Category: Brain Candy
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Cute, But Make It Molecular: Rabbit Immunology for Antibody Nerds
🐰I briefly mentioned in my previous blogs why rabbits are great for antibody production, but today I’m going all in. This is the full breakdown of why rabbits are immunology overachievers in a fur coat, absolute legends. Rabbits do the same immunology we learned, then add a secret level Rabbits have the same overall antibody…
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The Collagenase Conspiracy…Why Would an Intracellular Bacterium Pack Scissors?
Let’s start with the part that makes this whole thing feel like a plot twist. Ehrlichia (and its close relatives) tends to run a small, streamlined genome compared to many free-living bacteria…more like 😝“carry-on luggage only” than “moving truck.” Specifically, Ehrlichia has a small genome (~1–1.5 Mb) because it has undergone reductive evolution and relies…
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Cytokine Panels: The Group Chat Screenshot of Your Immune System
👀If you have ever said “Let’s run a cytokine panel” and felt instantly powerful, you are not alone. A cytokine panel is basically the immune system’s messy group chat: lots of people talking at once, some yelling, some whispering, and at least one molecule being dramatic for attention. You are not eavesdropping for fun (well,…
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How 10x droplet scRNA-seq works… barcodes, droplets, library prep, and the tiny chaos inside each bubble
If you’ve ever looked at a tissue sample and thought, “There are so many cells in here… and they’re all doing different things… and I would like to know their secrets 🥲🔬”… welcome. This is the exact emotional origin story of single cell RNA sequencing. I wanted to write this blog because 10x droplet scRNA-seq…
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How to Choose the Right Antibody (So Your Experiment Stops Gaslighting You)
I decided to write this because if you’ve ever sat there…way too late at night…staring at a Western blot like it’s a Rorschach test (“is that my protein… or is that sadness?”), I feel you. 😭 I’ve had those moments where you tilt your head, squint, zoom in, zoom out, and start negotiating with the…
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The (Slightly Chaotic) Guide to Finding Great Antibodies for IHC
Don’t panic……I got you covered 😌🔬💪 I’ve been there too……staring at a “positive” slide that looked more like modern art than biology, wondering if my tissue was trying to gaslight me 😭……so in this post, I’ll walk you through how to pick, test, and truly trust antibodies for immunohistochemistry (IHC)……including multiplex (mIHC)……in a way that’s…
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How to Pick a “Good” Antibody for Immunofluorescence: A Very Serious Guide Written by a Not-Serious Person
Welcome to immunofluorescence (IF), where proteins glow, microscopes judge, and your secondary antibody sometimes decides to become the main character. 🔬✨ When IF works, it’s gorgeous and informative—real spatial biology you can see. When it doesn’t, it’s still bright… just not truthful. 🌈😂 I want to write this blog to cover the key concepts for…
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The Great -Seq Zoo: A Field Guide for People Who Pretend They’re Not Confused
I have a recurring lab dream where someone casually says, “We should just do sequencing,” and then ten minutes later we’re arguing about stranded vs non-stranded, rRNA depletion, adapter ligation bias, and whether ATAC-seq is DNA-seq (it is… but emotionally it’s chromatin therapy). 😝 So here’s my attempt to categorize the entire “-seq” universe in…
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CUT&RUN vs CUT&TAG: The “Snip, Spill, and Sequence” Guide to Chromatin Profiling
If you’ve ever done ChIP-seq and felt like the protocol was basically “crosslink everything, shred it with violence, then hope your antibody is having a good day”… you’re not alone. 😭 ChIP-seq absolutely works, but it can be noisy, input-hungry, and emotionally expensive. ⭐️CUT&RUN and ⭐️CUT&TAG are the newer, calmer cousins: same goal (map where…
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4 Ways to “Steal” a Perfect Antibody From a Rabbit
🐇🔬 Let’s be honest: rabbit monoclonal antibodies (rabbit mAbs) have a reputation, and there are a few very different ways to do that. Each method is basically a different personality type of science: 👀Some are classic and old-school. 👀Some are biotech wizardry. 👀Some involve viruses doing the work for you. 👀And some feel like you’re physically…