Only in the past three decades has Danio Rerio (Zebrafish) started to call the lab their home. Since then, they have helped in finding cures for cancer, understanding more about embryological (vertebrate) development, and vertebrate behavior. One lucky zebrafish has also gone where few humans have been: space. On June 22nd 1976 the space station Salyut 5 was launched, with one of the crew members being a zebra danio.
Model Organism Week: Research’s Next Top Model
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Drosophila melanogaster: The Fruit Fly.
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If fruit flies could have an ego and could understand their contributions to research they would be pretty proud little model organisms. They would walk around on your fruit like, “ha! How about that? Whose banana now? This is my banana now…”
BenchFly’s Model Organism Week
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Many of the questions that we ask in research are to ultimately find an answer or understand a biological process in humans. However, human research is often too difficult, risky and expensive to undertake. Enter: model organisms.
UCSC Visigene: A Gene Expression Database You Need
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Whether we’ve just started a project or we’re expanding our current one, there are few things more overwhelming than learning about a new gene from square one. Just understanding the logistics can be a killer (Where is it expressed? What other proteins interact with it?…) and usually necessitates reading/skimming/sleeping through a chest-high pile of reprints. Until now…
Why Do Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail?
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Happy New Year and welcome back! It’s Monday morning and the holiday season is now officially in the rear view window. The crowded airports, the family fun and the blistering New Year’s day hangover are now all a thing of the past. However, somewhere between the first glass of champagne and Auld Lang Syne we probably made a few resolutions that “this year we’re going to stick with…”
Scientists: Naughty or Nice?
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With the holidays upon us and the year winding down, the time has come for reflection. There have certainly been ups and downs and we can only hope we’ve been fortunate enough to have more of the former than the latter. But have we?
Ethical Dilemmas, Micromanagers and that Evil Email
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Another juicy issue! Thanks for all of the great questions! We’re addressing three questions each month, so If you don’t see your question this time, keep an eye out for our future issues where it will likely show up! Send your questions to DearDora@benchfly.com.
“Seeing” the Big Picture: Vision Revolution Author Mark Changizi
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As research scientists, many of us spend a very large amount of time working on a very small subject. In fact, it’s not unusual for a biochemist to go through their entire career without ever physically observing the protein or pathway they work on. As we hyper-focus on our own niche of science, we run the risk of forgetting to take the blinders off to see where our slice of work fits in to the rest of the pie.
How to Work-Up a Reaction
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Whether brute-forcing through hundreds of mini-preps or setting up so many reactions that you run out of round-bottoms, it’s not unusual to feel like a robot from time to time. It’s normal. However, if that robotic feeling doesn’t seem to be going away and you have a craving for WD40, call your doctor – or mechanic – immediately. Watch this video to see what can happen to an otherwise normal grad student after too much repetition…
Holiday Wishes Do (Sometimes) Come True!
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Our Holiday Shopping Guide provided suggestions on how to fulfill the wishes of those around us this holiday season. But what about ol’ numero uno… what about us?
