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I’m writing this during England and the USA’s last chance to make it out of the group round of the World Cup. Those matches will soon be forgotten, but here’s some papers that (hopefully) will linger longer in the memory.

The colour of magic

One of the most boring things about working in a lab that, for whatever reason, expresses recombinant protein is waiting for the cultures to grow. This gets worse if you’re in one of those labs that religiously measures the optical density of cultures to get that sweet spot of induction just right.

Help might be at hand for those unfortunates. We report this week on a paper describing the use of the indicator methyl red to tell you when to add IPTG. Methyl red changes colour when the A₆₀₀ hits about 0.7