Medical student here, also pre-clinical researcher (PhD-student). Does anyone here have tips on methods commonly used in laboratory setting?
I'm not trained in methods, I feel this makes me function less well in the lab. Sure, I could learn a bit from colleagues with more lab-friendly education (molecular biologists, engineers and other). I have never been teached about gene expression analysis, western blots, facs and so on. I feel stupid everytime I ask another person at the lab about something and they're always like "Well, just do an electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry" and I have no clue whatsoever what that could be.
I "learn" the methods by reading papers. I feel the difference between me and others' at the lab is
Someone-who-knows-what-they're-talking about: "They should have designed the experiment in this way, and tried using this method A to setup method B."
Me (when I'm having a good day): "Uhm, IHC data, they should've done a WB as well to confirm, or is that even necessary?".
Indeed, I know some methods quite well (maybe 2-3 I can run by my own (designing the experimental setup), and do 90% of the trouble shooting on). I'm just lacking the necessary skill to discuss a paper as a whole.
Basically, I'm doing laboratory work without really knowing what I'm doing. I would like to have an introductory book on basic methods instead of "Here is the basics of patch-clamp (2100 pages)". To answer the question 1) how does it work? 2) why does it work? 3) what are they used for? 4) common misstakes/how to interpret the data/whatever.
I'm not trained in methods, I feel this makes me function less well in the lab. Sure, I could learn a bit from colleagues with more lab-friendly education (molecular biologists, engineers and other). I have never been teached about gene expression analysis, western blots, facs and so on. I feel stupid everytime I ask another person at the lab about something and they're always like "Well, just do an electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry" and I have no clue whatsoever what that could be.
I "learn" the methods by reading papers. I feel the difference between me and others' at the lab is
Someone-who-knows-what-they're-talking about: "They should have designed the experiment in this way, and tried using this method A to setup method B."
Me (when I'm having a good day): "Uhm, IHC data, they should've done a WB as well to confirm, or is that even necessary?".
Indeed, I know some methods quite well (maybe 2-3 I can run by my own (designing the experimental setup), and do 90% of the trouble shooting on). I'm just lacking the necessary skill to discuss a paper as a whole.
Basically, I'm doing laboratory work without really knowing what I'm doing. I would like to have an introductory book on basic methods instead of "Here is the basics of patch-clamp (2100 pages)". To answer the question 1) how does it work? 2) why does it work? 3) what are they used for? 4) common misstakes/how to interpret the data/whatever.
