In an editorial in the July issue, we suggest some recent popular science books that would make a nice summer read and hope that summer will not be the end of it. To keep you going, here are an extended list of older books, including some of our favorites and some of the genre classics. The list was assembled with the kind advice of editors, scientists and science writers.
One of the most common frustrations among biologists is the difficulty to get their hands on a good antibody with a decent chance to work well in the particular assay they have in mind.
There is not one universal quality control test for antibodies and many commercial antibodies which are advertised to work well, say, in Western blot will perform poorly in immunoprecipitation and abysmally in a FACS machine. Examples abound and researchers often lament about the money spent on re-testing antibodies or repeating experiments that have failed due to poor antibody quality.