Category: Updates / Blog Stuff

Life Changes – Halting Plasmid Distribution


As some of you may know I recently obtained my PhD 🙂 and have been looking for work. I’m very happy to say that a wonderful opportunity has come up! I will be starting work at a biotech company on the microfluidics / molecular biology side!

As I transition to this new non-academic world, I’m voluntarily deciding to halt distribution of the plasmid pack. I will fulfill requests made up to today (Feb 16th, 2021), however going forward I will have to decline further requests. This is to avoid any potential conflicts of interest and to focus myself for the tasks at hand.

The blog will continue to grow and mature, this is a labor of love and I appreciate meeting all the wonderful DIYers and scientists around the globe.

Transformation a Go-Go (TGG) Protocol + Twitter

Published: November 29th, 2019   Last Modified: December 13th, 2019

Getting the social media (“sosh meed”) train rolling to help grow the DIY Biology community. Follow me to get regular updates on when I post something new! And what better way to kick things off than to share a sneaky little protocol with you all?

Let’s say you’re doing a standard transformation to get a plasmid into BL21s for protein expression, or to get fresh colonies for a maxi prep. You’ve just had nice, fat burrito and the hour and a half protocol could be better spent on a nap. Skip all that! Heat shock your cells and plate just a whiff, you’ll get enough on your plate to do what you need to do. You only need one colony after all.

Competent cell protocol from Wendy Chao’s blog, thanks Wendy, wherever you are 🙂

*** Do not use this protocol for cloning reactions where you expect low efficiency, like a 4 fragment Gibson assembly/ InFusion or the like. Those experiments deserve the extra hour and a half finesse steps, you need every edge you can get! ***

Cheat Sheets / Calculators

Published: November 23rd, 2019   Last Modified: December 13th, 2019

Cognitive load already high? Don’t feel like doing calculations or digging out your protocol binder from under the test tube racks and despair? Lighten your load with some easy to reference protocol cheat sheets and spreadsheets that do the work for you!

Plasmid Prep cheat sheet, Silica column cheat sheet, PCR master mix calculator and MORE!

Help support PipetteJockey! (Decision to monetize)

It makes me happy that people around the globe find this niche-of-niche website useful to them and their labs and I will keep this ship running as long as I can. However, the projects I do are done out of pocket on a grad student budget, so there’s a limit on the cool stuff I can do.

So, I’m deciding to monetize the website in an as non-obtrusive way as possible to get some cash flow going to fund more cool projects. Read on if you’d like to know how this will be done, in the sake of transparency between me and you as the reader.

Continue reading “Help support PipetteJockey! (Decision to monetize)”

Where the hell have you been, pipette jockey??? The world NEEDS YOU! Upcoming stuffs

Published: September 16th, 2016   Last Modified: June 16th, 2017

Just letting you all know that I’m not dead, I haven’t been hit by a bus and I haven’t given up on science to enter the shady world of underground street fighting. I’ve been pushing hard to construct an infectious clone of a plant virus, which has been my baby for the last year and a half. I’m at the stage where I have to get the plasmid into my plants…agroinfiltration? It’s an option, but not very exciting, so instead I’ve been building various DIY particle bombardment devices!

This includes attempts at using a coilgun to shoot home made magnetite beads, an electromagnet to pull the beads INTO the leaf, and a more promising DIY gene gun that uses CO2 cartridges, and actually works!

On top of that I have articles lined up concerning DIY electrophoresis equipment, cheap digital thermometers and various useful gadgets that make our lives a bit easier. Stay tuned!