March 05, 2016 at 01:52AM

Today I Learned: 1) New trick for cooking with garlic -- instead of adding it to the pan as the last ingredient, just a minute or two before serving, add it as the *first* ingredient, cook it for about a minute (until it just starts to brown), take it out, and add it back at the end. Advantages: the garlic gets very well cooked through, and it... maybe adds some garlic flavor to the rest of the meal? Only tried this once so far, and it seemed to add a nice aftertaste. Need more sample size. Disadvantages: you have to pay close attention while the garlic cooks, which means it's hard to be preparing other ingredients in parallel. Also, taking out the garlic is messy, and there's some loss in whatever container you use to hold the garlic. Speaking of which, you end up having to wash whatever dish you hold the garlic in, which is one more thing to wash. Overall, I'm not entirely sold, but I may want to try it a few more times to get a better feel for the effect it has on flavor. Tip from Erik Jue! 2) There are purple fluorescent proteins. Of course there are purple fluorescent proteins. There's a purple fluorescent protein called mPlum. Of course it's called mPlum. 3) Primer design and primer overhang extension is a lot to teach someone who isn't an experienced biologist at once, if you expect them to immediately be able to apply that information.