Tag

troubleshooting

Articles tagged troubleshooting. Tags group methods across clusters so a technique can be found from more than one route.

cold chain biosafety crispr specification sequencing proteomics enquiry glossary troubleshooting cloning microbiology buffers freezers pipetting calibration elisa cell culture glassware

15 articles

Close-up of a micropipette tip releasing a droplet into a microcentrifuge tube held in a gloved hand

liquid handling

Air displacement versus positive displacement

Trace under-delivery and dripping to the air cushion or the piston, and choose the pipette class that matches the liquid.

8 October 2026 · 7 min read

Wall-mounted water purification unit dispensing ultrapure water into a glass flask

buffers and water

Chelators EDTA and magnesium-dependent enzymes

Trace a failed magnesium-dependent enzyme to EDTA carry-over, including textbook TE, and decide whether EGTA or less chelator is the check the method actually allows.

8 October 2026 · 8 min read

Safety goggles, lab coat, nitrile gloves and a face shield on a bench with an eyewash station behind

laboratory safety

Gas cylinders and a secured chain

A hiss, a slack chain, or the wrong regulator are different faults. Separate oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen before you touch a fitting.

8 October 2026 · 8 min read

Gloved fingers placing a silica spin column into a collection tube beside a tube rack and pipette tips

nucleic acid purification

Low yield troubleshooting for DNA preps

A low spectrophotometer reading can mean incomplete lysis, overload, excess elution volume, leftover ethanol, nuclease or input that was never there.

8 October 2026 · 7 min read

Gloved hand pipetting into a tube near a cold block and agar plates with colonies, gel image on a monitor

molecular cloning

Overlap assembly design rules

How to troubleshoot Gibson-style overlaps of about 15 to 40 bases when repeats, a melting mismatch, a short insert or exonuclease chew-back wrecks the join.

8 October 2026 · 8 min read

liquid handling

Small volumes near the bottom of the range

Diagnose noisy results at the bottom of a pipette range, move to a lower-range instrument, and watch pre-wetting and the first stop.

8 October 2026 · 7 min read

Rack of flow cytometry tubes in front of a researcher viewing coloured scatter plots beside a cytometer

cytometry and microscopy

Troubleshooting a cytometer with no events

What no events means on a cytometer: clog, threshold, trigger, sheath, interlock, or a tube that is not actually sipping.

8 October 2026 · 7 min read

liquid handling

Troubleshooting a dripping pipette

Name the seal, shaft, solvent, and piston causes of a dripping pipette, and keep that pipette out of service until it is checked.

8 October 2026 · 6 min read

Gloved hand placing a vial into the autosampler of a modular HPLC system with solvent bottles on top

chromatography

Troubleshooting a flat chromatogram

Work through a flat chromatogram by checking the lamp, wavelength, injection, leak, flow-through, and the integrator scale.

8 October 2026 · 7 min read

Gloved hands pouring acrylamide solution between glass plates in a gel casting stand

protein biochemistry

Troubleshooting a smeared protein gel

How to branch a smeared protein gel: overload, salt, DNA, degradation, polymerisation, buffer, bubbles, detergent and a leaking well.

8 October 2026 · 7 min read

buffers and water

Troubleshooting an assay that worked last month

Choose the first variable to test when an assay that worked last month now fails: water, pH at the temperature of use, the salt hydrate, the electrode, or the enzyme lot.

8 October 2026 · 9 min read

Gloved hand sliding a yellow-developed ELISA plate into a microplate reader drawer

immunoassays

Troubleshooting no signal

A flat research ELISA is a broken chain, from coating to wavelength. Separate a truly blank plate from a signal that merely sits below the curve.

8 October 2026 · 11 min read