We were very lucky to receive two free places to attend the Danish Diabetes Academy’s Winter School in Malaga in March. The Winter School is an annual event for post-docs/final year PhD students working in the field of diabetes research. The 4-day programme covered a range of topics from molecular research into diabetes aetiology and […]
No more cloning: quick and easy CRISPR with sgRNA gene fragments
Ralitsa Madsen is a PhD student in the University of Cambridge. Below she shares her journey in harnessing the power of CRISPR. Ultimately, she was able to create point mutation knockins in HEK293s using CRISPR with up to 18% efficiency without selection. Check out this post for her tips and tricks! Introduction When I started […]
Researcher Spotlight at Wellcome Trust: Naomi Penfold
Naomi Penfold has a four-year MRes plus PhD programme studentship from the Wellcome Trust, and is currently working towards her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on the way that nutrition in your early years – starting even before birth – can affect your health in later life. We asked her to […]
Three shades of fat
Until recently, our body fat, the adipose organ, was thought to be composed by white adipose tissue, which has been described merely as a passive storage organ for excess calories, and of brown adipose tissue, described to be present in infants, which functions primarily to consume fat to produce heat to maintain core body temperature. […]
The Road to Rio, via Seoul – Going to the Paralympic Qualifiers
Written by Sarah M Leiter, MB/PhD student at Semple Lab, University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories Hello everyone, My name is Sarah and I am a 3rd year PhD student in Rob Semple’s lab. As many of you know, when I am not working in the lab I can usually be found in the gym […]
The Tower of Babel: scientists and the public
by Ralitsa Madsen, Wellcome Trust PhD student in Metabolic and Cardiovascular Disease at the University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories Most of us have heard about the Tower of Babel, a biblical story supposed to explain the origins of different languages. Accordingly, living beings do not share a common, or universal language. Is that really […]
Obesity in dogs: a big problem
‘I am inclined to resent the wide publicity recently bestowed upon a certain [cat which] has achieved notoriety by measuring 33 inches round the waist and weighing just over 2 stone. That is a good deal of cat; about three times too much, to be perfectly frank.’ ‘Far be it from me to sneer; obesity, […]
An insider’s view of the PhD Student Symposium
Written by Vivian Peirce & Naomi Penfold; photos credited to Annie Robbins & Joseph Polex-Wolf. On Monday 21st July, the Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science’s Metabolic Research Laboratories (IMS-MRL) hosted their fourth Student Symposium. This was the annual opportunity for our postgraduate students to share their research with their peers and the rest of […]