By Ian Hayman You’re sitting in lab, fiddling with the newest duct tape/wire/clamp/tubing/ring stand amalgamation you jury-rigged to support your experimental apparatus. Everything looks good (or as good as it can look), so you start your experiment and head to lunch. Calamity strikes. Upon returning to lab, your monstrosity has fallen apart and your precious … Continue reading Tea! Earl Grey! Hot! How Star Trek Replicators are not so Sci-Fi After All

By Ryan Hylton, PhD The advantages of cryo-electron tomography In cell biology publications, many mechanistic models are built on a research team’s interpretations of relatively indirect observations. For instance, changes in protein expression levels are determined without direct visualization of the protein of interest. Fluorescent microscopy can reveal the rough morphology of intracellular compartments and … Continue reading The Benefits of Exploring the Unknown: How Cryo-Electron Tomography of Neuronal Growth Cones Revealed a New Function for an Old Protein

By Gaelyn Lyons On June 7th, I presented my first biomedical sciences PhD student seminar. I was excited to share the research I've done over the past year with my peers and obtain feedback that I can use moving forward. A week before my seminar, Dr. Ralph Keil, the biomedical sciences program director, sent me … Continue reading Can You Repeat That? The Importance of Rigor, Reproducibility, and Transparency in Science

By Rebecca Fleeman Over the past two decades a large portion of the public has formed unfavorable feelings towards the pharmaceutical industry1. With soaring drug prices and the opioid epidemic, many question the financial intentions of not only drug companies, but also the doctors who accept financial kickbacks from pharma. This distrust kindled government action … Continue reading Here Comes the Sun: Updates to the Sunshine Act

Comic By Madison Kuhn Based on "Human brain organoids assemble functionally integrated bilateral optic vesicles"

By Wenxue Lin, PhD Although the prevalence of cigarette smoking has decreased from 20.9% (2005) to 14.0% (2019),1,2 cigarette smoking still remains the primary preventable cause of death in the United States and is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths annually.3 In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration declared that reducing nicotine in tobacco products … Continue reading Are We Winning the War on Tobacco?

Comic By Rebecca Fleeman

By Stephanie Baringer We know that science isn’t always a perfect, well, science. Despite our best efforts and rationale, things don’t always work the way we expect them too. Maybe a cytotoxic drug isn’t toxic to your cultured cells, or maybe your mouse model doesn’t behave in the anticipated way. These encounters highlight why validation … Continue reading DREADDing Validation Experiments

By Greg Kincheloe Every year around spring, many people can be heard sniffling and sneezing their way through life because of seasonal allergies.  It can be frustrating and borderline infuriating to experience, and as a result, often brings a renewed appreciation for things that we normally wouldn’t notice in any other season.  There’s truly nothing … Continue reading Who Nose What Happens When We Breathe?

By Savannah Marshall Every laboratory researcher produces nearly 15 times the amount of plastic waste as the average individual.1 The sturdiness of plastic that makes it so desirable for use in laboratories creates a large problem when it comes to disposal. A plastic bottle takes about 450 years to decompose, and it leeches toxins into … Continue reading Research Laboratories Brought Plastic Into This World; Now Can They Do Their Part to Take it Out?