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PODCAST

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences

Dr. Synaptologica

Students and scholars in life sciences need to use many skills to survive and excel during scientific training, which involves listening, reading, writing, and speaking. But I have seen many of them struggle in understanding and learning those skills. I am a professor in the U.S., a tenured faculty member with MD, PhD degrees. I will assist you through the skills, so that you will learn and improve successfully in your professional life. Please visit my website for more information

science life sciences

All Episodes

22:01

41. Exclude or include seemingly irrelevant...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/11/28

“Should I exclude irrelevant experiences from my academic CV?” This is a question that students often ask. In this episode, I would like to give you my thoughts about this question. In general, there is a way of creating a comprehensive CV: it will show that you have unique experiences, and you are a careful and a thoughtful writer. The key would be for you to be proud of what you did in the past. I hope that this discussion will be useful for you. (My emai...

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16:23

40. Short or long CV for applying for a research...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/11/01

“Should my CV be short or long, when I apply for a research assistant position in a college/university lab?” This is a question that students often ask. In this episode, I would like to give you my thoughts about this question. The content in a CV depends on the person’s career stage. But I have one common viewpoint for CVs at all stages. I would like to view the descriptions in the CV, during and after the undergraduate education, as the defining statements of the per...

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18:57

39. Eight key components define the Abstract...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/10/25

How do top-tier scientific journals, like Nature, make sure their abstracts are clear and impactful? In today’s episode, we will identify the eight key components that make those abstracts effective, by naming the components in our own words, and clarifying their roles and order. Our system was inspired by the Nature document for the Abstract guidelines that we discussed in the Episode #38. Here is the URL that brings you directly to the Nature document:&nb...

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13:26

38. The journal, Nature, dissects the Abstract...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/10/15

What is the best way to learn how to read the Abstract of a scientific paper? In my view, the best way is to learn how the Abstract is structured in any paper. Today, we will learn it, by reading a very short document. It is a one-page document that describes the Abstract guidelines, provided by the journal, Nature. Here is the URL that brings you directly to the Nature document: https://www.nature.com/documents/nature-summary-paragraph.pdfHere ...

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9:23

37. Announcement of The Nobel Prize in Chemistry...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/10/10

The 2024 Nobel Prize was announced! Two days ago, it was in Physiology or Medicine. Yesterday, it was in Physics. Today, it was in Chemistry. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dr. David Baker “for computational protein design”, and to Dr. Demis Hassabis and Dr. John Jumper, “for protein structure prediction.” Their work is directly related to life sciences. Let’s learn about the work by watching a YouTube video. It is the archived video of the ann...

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8:25

36. Announcement of The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024,...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/10/09

The 2024 Nobel Prize was announced! Yesterday, it was in Physiology or Medicine. Today it was in Physics. It was awarded to Dr. John Hopfield, and Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” It is somewhat (indirectly) related to my field, neuroscience! Let’s learn about the work by watching a YouTube video. It is the archived video of the announcement of The Nobel Prize.&n...

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3:19

35. Announcement of The Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/10/07

The 2024 Nobel Prize was announced! This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Victor Ambros, and Dr. Gary Ruvkun, “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.” Let’s learn about the work by watching a YouTube video. It is the archived video of the announcement of The Nobel Prize. Here is the URL of the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5rCmDqua0Here is the URL of the same vide...

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31:10

34. Lessons learned from Nobel Laureates' work, about...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/09/17

We will complete the analysis of positive and negative controls in the milestone article of the Nobel Laureates of 2023. The article shows us one of the best examples of how to use positive and negative controls in life-science experiments. This episode will be Part 2 of a 2-part summary of control experiments. This will also conclude Step 11 of reading the article, which is to examine the key graph of the article. We can learn a lot from the Nobel Laureates! Here ar...

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17:44

33. How to do a good oral presentation? Hidden, but...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/09/09

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...

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21:32

32. Is it important to include positive and negative...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/08/29

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 Arti...

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12:02

31. Is it OK to say, “I don’t know” in response to...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/08/21

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 differ...

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32:41

30. Positive controls in another experiment by Nobel...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/08/17

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 hel...

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25:31

29. Positive controls in experiments by Nobel...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/08/07

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 ...

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13:11

28. Defining positive controls in life-science...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/07/31

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.2005.06.00...

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21:02

27. One-year anniversary: I started podcasting to...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/07/23

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. (My email is active. But my website is under construction. Please wait for a while. Thank you for the patience!)

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34:47

26. Lessons learned from a failed experiment. Part 2...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/07/16

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 ...

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31:30

25. Lessons learned from a failed experiment. Part 1...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/07/10

In the last episode, we finished discussing details of the life-science experiments in our story. We observed that negative controls can be powerful tools for troubleshooting and ensuring data quality. The story gave us invaluable learning experience. What lessons can we learn? We will talk about three lessons related to negative controls today. They will help us design good research and evaluate results well. This is Part 17 of the reading mini-series "Let’s r...

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46:41

24. Negative controls put the pieces together in...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/07/03

We will see how the experimenters implemented a good, troubleshooting idea into a protocol that appeared to be challenging at first. We are continuing to discuss the troubleshooting of a real, life-science experiment in our story. Sophisticated thought processes made the experiment possible in the end. This episode celebrates the power of well-designed experiments. We'll see how meticulous planning and a systematic approach to troubleshooting can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.&n...

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25:11

23. Refining a troubleshooting idea: the power of...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/06/25

We will discuss the fourth and final idea, for troubleshooting a real, life-science experiment in our story. This idea was based on the previous three ideas. Then the experimenters took an impressive step. They identified key unknowns about the experiment, and refined and updated their idea. The updated idea laid the foundation for designing the crucial, fourth and final troubleshooting experiment that we will discuss in the next episode. This is Part 15 of the readin...

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14:39

22. Negative controls unveil a hidden culprit in a...

Foundational Skills in Life Sciences ·

2024/06/18

We continue our deep exploration into negative controls and their importance in troubleshooting life-science experiments. We follow a real-life story of an experiment that yielded unexpected results. Through the third troubleshooting experiment utilizing negative controls, the experimenters finally uncovered the culprit. We discuss how negative controls helped identify the problem and pave the way for further investigation. This is Part 14 of the reading mini-series "Let’s ...

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61 results

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