The hottest Laboratory Substack posts right now

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Top Science Topics

Why Lab Coats are White

Asimov Press • 386 implied HN points • 18 Mar 26
🔬 Science Laboratory
  1. The white lab coat began in 19th-century surgery as a practical, washable garment tied to new hygiene practices, replacing the dark, blood-stained frock coats.
  2. Over time the white coat turned into a powerful public symbol of science and medicine, signaling professionalism, cleanliness, and group identity.
  3. The coat’s symbolic power often outpaces its actual safety, so researchers are inventing better, functional materials and designs—but widespread change requires cultural as well as technological shifts.

Working in Glass

Asimov Press • 322 implied HN points • 04 Mar 26
🔬 Science Laboratory
  1. Learning to make and modify glassware let chemists build cheap, hands-on experiments and get repeatable results; teaching glassblowing spread that do-it-yourself approach.
  2. Advances in glass chemistry and manufacturing—especially borosilicate formulations and standardized fittings—made labware tougher, more accurate, and interchangeable, which helped standardize modern labs.
  3. Glassblowing shifted from a core skill to a specialized trade as industrial brands mass-produced equipment, but glass remains essential for optics and high-temperature work while plastics handle many disposable tasks.

More Roche SBX Workflow Thoughts

ASeq Newsletter • 21 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🔬 Science Laboratory
  1. There are two Axelios workflows being compared: SBX-D is a duplex, multi-day protocol around 19 hours, while SBX-Fast completes in roughly 3.5 hours.
  2. Collected run data were used to directly compare SBX-D and SBX-Fast to show their relative throughput and performance differences.
  3. The comparison highlights trade-offs between speed and duplex capability, so choosing a workflow depends on whether higher throughput or shorter turnaround time is more important.

A Most Important Mustard

Asimov Press • 264 implied HN points • 26 Nov 25
🔬 Science Laboratory
  1. Arabidopsis thaliana is a small plant that was first discovered in the Harz Mountains of Germany. Despite its simplicity, it has become a major model for plant biology.
  2. Important researchers saw its potential, especially because it has a small genome and can be easily manipulated in the lab. This made it useful for studying plant genetics.
  3. Over time, Arabidopsis has transformed from being overlooked to becoming a key species for understanding many plant processes, benefiting both research and agriculture.

BioFire SpotFire

ASeq Newsletter • 7 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🔬 Science Laboratory
  1. The SpotFire stood out among sample-to-answer qPCR machines.
  2. It appears to use the same two-stage amplification process as the FilmArray.
  3. It shortens time to result from about 45 minutes to around 15 minutes.
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