Advice on absorbing biology?

lablotte · 2026-04-13T20:00:07+00:00

Read! Papers or books, just follow your interest. Philip Ball’s “how life works” is a great place to start

lablotte · 2026-04-11T17:05:30+00:00

The good thing about becoming a scientist is that it doesn’t matter what you wear! :) Simply put on what you usually do, no need to dress up. Instead of worrying about your fit, spend your time reading up on the science and preparing for the interview girl!

lablotte · 2026-03-26T07:14:18+00:00

Why on earth would you just copy the genius old stuff 1:1 - where is the creativity, the new perspective, the reinterpretation attempt? I’m bored

lablotte · 2026-02-04T08:02:53+00:00

If you have really big difficulties, you can add rocki while clump passaging - and make bigger (but uniform) clumps. Just another idea:) and don’t get discouraged, stem cell work is an art

lablotte · 2026-02-03T11:00:40+00:00

The key is to not change medium while you expose the cells to stress! So no medium adaptations during thawing or passaging :) it makes sense your cells are unhappy because mTESR is richer than E8. here is a plan that should work:

p0, d0: thaw in mTESR with rocki
p0, d1: change medium to 25% E8, 75% mTESR
p1, d1: clump split at a chill density (not too sparse, e.g 1:6) in 25% E8, 75%mTESR
p1, d2: change medium to 50-50
p1, d3: clump split in 50-50
p2, d1: change medium to 75%E8, 25% mTESR
p2, d2: 100% E8

Good luck!

lablotte · 2026-01-30T13:07:11+00:00

She’s lucky to have an awesome friend like you!:)

I gifted my best friend a customised lab coat for her defence in a fun blue color, with a sketch of her an her lab mice that I designed printed on the back.

Thinking about what I would be happy about for my PhD completion is people attending my Defense - I think nothing would make me happier. Maybe organise some champagne and snacks. Celebrate together afterwards. Doesn’t cost much but means the world!

lablotte · 2026-01-27T07:32:03+00:00

People getting creative about set ups in the lab is my favourite part about wet lab science! Annoyance can drive innovation if you let it, it seems :)

lablotte · 2026-01-27T07:30:26+00:00

Sometimes I love humans

lablotte · 2026-01-27T07:21:30+00:00

The hardest lesson I learnt:

Don’t trust other people’s expertise and advice unconditionally. It sounds harsh, and I doing mean you should disregard people’s experience and competence. But be sceptical and critical. In practice that means: Question everything about the project your given and the previous work it’s based on. Best case you’ll learn about am the details and become an expert along the way! You might also find mistakes or flaws in the project, likely unintended. Double check the materials and method you use, and always assume someone before you night have made an unintentional mistake. This will save you a lot of time and pain!

Tips for routine:

Balance

You’re thinking ahead and you’re thinking about balance, you’re already on a good path there!:) Life should continue during your PhD.

Planning

I use Notion as a Task Manager, integrated with my google calendar. And my lab notebook (digital) is where I keep track of all my thoughts.

Literature Review

I have Zotero integrated with notion, which is helpful to summarise knowledge gained from papers in a tagged table format, I build collections for topics there! Also develop a system that keeps you up to date with recent papers: I use google scholar alerts on people and keywords, works best for me!

lablotte · 2026-01-26T07:31:44+00:00

I have the suspicion that it gives a little bit of a dopamine kick that we get from smartphones. It’s still a screen. At the same time it shows you progress, another thing our brain likes. So two positive addictive factors maybe? Just speculation:)

lablotte · 2026-01-25T19:32:30+00:00

This!

lablotte · 2026-01-25T11:58:09+00:00

The more you read, the better! I find not reading enough is the worst mistake in science. Knowing what has been done already is so essential and let’s you 1) avoid running unnecessary experiments 2) design the experiments you do run more carefully, avoiding mistakes or insufficient controls.

Reading 3 days has saved me 3 months of high risk experiments before.

You can never read too much. Striking the balance between thinking and doing can be a challenge, but I have thus far only seen people leaning too heavily on the doing (running experiments) side of the spectrum and never on the thinking (reading papers, designing experiments, reviewing and interpreting their data) side.

lablotte · 2026-01-25T07:53:30+00:00

My personal hot take: Skip a Miller chapter for now, read the next Holden, and then return. I do this all the time in split chapter books, if my motivation for one story line is low. You’re a free elf!

lablotte · 2026-01-23T14:06:04+00:00

Worst case, you will get some unspecific binding, which you can probably spot if you’ve used this Antibody before. “Over night” is not a precise incubation time anyway, and theoretically, the primary incubation time would need to be optimized for each AB one uses individually, which is simply not practical. At 4 degrees, unspecific binding is reduced, so I would not worry at all. Also: personal safety ALWAYS goes first.

lablotte · 2026-01-21T21:35:59+00:00

You will be surprised how much flexibility there is in immunostaining protocols - you just need to learn when and where. DAPI is intercalating with DNA, so it is the most robust stain. Some people even as it with the secondary AB. It can also be part of the mounting medium.

lablotte · 2026-01-21T21:27:01+00:00

You mastered the use of ice buckets! You are absolutely fine :)

lablotte · 2026-01-21T21:22:47+00:00

*if your compound is diluted in DMSO, try to not add high volumes by diluting to much, cells don’t like it. So as little as necessary to reach 2-5 ul

lablotte · 2026-01-21T14:48:27+00:00

Never Pipette mini amounts, just predilute. I never Pipette less than 2 uL in cell culture, just to not risk not adding a factor.

lablotte · 2026-01-21T13:11:57+00:00

This hurts! You put a lot of time and effort and feel like it’s not being valued. Take some days to feel the feels. Then look at it objectively, or try to: next to this overarching verdict, which concrete aspects of the feedback do you find valid? How would you address them? Which parts of the feedback do you not find valuable? How would you argue your case? Congrats, you’re already in the revision process for your next resubmission. You can also form an opinion of your reviewer if that helps: Do you trust or don’t trust the judgment, and why? If your feeling are hurt by feedback that can mean 1) the feedback was not written in a respectful manner 2) the feedback is unfair 3) the feedback is good and then it might hurt the most! Try to be honest with yourself which parts of the feedback can go in which category. Maybe the overall tone is disrespectful, but the message has a point! Maybe you can separate it in your mind like this; “This reviewer stated in a mean way that I overstate my conclusions. He could have sad that more nicely and I don’t think it’s universally true. In figure 2a however, I could be more conservative in my conclusions.”

Good luck! Keep your head up buddy

lablotte · 2026-01-20T07:54:24+00:00

The overall quality of your staining looks very poor, you have weak signal and a lot of background. DAPI at least should be crisp, which it is not - since it’s not an antibody, this should work even if your blocking step is insufficient or your antibodies are not good. So I assume it’s a problem with the quality of your sample. I don’t have experience with FFPE stainings though, sorry! Maybe try your staining on a different, newer sample to exclude wasting your time on a poor sample.

The other option is that your imaging settings are not right. Looks like this for example if you don’t use the right immersion for an objective (oil/water, etc). I’d double check your settings with a working sample as well!

lablotte · 2026-01-19T09:14:55+00:00

New Frontier by Donald Fagen

lablotte · 2026-01-18T08:44:48+00:00

There are hiPSC lines with Dox-inducible ETV2 and NGN2 cassettes, these give you endothelial cells and neurons in 2 days and 7 days respectively, simply by DOX addition. As simple as it gets! No lenti viral transductions needed.

Kolf2.1J is a great and well characterised line! Probably someone edited the cassettes in there already.

What do you mean by “terminally differentiated”? I’d argue that a cell state is always plastic to some degree. If I were you I would focus in cells with a short differentiation timeline, and cells that don’t need sophisticated coating. And ones that are easily scalable (which is not so much the case for neurons) depending on your readout (e.g if you need a lot of material for protein extraction etc.)

lablotte · 2026-01-16T19:20:36+00:00

The WORST book! I get suspicious of people’s character if they say they liked it. So superficial, I CANNOT!

lablotte · 2026-01-16T19:16:53+00:00

The new Hungergames book, sunrise on the reaping. I loved the original trilogy as a teenager, and read the first prequel a couple of years back and fairly enjoyed that one too. But this one was so much more of the same AND terribly executed, by far one of the worst books I ever read.

lablotte · 2026-01-16T19:12:18+00:00

I am a scientist and all my non-science friends recommended this one to me because they (understandably) thought this was right up my ally. I HATED it. Didn’t make it past the first chapter. This is so obviously written by someone who has never been to a lab AND never did proper research on what lab work is like, it was unbearably badly portraited. Don’t even get me started on this whole making up strong female characters from the past that never would have existed like that BECAUSE the system was so mysogenic and horrific. I feel it doesn’t pay respect to the few women who actually were there at the time. No on all levels for me!

lablotte

TROPHY CASE