Learning paths

Learn a workflow, step by step

Each path follows a real lab workflow in the order you would do it at the bench. Every step says why it comes where it does, and has its own guide and virtual lab.

The skills every experiment rests on: working safely, measuring volumes, making solutions and checking concentrations.

  1. Lab safety & biosafety
  2. Pipetting & serial dilution
  3. Buffer & media preparation
  4. Centrifugation
  5. UV-Vis spectrophotometry
  6. Experimental design & controls
  7. Record keeping & sample tracking
0 of 7 practisedStart

Copy a gene, put it into a plasmid, get it into bacteria and confirm the sequence: the classic cloning workflow.

  1. PCR
  2. Agarose gel electrophoresis
  3. Restriction digestion
  4. Ligation-based cloning
  5. Bacterial transformation
  6. Plasmid preparation
  7. DNA quantification & QC
  8. Sanger sequencing
0 of 8 practisedStart

Find out how much a gene is switched on: from isolating RNA to a fold change you can defend.

  1. RNA extraction
  2. RNA integrity check
  3. Reverse transcription
  4. RT-qPCR
  5. RNA-seq
0 of 5 practisedStart

Get protein out of cells, measure it, separate it by size and detect the one you care about.

  1. Cell lysis & protein extraction
  2. Protein quantification
  3. SDS-PAGE
  4. Western blot
  5. ELISA
0 of 5 practisedStart

Produce a recombinant protein, purify it and check that what you have is pure, folded and not aggregated.

  1. Recombinant expression
  2. Affinity purification
  3. Chromatography polishing
  4. SDS-PAGE
  5. Thermal shift assays
  6. Dynamic light scattering
0 of 6 practisedStart

Keep mammalian cells healthy, counted, contamination-free and safely frozen.

  1. Aseptic technique & passaging
  2. Media & supplements
  3. Cell counting & viability
  4. Contamination control
  5. Cryopreservation & banking
0 of 5 practisedStart

Edit a gene with CRISPR, get the edit into cells and confirm it worked.

  1. CRISPR-Cas9 editing
  2. Transfection
  3. Genotyping
  4. Western blot
  5. Stable cell line generation
0 of 5 practisedStart

Grow, count, identify and test bacteria, the core of any microbiology lab.

  1. Plating & streaking
  2. CFU counting
  3. Growth curves
  4. Gram staining
  5. Antimicrobial susceptibility (MIC)
  6. Liquid culture & strain storage
0 of 6 practisedStart

Take DNA from extraction to reads you can analyse: the next-generation sequencing workflow.

  1. Genomic DNA extraction
  2. DNA quantification & QC
  3. Library construction
  4. Library QC & pooling
  5. Short-read sequencing
  6. Read processing & analysis
0 of 6 practisedStart

Label structures in cells, image them well and turn the pictures into numbers.

  1. Immunofluorescence
  2. Widefield fluorescence
  3. Confocal microscopy
  4. Image analysis
0 of 4 practisedStart