Notes from the bench
Short posts about method, failure and how we run the lab. Written by whoever did the work.
Every post
No schedule, no newsletter. We write when something is worth writing down.
What a failed screen taught us about packaged DNA
Nine hundred designs did nothing. The pattern in which ones did nothing turned out to be the most useful result of the year.
How we choose what to work on
Three questions we ask before a project starts, and the one we ask six months in.
A microscope you can book on day one
Why every new person gets instrument time in their first week, before they know what they are doing.
Every figure links to its raw images
How we set up our figures so a reader can get from a published panel to the original file in two clicks.
Teaching a method properly takes three goes
Our rule: nobody runs a protocol alone until they have done it three times with someone who knows it.
What we got wrong about affinity
For three years we optimised how tightly our designs bind. Specificity was the number that actually mattered.