Here is a newly updated and expanded edition of a useful and popular guide. In addition to providing new information on topics covered in the first edition, this volume covers a number of major techniques which must be mastered by molecular biologists and biochemists. Every aspect of polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis is described, while valuable appendix materials bring the reader useful listings of suppliers' addresses, detection methods, and more.
Feel like the protocols in your lab are voodoo cobbled together from a mess of chance observations from lab members long ago, where something once worked for them so they kept doing it from then on without really understanding why it worked that one time? Ever get messy results and just had your PI shrug, say it was a "bad gel", and told you to "just repeat it", because "something was just wrong that time", and surely if you repeat it, even if you do everything the same, it will just work this time? Ever wanted to really know how a Western blot worked, but got lost in a chain of references that never actually connect to a decent review?
Then the Practical Approach series is for you. Experts actually stop and explain the voodoo: this is why you do each step, here are the proper citations for how we know what we know, and this is how to troubleshoot an ugly gel. Must-read for undergrads, first-year graduate students, and basically everyone working in a laboratory.