This is not the first time this happens. Back in 2009 six people became ill at Harvard after drinking coffee from a communal espresso machine that was contaminated with sodium azide.

Oh and let's not forget the Berkeley cadmium poisoning.

Edit: I'm going to compile other cases I wasn't aware of that you guys mentioned in the comments

• 1970 ascariasis poisoning incident: research parasites added to food - ruled as poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_ascariasis_poisoning_incident

• 1994 Rockefeller University NY: attempted poisoning - coffee https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1994/07/27/779377.html?pageNumber=23

• 1997 UC San Diego: acrylamide in coffee pot https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.278.5344.1704b?referrer=android-app%3A%2F%2Fcom.reddit.frontpage%2F

• 2014 Gustave-Roussy Institute case in France: sodium azide in a coffee kettle https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2014/04/26/la-vengeance-d-un-stagiaire-vire-a-la-tentative-d-empoisonnement_4407857_3224.html

• 2015 Stanford University case: paraformaldehyde in water bottles https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/01/16/former-stanford-student-sentenced-in-poisoning-case/

• 2017 Yale University case: sodium azide in an office coffee machine https://yaledailynews.com/articles/police-launch-inquiry-after-toxin-sickens-four

• 2023 Florida chemistry student poisoning family case: hydrocodone and methadone poisoning by pumping the chemicals on the front door of the house https://www.the-independent.com/tv/news/chemistry-student-filmed-poisoning-family-by-injecting-chemicals-into-their-front-door-b2401121.html

• 2026 UW Madison case: chloroform poisoning in a water bottle https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/university-wisconsin-scientist-allegedly-tired-kill-lab-colleague-pois-rcna341216

Original cases I mentioned:

• 2009 Harvard poisoning case: communal coffee spiked with sodium azide https://abcnews.com/amp/US/poisoned-harvard-researcher-spiked-coffee-fatal/story?id=8918291

• 2017 Berkeley case: cadmium poisoning in a water bottle https://abc7news.com/amp/post/bay-area-woman-poisoned-worker-david-xu-speaks-1st-time-felony-conviction-expunged-judge/19933507/

• 2026 University of Wyoming case: acrylamide poisoning in tea https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/s/q74na4eoXm

How are you fairing the war on science?

This is after 4 months of running a membrane Bioreactor. Currently broken down and moving from a 2 stage to a larger single stage reactor.

I work in a human genomics lab where I do library prep and sequencing. I don't work with starting materials like blood, plasma, or tissue. It's about time for me to buy new clothes and I kind of want to just start wearing scrubs. I'm a dress and skirt wearer and my work clothes rotate the same 8 or 9 outfits that are lab safe pants that aren't jeans.

There are research fellows in other departments who are MD PhD's and they often wear scrubs, but they also do surgeries where scrubs are needed. There isn't a direct need for me to wear scrubs based on the lab work I do, but I'm just kind of tired of the clothes and outfits that I do have and feel like scrubs might just be easier.

My department is one person (me) so it's not like I'd have a colleague saying I'm wearing the wrong thing. I often go an entire week without someone checking in on my lab so I don't really see the reason of wearing an actual outfit when I could just wear scrubs.

Hi, I'm a 1st year master's student rotating in a biology lab that I really like so far, but some of my PI's lab practices seem a little bit too relaxed, and it makes me nervous that I will have to share stuff when I start my project. For context, I have around 3 years of lab experience from undergrad and research internships, so I've seen a lot of variations of the same techniques like cell culture. However, I understand I am still newish to research and he has obviously been doing this a lot longer than me. But here are some things I saw that made me very nervous (with mammalian cells):

- grabbed cell dishes/plates from incubator with no gloves on

- touches everything (reagents, media, pipettes, stuff in fridge) with no gloves until he is ready to actually start working

- took out ~20 different plates from incubator at the same time to image them one by one, which left all the cells out at RT for over an hour

- Sprayed EtOH on media bottle after putting it in the BSC instead of before

- keeps cells he knows have been contaminated with yeast in the same incubator as healthy, uncontaminated cells (he is trying to treat them with an antifungal)

- working with cells he knows are contaminated with yeast in the same BSC that he uses for everything else

Maybe these are little things that don't really matter, but it just seems to go against a lot of what I have been taught over the years. Am I overreacting?

Looking to see how much of this is normal. My PI is incredibly slow to communicate the science of our group. After the final data are collected, it takes about 1-2 years on average of the lead researcher meeting the PI every week while they write together. This ‘writing together’ consists of the lead scientist writing the paper solo, then the PI looking over the work and suggesting things get moved around, arguments get re-framed, etc. Often, this flip flops and goes in cycles, where the PI requests major changes, then further major changes that revert the manuscript back to how it was before. No matter how much writing work the lead scientist does, it always needs to be read over in this way, which takes a year or more. The PI can only carry out this process for at most 2 manuscripts at a time. We have 20+ people in our lab. Consequently, most will never have their lead work published, as PhD/postdoc terms are typically < 4 years in the UK. Once a person leaves, their work will never be published because they can no longer meet regularly with the PI, so if you don’t complete this dance in time, you will not have anything to show for your work. We work in human health-related biotech, so by not publishing our findings, we squander the money given to the lab to work on our particular disease that would certainly be better spent elsewhere.

There is no way around it. It means that if a PhD student reaches 3 years, and is just wrapping up the data collection side of their project, they will not have anything to show for their work by the time of their postdoc applications, and likely ever. It penalizes slow, accurate, bold science, and favors churning out something passable but incremental, then dressing it up as something fantastic over the two years spent writing. My colleagues have understandably taken this route repeatedly, doing good but incremental science that is then publishable during their time in the lab. Others who did not take this approach left empty-handed.

Does anyone have experience with situations like this - how normal is the environment I’ve just described, and does anyone have advice on how to navigate it?

I‘m trying to learn to differentiate macrophages from peripheral blood monocytes and this is the state of my cell culture after six days of differentiation. From the morphology I can differentiate three types of cells: spindle-like, round large, and small cells. I assume the spindle-like cells are the attached macrophages — and the rest? Are the large round cells detached macrophages? What are the small ones? They’re not moving and the medium is clear. Any input is very much appreciated.

I’m a junior studying EE working in an optics lab. I joined over the summer and was very passionate about doing a PhD. The passion I feel for this stuff is still there, I’m eternally grateful for all that I get to work on, but I’m so tired of being the stupidest person in the room 24/7.

I work with a 3rd year PhD student and another undergrad my year who joined the same time as me and who has extensive research experience (first author publication) in a different field than optics. I just feel like I’m barely staying afloat, and that everyone is running intellectual laps around me. My PI also believes that undergrads should have the responsibilities of a full time PhD student, so constant individual contribution is expected. Despite his somewhat toxic nature, I joined the lab so that I can work on something that was very interesting to me and gain extensive research experience (in my school, undergrads are mainly used to do simple data analysis or lab infrastructure development)

I genuinely don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I’m cut out for this thing, if I’m just stuck in a lab that expects too much from me, or if it’s a combination of both. I do my best to show up everyday but during discussions I’m just quiet because I’m trying to process what’s being said last. I really need some help here.

I did a DNA extraction and then used a Nanodrop to quantify my product and these results don’t look good. What likely happened? Was it the extraction or the nanodrop?

So my boss asked me to hunt for something in the-80 freezer (thermoscientific TSX) , and ofc (since neither of us knew where the samples were) the door was open overall quite a long time (I shut it periodically so it wasn’t alarming but still overall open quite a bit). I was also looking in another freezer, a phcbi VIP ECO. It’s been a few hours and the other freezer is back up to -80 but the thermofisher is stuck at -64. The touchpad says the health is all good etc etc but it’s odd to me it’s taking so much longer than the other freezer… should I be worried? Is it time to call a mechanic? I have heard the TSX freezers are worse, is this a feature of that?

EDIT: checked back in and it’s within the -70 and above range #phew. But good to know about freezer diving techniques— my boss has been out for a few leeks and just told me to find something without much direction (new to lab life) so I definitely didn’t know what I was doing. Also I don’t think this freezer has ever been defrosted….

Hi, I’m a master’s student. I need a help. I’m confusing about cell conditions. What is that? I cultured old Shsy-5y cells yesterday. Today, I controlled then I saw that. I suspect contamination, but I couldn't figure out what the structures resembling blebs on the cells actually are. Do you have any idea what they might be?
they are inverted mic pictures.

entry level lab roles in the UK are hard to find because most postings say "scientist" and want a phd or 5 years. this list only has entry level R&D: placement years, graduate programmes, associate scientist, lab technician and research roles.

https://github.com/mehek-builds/UK-Entry-Level-Pharma-Biotech-RD-Jobs

- 31 roles at 12 employers (GSK, Lonza, Pfizer, Moderna, Vertex, Roche, Labcorp, Elanco, IQVIA, Avantor)

- placement years, graduate programmes, associate scientist and lab roles, discovery and chemistry

- 12 posted in the last week

pulled from employers' own careers pages. senior, principal and manager titles are left out. rebuilt every monday.

comment which area you're looking for and i'll send you a list for it.

Hey everybody, I am doing that RNA Dot Blot for my thesis and no matter what I did I could not solve that background noise. So here is my protocol,

1- Heat my samples at 95 C and chill in the ice
2- I use Nylon Nucleic acid specific membrane, drop my samples and let it dry for 5 mins
3- Incubate under Cross-linker (0.120 J/cm2 at 254 nm UV light) until countdown is finished.
4- Block membrane with 3% BSA for an hour then wash 1 x 15 mins with TBST then incubate it with 1:1000 m6A antibody in 1% BSA ON
5- 3 x 15 mins wash with TBST
6- 1 hour secondary incubation with Anti-rabbit 1:10.000 in 1%BSA
7- 3 x 15 mins wash with TBST and develop image with Super Signal.

Problem is Methylene Blue staining is very clear (as u can see in the image) but I cannot get a clear image from chemiluminescence. Do you guys have any suggestion? What can I do to get a clear image?

Has anyone had any issue reviving HepG2 cells from ECACC UK?

- i revived as soon as they arrived in a 37deg water bath, with the tube inside a sterile tube, until just completely thawed
- transferred immediately into 9ml warmed complete 10% FBS DMEM plus NEAA, Glutamax, pyruvate, penstrep, counted cells and centrifuged at 90g for 10min
- Replaced supernatant with 10ml complete media as above
- they were >90% viable upon counting, and at the recommended seeding density for this cell line for a T75

The cells took many days to attach, and even then I only had enough attached cells by day 6, when I changed the media this time to the equivalent of 10% FBS EMEM with the same supplements as above. Changed media every 3 days. It’s now been 2 weeks and I have very few colonies of cells, which have only just started proliferating

All my other cell lines are growing fine - multiple HEK cell lines, THP-1s

ECACC are saying the DMEM is the issue and they should have been revived in EMEM. However there are heaps of publications using DMEM to culture HepG2?

Y’all, I just wanna graduate, and these BMDMs are making it very difficult for me. Here’s the situation:

I need a non-enzymatic (no trypsin, no Accutase) GENTLE method (so, likely no scraping) to remove BMDMs from a flat-bottom 96-well plate… while the plate is either on ice or at 4 degrees. I have tried non-tissue culture treated plates but my IL-4-polarized (“M2-like”) BMDMs still hang on like it’s their one job.

I have a 10 mM EDTA recipe (see image) that works like a dream at 37 degrees, but for this experiment I can’t have them warmer than 4 degrees. I don’t know how long I can reasonably keep them in the fridge. 1 hour? 2 hours? The longer I leave them in the fridge, the more rounding I see, but I don’t know what is experimentally acceptable. I plan to run flow as my readout.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks Reddit!

So I am relatively new and starting a project. I’m ordering tonnes of stuff. I don’t know how exactly to keep track of everything. Any tips and tricks to make it less painful than just keeping an excel sheet? Any management software or apps and such or anything.

Gloves are bit short for me. We have standard length nitrile gloves. They are 240 mm (9.45 inches) long. They do go over the cuffs of my lab coat, but come off easy as there is not enough overlap. So I am looking at longer gloves, but they cost way too much. The current ones we get are microflex n273 which cost us ~$10 per 100 gloves. Also the extended cuff ones which are 300 mm (12 inches) feel too along, and of course expensive. I do see that different brands and skus have different length but there are so many to check. Does anyone have a recommendation which I should look for? Hopefully not too expensive.

Bonjour à tous,

Je démarre mon utilisation du kit TUNEL 647 pour l'évaluation de l'apoptose dans mes cellules traitées avec un siRNA et j'ai un bruit énorme ultra aspécifique sur ma lamelle.

J'ai du mal à savoir d'où est-ce que cela provient, si c'est un manque de rinçage ou une précipitation de mon fluorophore.

Est-ce que ce genre de chose est déjà arrivé à l'un d'entre vous?

Je suis preneuse de toutes infos!
Merci et bonne fin de journée !

Hi everyone😊

I’m planning to extract DNA from a small region of interest on FFPE tissue slides, rather than using the entire tissue section. The area I can collect is only around 5 mm × a few mm per section, so I’d love to hear about people’s experience with similarly small samples.

- What section thickness do you use?

- Roughly how much tissue area do you collect per section?

- What total DNA yields do you typically get from that amount of tissue?

I’m mainly trying to work out how thick would the sections need to be when sampling only this small region. Any real-world examples would be really helpful. Thanks!

Long story short, we’re using plasmids with an inserted sequence for our quantified standard in some in-house qPCR runs. Oddly though they seem to be coming up earlier and earlier over time. It looks to be about 1 Ct earlier each month with no real explanation (gone from 24 to 21 now).

The issue is between multiple mastermix lots and is consistent between vials stored in the fridge or in our -80. Baselines are set to the same thing, happening on multiple cyclers and seems to be happening with more than just one plasmid/control.

I’m a bit stumped on this one and my only theory has to do with the coiling of the plasmid changing over time leading to better amplification? Next step is to get the sequence as a gBlock and see how it compares in parallel.

If anyone has seen anything similar or has possible causes it’d be really helpful.

Hi everyone,

I'm installing an electric furnace inside a glovebox for research experiments. The furnace will operate at temperatures up to 700°C.

I need help selecting the correct wire inside the glovebox, specifically to connect the furnace's electrical terminals to the internal side of a Kurt J. Lesker power feedthrough.

Could anyone recommend what type of wire would be suitable for this setup?

I've also attached some photos for reference.

Thanks in advance!