Our latest post, a discussion on the Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis [Cancer Stem Cells: the root of all evil?], marked our 100th post.I considered this to be a good time to talk a little about the ~7 months this blog has been around.
The blog, MolBio Research Highlights, was initially born to compile a list of articles, tools, websites and news in molecular biology I considered of interest [See So exactly, what is this blog about?]. With time, I decided I wanted to comment a little more extensively on the items I was posting and eventually these comments got lengthier and richer, as I sometimes discussed not only the item being highlighted but also related stuff. Indeed, some techniques in the field have also been posted, as an aid for interested young researchers [For example, see Analyzing the genome-wide chromatin landscape: ChIP-Seq].
As primary research literature in molecular biology was sometimes discussed, I decided it was a smart move to join Researchblogging.org, where blog posts on peer-reviewed research on different topics, are aggregated. Indeed, this attracted a whole lot of traffic to the site and also, through this initiative, I got the chance to learn about several science-related blogs with some very interesting writing. In this sense, I think MolBio Research Highlights stands aside, and through its novel approach joined a particular group of blogs: blogs where the content is written by scientists and more interestingly, for scientists, differing from many other blogs, for example, where science is discussed by some very talented, yet non-scientist/researcher bloggers, and are aimed at the general public, or others which are written by scientists but aimed at the general public. I consider all of these approaches valuable and needed at present, each within its particular niche.
Around that same time, Francisco Barriga, a cancer researcher at IRB Barcelona, joined the blog and his interesting insights in cancer biology have broadened our scope. Indeed, MolBio Research Highlights was featured for the first time in the Cancer Research Blog Carnival [Cancer Carnival #23] and we hope to participate in future editions.
I sincerely hope other young molecular biologists will follow Francisco’s example and get interested in participating in our blog to discuss new research and advances at this fascinating time in molecular biology. The doors are open.
You don’t have to be a regular writer to be featured here; if you occasionally find an article you’d like to write a post about, you are most certainly welcome to contact us with the idea.
We feel very satisfied with the way the blog has developed over the course of these few months, and even though we acknowledge there are still many things that can and must be improved, this has been a good start, in our opinion. We are particularly proud of some of our most-read articles, What is Epigenetics? An operational definition, On PLoS' article-level metrics and the rapid blogosphere hit Cancer Stem Cells: the root of all evil?
Please feel free and encouraged to comment on our posts and also to let us know who you are; do you also have a blog? Let us (and everyone else) know about it!
We hope to have been an interesting addition to the science-related blogosphere during these few months and to improve within the next ones.
Thanks to everyone who has been reading our blog.
[Image credit: Multitema]
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