Foundational Skills in Life Sciences – Details, episodes & analysis

How are you reading life-science textbooks?   

My approach to reading textbooks has evolved significantly throughout my academic career, from student to researcher to instructor to course director. Today’s episode is part 1. We will discuss the first two phases of my experience.   

My overall goal of the two-part episodes is to highlight the unique roles that textbooks play, different from those of primary research papers. Knowing these different purposes will help us read textbooks more effectively.   

   
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Happy Holidays to you, and I wish you the very best in 2025! 

Question of today: What is a practical tip for effective oral presentations? There are many important things to do, for delivering oral presentations successfully. But I will be happy to give you my number one tip and the reasons why. And this tip is not discussed often in scientific communities. I hope you will find it useful!   

Disclaimer: What I'm going to tell you is my personal opinion. It is possible that it does not apply to you in your own specific situation, in your program, in your own institution, and in your country. And each professor could have a different opinion. So, please listen to my comment, not as definitive advice, but just as a reference. I hope my comment will still serve you as a starting point for your thought. 

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We will examine the positive and negative controls in the milestone article of the Nobel Laureates. The article shows us one of the best examples of how to use positive and negative controls in life-science experiments. We will compare a total of eight figure panels. And we will learn important lessons from them, for designing experiments and for reading figures. This episode will be Part 1 of a summary of control experiments.       

Here are the links to the Milestone Article 1  (Immunity, 2005) by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023.     

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2005.06.008
• PDF: https://www.cell.com/immunity/pdf/S1074-7613(05)00211-6.pdf
• PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16111635/

   
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The first Q&A session!   Question of today: Is it OK to say, “I don’t know” in response to technical questions in an interview when you apply for a life-science research position in a laboratory? I will give you my answer and the reasons why.

Disclaimer: What I'm going to tell you is my personal opinion. It is possible that it does not apply to you in your own specific situation, in your program, in your own institution, and in your country. And each professor could have a different opinion. So, please listen to my comment, not as definitive advice, but just as a reference. I hope my comment will still serve you as a starting point for your thought. 

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We will keep analyzing the specific positive controls that the Nobel Laureates used in their milestone article 1 that led to the Nobel Prize. We will examine the four positive controls in the third figure of this paper, and in other figures as well. Those positive controls did not necessarily show positive responses in multiple figures. We will observe that positive controls can show variable behaviors in a paper. We will also discuss how a modified definition of positive controls will be helpful for understanding them.       

Here are the links to the Milestone Article 1  (Immunity, 2005) by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023.     

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2005.06.008
• PDF: https://www.cell.com/immunity/pdf/S1074-7613(05)00211-6.pdf
• PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16111635/

   
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Let’s analyze the specific positive controls that the Nobel Laureates used in their milestone article 1 that led to the Nobel Prize. We will look at the first two figures and four positive controls therein. As always, we are impressed by the meticulous design of the experiments by the Laureates.      

Here are the links to the Milestone Article 1  (Immunity, 2005) by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023.

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2005.06.008
• PDF: https://www.cell.com/immunity/pdf/S1074-7613(05)00211-6.pdf
• PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16111635/

   
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In this episode, we shift our focus from negative controls to their counterparts: positive controls. We will begin by defining what we mean by positive controls. Then we will refine that definition to encourage practical and cautious thinking.      

Here are the links to the Milestone Article 1  (Immunity, 2005) by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023.

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2005.06.008
• PDF: https://www.cell.com/immunity/pdf/S1074-7613(05)00211-6.pdf
• PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16111635/

   
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One-year anniversary of this podcast channel! Thank you for listening. Why did I start podcasting? The motivation or the trigger was the students’ feedback to my teaching and training: they loved it. My goal is to help you learn and polish your skills in life sciences. In this episode, I will talk about a little story of how I started podcasting.     
   
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This episode continues from the last one. This will mark the end of our story about the life-science experiment that did not work at first, but worked well after extensive troubleshooting. We will talk about the remaining three lessons we can learn from the story. They will be about thoughtful approaches, and about probably the most important mindset in life sciences (What will it be?).         

This is Part 18 of the reading mini-series "Let’s read a paper written by Nobel Prize Laureates, 2023."    

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