Blogs

The October 2013 edition of Bio-Link Connections is now available! Visit our newsletter page to download your copy and learn more about the wonderful things that Bio-Link programs are doing across the country and sharing with each other. Read more

Hello, my name is Kristine and I'm currently enrolled in State College of Florida's Biotechnology program. I have always been in love with science and remember watching documentaries and television shows wanting to work in the labs that the actors/featured scientist were in. I thought in order to get to work in such a place you needed to go to Harvard or some high class university first.

When I started my journey back to school I was working as a certified nursing assistant (CNA), and majoring in nursing. CNA's are the low man on the health care... Read more

If it's one thing I've learned in my technique classes is that there is a lot of 'hurry up and wait' procedures. Working with proteins is definitely no exception.

For the past month or so my protein class has been working on purifying bacterial alkaline phosphatase (BAP). Rewinding back to day one of the process, we received our bacteria that had already been induced so our first step was to lyse the cells. Method used for lysing = sonication. I have to admit, this is my least favorite method for lysing cells. The sound of the sonicator... Read more

Who is the microscopic answer to the Blue Man group? Find out in this week's blog post!

Well, they sure weren't cute little carrot colonies.

There was a serious dichotomy to this week's work. Everything either turned out fabulously or fell flat on its face. Let's start with Cell Culturing:

The carrots look like an entirely successful experiment in growing mold and bacteria, so it was back to the drawing board on that one. And I'm seriously mourning my lovingly-tended CHO cells. I have a feeling that next week I'll be doing the Chinese hamster ovary... Read more

This story just cracked me up! Gel photography with a cell phone? Can it work?

So here's what happened:

In Mo Bio we've been working on cutting the pAMP we purified from our super sweet transformed E. coli JM 109 cells with BamH I and Hind III and then electrophoresing to compare our results against negative and positive controls to see how we did. But after bathing the gels in ethidium bromide we discovered - eeek! - no photography paper. So we tried taking pictures with our phone:

But we couldn't get the furthest and... Read more

Our NSF ATE grant project was featured in the October International Innovations magazine.

Training Food Safety Technicians :

http://www.research-europe.com/magazine/REGIONAL/NA17/index.html Read more

Documenting life on the job at Biotechnology Careers.org

by Hallie Golden

An average day during Elizabeth Stahl's internship meant documenting the fermentation process. During the lifetime of an individual "Ferm," she takes samples every 12 hours, with the first two getting a yeast count, and determing each sample's pH, Brix reading, NIR readings and temperature. Stahl also ran the ion exchange (IC) everyday to determine sulfate levels in the 200 proof and final ethanol product. In between testing fermentation and product, she collected samples to check the levels of solids.

A... Read more

Just kidding. We're too nerdy to be this coordinated. Allison and Holly are just good sports.

Along with the hoodies, jeans and wind-tousled hair, the autumn weather has brought a slew of new classes:

Molecular Biology I:

This past week in Mo Bio we worked on learning to set up restriction digests. While I was initially intimidated by the calculations, I warmed up when I realized how "logic puzzle-esque" it really is. We also whipped some competent Escherichia coli JM109 cells, by taking a sample from a mid-log phase suspension culture, spinning those puppies... Read more

Hello again! I bet you thought I forgot my login. (I did.)

Wow! What a difference a year makes. It's fall in school again and I'm still plugging away, only from Las Vegas now. It was so hard to say goodbye to Portland, the people and animals that I love there but this where I need to be now. I'm excited to see what adventures UNLV has in store for me.

Classes have begun and I am finding my way through a new campus and a new schedule. What I mean by finding my... Read more

Learn about Bio-Link's Course in a Box program and how it can help you develop new courses more quickly.

by Hallie Golden

New on the job at a biotech company that's developing novel therapies for treatment of pancreatic diseases, you're given a vial of human embryonic stem cells. Your boss asks you to use them to generate primitive endoderm (a special type of tissue) from them and devise a method to determine how well your method worked (the efficiency of your directed differentiation).

Piece of cake, right? Well, not exactly.

On day seven you return to... Read more