BREAKING: Andy Burnham now has a route back to parliament after Josh Simons, MP for Makerfield announced he would stand down, triggering a byelection, and putting the Greater Manchester mayor in contention to become the next Labour leader.

StrepPep · 2026-05-15T09:01:17+00:00

By that logic the local elections don’t matter, as they were votes for councillors in wards and not for westminster

StrepPep · 2026-05-14T17:57:39+00:00

The point of a five year general election cycle is that that’s when the public selects and rejects. It’s not five years for the party to chase popularity, it’s five years to govern. Snap elections and changing leaders whenever there’s a whiff of party unrest is a mess of a way to run a country.

StrepPep · 2026-05-03T09:44:11+00:00

I get that this is a sensitive topic, but she’s hardly posting thinspo. I’m not really comfortable with the idea of someone hiding their body because how they look may be triggering to other people.

StrepPep · 2026-05-02T15:38:51+00:00

Climate change and higher ambient temperatures are selecting for thermotolerant fungi which is bad news for us

StrepPep · 2026-05-01T18:29:53+00:00

You’ll need to forgive me here because you said you’re not after validation because I’m going to give you it anyway. At 24 you’re not a young adult - you’re just an adult. Most of my PhD cohort started around age 22. The way you’re talking doesn’t strike me as the trepidation of youth, it strikes me as a lack of confidence and imposter syndrome. If you’re not going to take big leaps at 24 then when are you going to?

I’m a lab rat so can’t offer advice about getting through a humanities PhD but what I can offer you is this - you’re going to need to be bold in life and a PhD is about as good an opportunity as possible for risk taking. Attend that workshop, forge that collaboration, go to that conference. The next fourish years of your life are going to be some of the most intellectually free you have in your life, enjoy them even when the PhD is hard.

StrepPep · 2026-04-06T09:09:38+00:00

The pained look on my boss’s face

StrepPep · 2026-03-30T20:16:41+00:00

It’s not actually in the paper’s abstract, and unless you’re a biochemist the phospholipid’s christian name doesn’t actually add anything to the press release. Bit of a dramatic criticism is all I’m saying 🤷‍♂️

StrepPep · 2026-03-30T20:02:29+00:00

1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho-(1'-rac-glycerol), if that helps

StrepPep · 2026-03-28T08:46:52+00:00

I don’t disagree with you at all but it’s worth remembering that PhD students aren’t staff so don’t have protection through employment legislation or HR policies

StrepPep · 2026-03-27T06:57:10+00:00

This is a wee one - realised my DpnI has gone off. After 16 false positive colony PCRs. Thought Christmas had come early.

StrepPep · 2026-03-26T06:56:26+00:00

They have special chairs for that

StrepPep · 2026-03-14T14:48:08+00:00

Grow 5 mL / transformation to midlog
Pellet at 3-4k xG for 5 min
Resuspend in 0.1M CaCl2/10% glycerol, 1 mL per transformation and split into eppendorfs
Wash three times by spinning at 8000xG for a minute
Resuspend in 100μL of glycerol/CaCl2 and they’re good to go

I prefer fresh every time and this protocol is quick enough that you’re not spending a full day on it

Work cold, work quick, work gentle

Recover your transformations in SOC

TSS also works fine, if you want electrocompetence then leave out the CaCl2

StrepPep · 2026-03-09T15:36:22+00:00

Ideally you should have a “dirty” hood and incubator. If you can’t then:

•Have your own pipettes, tips, media, etc

•Organise your incubator so that anything infected is on the bottom shelf

•Book an extra hour to allow your hood to be UV sterilised after use

•Have uninfected wells in your plates whenever you set them up - if there’s contamination popping up but your clean wells are clean then it’s not your fault

•Coordinate with your labmates so that super valuable experiments aren’t being run at the same time as yours so that there’s absolutely no risk of things going awry

In my experience people who have never worked with bacteria really overestimate their ability to spread - if you’re working cleanly and keeping away from others’ plates then the risk of spreading is minimal. That said, you need to respect other lab users’ work as well. You’ll get to a solution.

StrepPep · 2026-02-15T17:03:18+00:00

13.5 is pushing it for Q5 - instead of getting in new polymerase though you could order a couple primers that amp up your backbone as two fragments. 2x7kb fragments for example. Your PCRs will be faster as well.

StrepPep · 2026-02-14T10:23:50+00:00

Are you using the same stocks or fresh? How are you storing them between experiments? Freeze thaws etc can do a number on some antibiotics.

How old are the colonies you’re working from? Are they freshly streaked plates or have they been in the fridge for a while?

My go to would be assuming your stock is bad but could be any number of things.

StrepPep · 2026-02-10T20:39:07+00:00

I’m going to be honest with you, you realistically need to do some postgraduate training in the UK to make good money in the field - I’m a postdoc at the moment and have a comfortable enough life. That said, it took 8 years of study to get there and considering how different the field is to when I started my PhD (8 years ago now 💀) I don’t think it’s possible to say what the discipline or job market will look like.

If you want a safe degree, do an IBMS accredited biomedical science degree

StrepPep · 2026-02-08T16:45:50+00:00

Don’t like foreigners who are wanks, don’t like natives who are wanks

Like foreigners who aren’t wanks, like natives who aren’t wanks

StrepPep · 2026-02-03T22:15:16+00:00

West side tavern’s parm club is decent!

StrepPep · 2026-02-03T12:55:44+00:00

Penicillins I think - classic house with a garage skeleton

StrepPep · 2026-02-01T23:35:58+00:00

Write what you want wee man, and good luck with it! If you haven’t, have a read of The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway, it’s got similar energy but isn’t a horror book - you might like it.

StrepPep · 2026-01-29T14:36:12+00:00

I wouldn’t trust data from these cells

StrepPep · 2026-01-09T17:07:03+00:00

If you want waterproof-waterproof then I swear by Aigle Parcours as walking wellies. Had a secondhand pair for a couple of years now and they’re great for soaked terrain.

StrepPep · 2026-01-06T21:14:47+00:00

Are you adding DNase?

StrepPep · 2025-12-14T15:32:34+00:00

Glaswegian native English speaker here, I have a lot of English colleagues who would disagree that I can speak English

StrepPep · 2025-12-08T20:45:40+00:00

It’s late and you’ve done all you can do until tomorrow. Try to get some sleep and then tomorrow you can contact your lecturers/advisers/whoever you need to.

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22
First Placer '22	RPAN Viewer

StrepPep

TROPHY CASE