (down to 0.003 micron). These are essentially molecular sieves, which remove molecules with a diameter larger than the pore size. It can be used to remove viruses, endotoxins, RNase and DNase

4. Reverse osmosis. If you thought that ultrafiltration used impressively small pore sizes, you’ll be even more impressed by reverse osmosis . Reverse osmosis filters have pore sizes of less than 0.001 microns, which allows them to sieve ions depending on their diameter. This is used for desalting the water.

5. Filtration through a bed of activated carbon is useful for removing things like chloride ions and organic compounds, which are adsorbed onto the surface of the carbon.

6. UV radiation. We all know what UV radiation, at specific wavelengths, can do to DNA and microorganisms. So UV is an obvious way to remove microorganisms from the water. It can also clean up the water by breaking down certain organic compounds into less harmful products.

7. Deionization/ Ion exchange. This technique removes ions from the water by passing it through a resin bed containing a mixture of cationic and anionic resins. Positive ions in the water are attracted to the cationic resin particles and negative ions are (yes, you’ve guessed it) attracted to the anionic resins. The result is that nicely deionised water comes out of the other end of the resin bed.

Commercially available water, or water purification systems will typically use a combination of these. The higher the water purity grade, the more techniques used.

Any questions or comments? Just jump in and join the discussion in the comments section below. The water’s lovely.

Most of this activity is overdue. Because of recruitment freezes, teams have been stretched and they are working longer hours - often for less pay - and maintaining a larger workload. As a result of this, we recruiters have witnessed a very unusual trend — under the strain of increased workloads, employers are getting sloppy with the recruitment process.

You know from my previous articles about how employers love to use phone interviews in the screening process, but more and more often in recent months, candidates tell us that the phone interviewer calls them 15-20 minutes (or more) late past the scheduled interview time. This is very frustrating and seemingly unprofessional. It would be nearly inexcusable the other way around (if you failed to show up for your interview), but these times are unique. This sloppiness is likely unrelated to the culture or professionalism of the company and more commonly attributed to the multiple hats that people are wearing within organizations at the moment.

While the knee-jerk reaction seems to be to throw your hands up and declare that this company unfit to work for, I would recommend a different course of action: forgive and forget.. and most importantly, make sure that your behavior, words and tone do not reflect your frustration. Instead, take the high road. Would it make you feel better to ‘tell someone off”? Maybe. But will it advance you closer to what you want? No. Will it change them? Probably not. Instead, plan for this possibility and figure out what you would do if it happens to you. (Things seem so much less dramatic when you know it might be coming.)

If it does happen, chalk it up to how much this company needs your help and demonstrate how different you are from other candidates. Show them you can roll with the punches and that you are more professional than other candidates. A job search will throw you all types of curve balls, so be prepared and forgive and forget.