Hi. I have an interest in the topic of molecular biology and lots of other topics that fall under biology. I have a big passion for lots of different sciences and like to read research papers about different things. I enjoy the process of finding different connections between the topics. I'm currently self-studying pretty much all the time. It would be really cool to collaborate with others, learn from each other and share ideas!

Hello im a student almost stepping into college and im trying to consider molecular biology as my first choice and biochem as my second but im really struggling with research-heavy stuff. I really want to pursue a course that's related to molecular biology but is it worth it? or are there other courses that I can take without having to struggle with research-heavy stuff. I found myself very interested in biology, especially molecular biology. Please feel free to respond!! I really appreciate it. Thank you!

How are the opportunities after one gets a master's degree in molecular biology? I have a CS degree and find a job is a nightmare, tons of certifications, portfolio projects, rounds and rounds of interviews for an entry level job. Would getting a Master in biology let me find a job in the field or is it the same dead end as CS with tons of investment on the side to even get your foot in the door?

Hello everyone, I hope you can help me with a problem I am facing in my work, I extract RNA from Capsicum chinense leaves without treatment, the RNA does not degrade, however, when I treat it with the DNA-free™ Kit ambion by life technologies AM1906, all the RNA degrades, I would like you to help me with the methodology you apply to use this DNAsa, as I apply the manual and it has not worked for me.

As a bonus, I apply 1 microlitre of DNAse in a total volume of 25 microlitres, 1 microlitre of inactivator and 2.5 microlitres of buffer.

Thank you for your help.

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I live in the netherlands and am about to complete my double major Bsc alongside with a minor in biomedical research in practice, what type of masters whould lead to best job avaibility and wage? I was thinking of either doing molecular medicine, biotechnology or genetics.

Hello. I am familiar with dideoxy chain terminators (ddC) that are used to block the 3' extension by DNA polymerase. But what about ligation? Is there a modified nucleotide that, when inserted at the 3' end, will simultaneously: 1-prevent extension by a DNA polymerase and 2-allow ligation to the 5'end of an oligonucleotide.

Thanks for any tip!

I'm pretty new to the field, and would like to start from somewhere

What would be the best CAD software to learn and work with if you are:

1. A beginner / student
2. An experienced professional

The question specifically addresses the protein design of molecular motors. Just like they design cars and jet aircraft in automotive and aerospace industries, there's gotta be the software to design molecular vehicles and synthetic cells / bacteria

What would you recommend?

Hi everyone,

I recently ran a 1.5% agarose gel in 1X TAE buffer at 90 V for 50 minutes. While the bands for the DNA samples in the other lanes appeared well-defined, the bands of both DNA ladders (50 bp and 100 bp), located at the ends of the gel did not separate properly and lacked good resolution.

Both ladders are ready-to-use and from the same brand, and have worked well in previous runs, producing clear and distinct bands, but over the past few days, the haven't been resolving as expected.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue or have any suggestions on what might be causing this? Thanks in advance!

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Hello everybody. I'm currently writing my PhD thesis and need to write the Kd of the affinity of the complex nickel-NTA with a His6 on a protein. The problem is that I've found two very different values. In the first paper (older) they say 10^-13 M and in the second one 10 uM, which is quite different. Do you have any info on the subject? Thank you very very much in advance.

Papers:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8114690/

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/bc900309n

Needing to do some library prep for 16S and ITS. Our old post doc that left the lab usually was the one that prepped all the reagents and separated by run. We use the Plantium II master mix, but I noticed that it came in 2X concentration. Do I need to bring the working solution to 1X? Thanks!

I‘m searching for phd programs in industry. I have a master in molecular biology and 5 years of oncology research experience in the industry.

Best would be german speaking countries?

Thanks for your ideas

Hello, I got accepted from the University of Queensland, Australia and waiting on some good options for US, which would be more worth it, I am highly focused on obtaining a job, so please let me know about your experiences and what would be a more suitable place for me...it'll be so so helpful to me

I assume there's nothing available or down the pipe, but by chance anyone know any cool research or breakthroughs that are promising?

Hi everyone. I’m wondering if anyone else has used the king fisher apex for dna isolation from saliva before? We keep having a recurring issue where dna binding beads will end up in our elution plate. We’ve told the company before, had our machine recalibrated, and follow the protocol to a T. We’ve even increased the volume of elution solution in the elution plate as suggested by the protocol for bead carry over. Has anyone had this issue before? If so what did you do to fix the issue?

Hello all,

I am a graduate student working on my master's in exercise science. It is mostly sports performance focused, but I am interested in making a gradual transition toward molecular physiology for my PhD, and enrolled to take molecular biology. This class has been fairly challenging, as the most "biology" I've done was anatomy and physiology during undergraduate. The professor has also warned me that I am in over my head and should drop the class, but I am determined to do well as this is relevant to my future career. Would you all have any advice for how to approach this class, and how to do my best? Thank you!

Kindly give me an interesting topic, which is timely right now to report for my biochemistry class relted to Molecular Biology in Human.

I’m currently pursuing a bachelor’s in Cell and Molecular Biology and planning to do a master’s in Biotechnology. What career opportunities would that open up for me? Or should I consider a different field for my master’s to improve job prospects and earning potential? Please advise.

I'm pursuing a master's degree where I incorporated a terpene into a polysaccharide-based hydrogel and will evaluate the osteoinductive activity of this biomaterial in mesenchymal stem cells using molecular biology techniques. To enhance the research, I found it interesting to conduct a network pharmacology analysis to explore potential targets of my terpene that might be related to the osteogenesis process. Here's what I did so far:

1. Searched for terpene targets using SwissTargetPrediction and osteogenesis-related genes using GeneCards.
2. Filtered and intersected the results through a Venn diagram to identify common targets.
3. Input the common targets into STRING and downloaded the TSV file to analyze the PPI network in Cytoscape.

After performing various analyses, I would like your opinions on the best approach moving forward:

1. Should I perform GO and KEGG enrichment analysis on all the common targets?
2. Analyze the PPI network in Cytoscape, calculate degree, closeness, etc., and select the top genes (e.g., above the median or a fixed number like 10, 20, 30) as hub genes, and then conduct GO and KEGG enrichment on these hub genes?
3. Similar to option 2, but use CytoHubba with MCC as the criterion to select hub genes?
4. Group the targets into clusters and evaluate GO and KEGG for each cluster. If so, which clustering method is better, MCODE or MCL?
5. If I analyze both hub genes and clusters, how should I integrate these results? How should I select the clusters—only the largest ones or some other criteria?

I’m looking for guidance on how to structure and refine my analysis. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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I'm testing this fcking kit these days

It's result is weird.

Have anyone used this?

Tell me your experience please.

Hey all!

I graduated last year with a Master of Science in Pathobiology. Before that, I earned an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology and conducted over two years of post-baccalaureate research at the NIH. In total, I have 5+ years of molecular research experience, along with lecture and lab teaching experience. Throughout my research career, I gained expertise in a variety of molecular techniques and specialized in flow cytometry.

About two months before I graduated, I began my job search. I applied to over 100 positions for which I was qualified and/or overqualified, along with a few “dream job” applications where I was slightly underqualified but still felt within a reasonable grasp. Out of those 100+ applications, I received about five interviews. For one of those opportunities, I advanced to the final stage of a two-month application process, only to be rejected after the final round of interviews.

From what I can tell, my CV is strong, and I’ve tried nearly everything I can think of. I’ve reached out to recruiters and principal investigators (PIs) directly, created customized cover letters for every position, and even offered to meet with prospective employers for coffee to discuss their research. Despite these efforts, I keep coming up short.

After about four months of job searching, I needed to work and ended up taking a position in an unrelated field—food service. I was quickly promoted to a corporate role, which has provided financial stability for the time being. However, I’m incredibly discouraged, as my passion lies in working within the biological sciences. While I’ve been able to apply some of my research background to my current position (e.g., assisting with the acquisition of FDA licensure for my company), I feel lost when it comes to re-entering the field. I want to either elevate or make a lateral salary transition, but I’ve now been out of the biomedical field for over a year, and I worry that the longer this continues, the harder it will be to merge back in.

My questions for everyone out there are:

1. Are others experiencing similar struggles finding employment in their field of research?
2. Are there pathways I might be missing to re-enter the field? Recently, I’ve been applying to Field Application Scientist positions through Thermo Fisher, but despite tailoring my CV and cover letters and reaching out to recruiters, I feel like I’m getting nowhere.
3. What methods have you used to make connections outside of academia that have helped open doors?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to hearing your stories and advice. While I haven’t given up hope on finding a good career path, this year-long search is definitely starting to take a toll on me.

hello, im a 2nd year genetics and bioengineering student and i couldnt find an effective way to study and memorize things for our mbg course. our professor really values visualizing the information instead of writing it both during the course and in the exams. although i'd call myself a visual learner, i couldn't bring myself to memorize things that are taught. :/

do you have any study tips or tricks that could help me learn throughly?

As I understand it, the chromosomes replicate then pair up in prep for the nucleus to split. I'm confused because weren't they already paired? If they replicated, did they not replicate paired? I know I'm missing something. This book is very general, but I need to understand it instead of just memorizing the info.

Hi everyone!

I’m a grad student transitioning from computer science to biology, so apologies if I misuse any terms—I’m learning as I go. For clarity, I’m using ChatGPT to help phrase this post.

My research focuses on identifying modules of genes (in planarians) directly regulated by transcription factors. The idea is to use ATAC-seq data to find open chromatin regions near genes down-regulated after TF inhibition, then run motif enrichment (using Homer) to identify potential motifs. So far, I’ve come up empty—no significant motifs have been found.

To test how well Homer detects motifs, I ran a small experiment:

• I took 42 sequences as my test set.

• I planted a motif (CCGTGC) into 10% (4), 15% (6), 30% (12), 50% (21), and 100% (42) of these sequences.

• I used a background of ~4,000 sequences, where the motif appeared by chance in ~4% (150).

The results:

• At 10% and 15%, Homer failed to detect the motif.

• At 30%, it found the motif as part of a 12-bp motif, but flagged it as a false positive (1e-7).

• At 50% and 100%, it reliably found the motif

It's important to note that I did not use any specific parameters such as motif sizes, and let it go by default.

Does it make sense that Homer struggled with detection at lower planting rates? Should I tweak the parameters to improve sensitivity for short motifs? I'm a bit pessimistic about trying to optimize this test, assuming that any real-world data will probably be worse that what I did, but I'm still willing to explore this approach if it has any potential.

And if anyone has advice for alternative approaches, especially computational tools or strategies to identify TF-regulated gene modules, I’d love to hear your thoughts. This problem feels like a dead end right now, and I could use a fresh perspective.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone! I am a junior studying molecular biology with a keen interest in genomics/cell bio. In all honesty, I feel a little lost on where to go after realizing dental school wasn't for me. I don't find myself staying in academia (ex. PhD, med school, leading a research project), but I see myself working in a lab happily. I would love to continue my love for hands on extractions, PCR, cultures, I want to keep doing all that but I just don't see myself being happy with having to do my own research. I have seen biotech lab technologists or even just lab technologists have responsibilities more along those lines!
I am asking for advice because I am a first-generation college student, and always had to learn things on my own but this time around I don't know what is the right answer when figuring out how to end up in a career where I can spend hours in a lab with following protocols without having to get a PhD?

Hi everyone! I found a strange thing in my experiment and I wanted to ask you if you have ever had a situation like this.

In Arabidopsis thaliana genome a XYZ gene during mechanical damage increase abundantly its transcription. Blasting it in the Brassica oleracea genome (cauliflower one) and doing Rt-qPCR with the same conditions, it turn out that the gene XYZ lowers its transcription during mechanical damage.

Have you ever had any experiences where across genomes the same gene responses are opposite between themselves? (Btw, 3 biological and 3 technical replicates have been used).

Thank you in advance!!

Hey all! I'm a third-year undergraduate who is currently applying to research programs for summer 2025, one of my applications wants me to describe a scientific finding within the last 10 years that has inspired me. My research interests are in protein structure/function and signal transduction, so if I can find something related to that that would be best. I'm not really sure where to look for this info and was hoping for some advice, thanks!