David Bemis's Blog for Molecular Microbiology Laboratory (and Beyond)

The first key question W. P. Hanage discusses in his article regarding interpreting scientific literature was “can experiments detect differences that matter?” Just because a difference is detected does not mean it is necessarily important to the problem at hand. It also does rule out the possibility of a much larger difference existing that just… Continue reading Writing Exercise #9

I found Nowak’s commentary to be very helpful in understanding the larger Fleichmann paper. The diagram from Nowak’s paper alone really summarized the whole gene random sequencing talked about in the paper well. Additionally, the diagram really highlighted how overexpression of genes versus knocking out of a genes was used in the context of gene… Continue reading Writing Exercise #8

(1) Adele Mennerat, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Bergen, authored a paper on molecular microbiology titled “How to Deal with PCR Contamination in Molecular Microbial Ecology” (2014) that asserted pre-treating PCR reagents with restriction enzymes yielded more accurate amplified DNA. (2) Dr. Mennerat illustrated that samples treated with the restriction… Continue reading Rhetorical Precis 2

Using the command line to analyze DNA sequences and detect chimeras was an interesting experience. I learned a major error in how PCR works (i.e. it creates chimeras), but also how to fix it, in reference to measuring richness, using the command line. I think the most important thing I learned was only said in… Continue reading Writing Exercise #6 – Chimera Analysis

As somebody mostly interested in medical microbiology, I often forget that aquatic, agricultural, and ecological microbiology exist. Reading other people’s research proposals reminded me that these subdisciplines exist and were actually very interesting. In general, they made me want to read more about the topics they were on. This is similar to the course content… Continue reading Writing Exercise #5

Sigrun Lange, an associate professor in the University of Westminster’s school of life sciences, published a paper with her graduate students titled: Cannabidiol Is a Novel Modulator of Bacterial Membrane Vesicles. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, that asserted cannabidiol could inhibit membrane vesicle release in gram-negative bacteria and thus possessed antibacterial properties. The scientists… Continue reading Writing Exercise #4

The peer-review process is an old and important part of scientific research. If a scientist does some experiments and thinks the data from those experiments support a conclusion, they can write a several page long paper detailing this. While the discussion portion of it is mostly an opinion piece, there will be a results section… Continue reading Writing Exercise #3

It was interesting to critique the work of others. I found looking critically at the experimental design and justification for why the experiment should be done in the first place to be an extremely satisfying process. While reading their work I was asking questions like: – “Is what they say the data will indicate actually… Continue reading Writing Exercise #2 – Peer Review

The first thing I want to comment on in this blog post is the difference between a microbial population and a microbial community. The former denotes a group of microbes belonging to a single species while the latter refers to multiple species living together. The characteristics of a microbial population can include the carbon, nitrogen,… Continue reading Writing Exercise #1

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