Start Me Up: Endocytosis on demand

We have a new paper out. The title is New tools for ‘hot-wiring’ clathrin-mediated endocytosis with temporal and spatial precision. You can read it here. Cells have a plasma membrane which is the barrier between the cell’s interior and the outside world. In order to import material from outside, cells have a special process called […]

My Blank Pages V: Raw Data

Raw Data: A novel on Life in Science by Pernille Rørth (Springer, 2016) I was keen to read this “lab lit” novel written by renowned cell biologist Pernille Rørth. I’d seen lots of enthusiastic comments about the book, and it didn’t disappoint. I was frustrated to read two pieces about Raw Data on Retraction Watch and The Node, […]

My Blank Pages IV: Every Song Ever

Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty Ben Ratliff (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) A non-science book review for today’s post. This is a great read on “how to listen to music”. There have been hundreds of books published along these lines, the innovation here however is that we now […]

My Blank Pages II: Statistics Done Wrong

I have just finished reading this excellent book, Statistics done wrong: a woefully complete guide by Alex Reinhart. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in quantitative biology and particularly to PhD students starting out in biomedical science. Statistics is a topic that many people find difficult to grasp. I think there are a couple of reasons for this […]

Joining A Fanclub

When I started this blog, my plan was to write about interesting papers or at least blog about the ones from my lab. This post is a bit of both. I was recently asked to write a “Journal Club” piece for Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, which is now available online. It’s paywalled unfortunately. It’s […]

A Day In The Life II

I have been doing paper of the day (#potd) again in 2014. See my previous post about this. My “rules” for paper of the day are: Read one paper each working day. If I am away, or reviewing a paper for a journal or colleague, then I get a pass. Read it sufficiently to be able […]

Falling and Landing

A great quote from a classic paper by J.B.S. Haldane “On Being The Right Size” (1926). You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a […]