MolBio Research Highlights turns 1

It was on Tuesday 23rd, 2008, on a hot summer afternoon, that MolBio Research Highlights was launched.

As I've mentioned before (See So what exactly is this blog about? and The 100th post at MolBio Research Highlights), this blog was created out of necessity and we are very excited about the way it has turned out.

MolBio Research Highlights, was initially born to compile articles, tools, websites and news in molecular biology I considered of interest [See So exactly, what is this blog about?]. Its first posts simply listed Pubmed entries of stand-out papers in the field in a way to compile them all in one place, instead of emailing them to the people I thought could be interested in them. With time, however, 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.

Having been around for a year now, I wanted to round up the major events of the past 12 months. MolBio Research Highlights turned into a blog with a philosophy that makes it stand aside among science-related blogs (it is written by scientists for scientists) and we are extremely pleased with the way this project has unfolded.

So, what has happened in this first year?

As I mentioned, we started discussing articles, news, tools and websites in molecular biology, more extensively which made the blog a lot more useful for fellow scientists.

We joined ResearchBlogging.org which gave the blog a lot more exposure and helped us learn about many other interesting science-related blogs.

We were featured a few times in the Cancer Research Blog Carnival and even hosted its 27th Edition.

I was interviewed by a Chilean nation-wide newspaper, about scientists that blog.

Some of our posts have had wide exposure in the blogosphere, with many "views":

What is Epigenetics? An operational definition
Are we training pit bulls to review our manuscripts?
Cancer Stem Cells: the root of all evil?
A few ideas for grad students in the life sciences to keep in mind ,

just to name a few.

We started "Picks of the Week", where we highlight the best molbio-related blog posts aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org. This has been around for roughly 20 weeks now and has been a great success.

We have several followers in Twitter and Friendfeed, accounts that were created mainly to promote the blog.

We would like to thank everyone who has supported us during this first year and we hope to have been an interesting addition to the science-related blogosphere.

Also, we would like to encourage fellow grad students to write for this blog and discuss new research and advances in molecular biology. The doors are open, just send me an email. You don’t have to be a regular writer to be featured here; if you occasionally find an article you’d like to write about, you are most certainly welcome to contact us with the idea.

Thanks again to everyone who has made this possible.

[Image credit: Chez Peg]