Life & Health Sciences
Biological sciences research: archives, preprints, standards and funders
Biological sciences research is organised less by one shared instrument than by a shared layer of public infrastructure. Sequence data are deposited in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which brings together DDBJ, the European Nucleotide Archive and NCBI. Protein knowledge sits in UniProt, a consortium of EMBL-EBI, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the Protein Information Resource, with manually reviewed Swiss-Prot entries beside automatically annotated TrEMBL. Experimentally determined structures are held through the wwPDB partnership, and data from ecology and evolution are often published in Dryad, a membership-based nonprofit.
Work is shared early. bioRxiv, run by the nonprofit openRxiv and founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2013, takes unrefereed life sciences preprints, and PubMed Central archives free full text, with more than 10 million article records. Journals such as eLife, which uses a publish-review-curate model, and GENETICS and G3 from the Genetics Society of America sit alongside society titles like BioScience from the American Institute of Biological Sciences.
Reporting and data standards matter for reuse. Animal studies follow the ARRIVE guidelines, sequence metadata follow the Genomic Standards Consortium's MIxS checklists, and the OBO Foundry sets principles for interoperable ontologies. Work on genetic resources collected abroad falls under the Nagoya Protocol, which entered into force on 12 October 2014 and requires prior informed consent and mutually agreed terms.
In the US, the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences and NIGMS fund much basic research; in the UK, BBSRC does. Societies such as AIBS and SICB organise the community, and EMBO counts more than 2,200 members. Specialist questions belong to the specialisation pages below.
New to the field? What is Biological Sciences? →
Reviewed 5 November 2026 by CASRAI Editorial Board
- eLife(read 5 November 2026)
- GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics(read 5 November 2026)
- American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)(read 5 November 2026)
- Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)(read 5 November 2026)
- EMBO(read 5 November 2026)
- NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO)(read 5 November 2026)
- NIGMS(read 5 November 2026)
- BBSRC (UKRI)(read 5 November 2026)
- International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC)(read 5 November 2026)
- UniProt(read 5 November 2026)
- RCSB Protein Data Bank(read 5 November 2026)
- Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)(read 5 November 2026)
- Dryad(read 5 November 2026)
- ARRIVE guidelines(read 5 November 2026)
- MIxS (Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence)(read 5 November 2026)
- OBO Foundry(read 5 November 2026)
- Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing(read 5 November 2026)
- bioRxiv(read 5 November 2026)
- PubMed Central(read 5 November 2026)
- arXiv Quantitative Biology (q-bio)(read 5 November 2026)
Field at a glance
Journals
- eLife
- Non-profit journal using a publish-review-curate model that pairs preprints with public peer-review assessments; funders shown include HHMI and Wellcome.Website ↗
- GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics
- Peer-reviewed journals of the Genetics Society of America, which has nearly 6,000 members in more than 50 countries.Website ↗
Societies
- American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)
- Founded 1947; publishes BioScience, offers peer review services and has 91 member organisations including societies, museums and botanic gardens.Website ↗
- Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)
- Organised in divisions such as Animal Behavior, Phylogenetics & Comparative Biology, Invertebrate Zoology and Evolutionary Developmental Biology.Website ↗
- EMBO
- Heidelberg-based life sciences organisation with more than 2,200 members; funds postdoctoral fellowships and the Young Investigator Programme.Website ↗
Funders and programmes
- NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO)
- Funds research from molecules to ecosystems, including BIO Core, Living Systems (EPP and OIE) and Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology.Website ↗
- NIGMS
- NIH institute whose areas include genetics, molecular, cellular and developmental biology and biophysics; mechanisms include R01 and MIRA.Website ↗
- BBSRC (UKRI)
- UK research council whose stated mission is to push back the frontiers of biology; funds research, doctoral training, fellowships and facilities.Website ↗
Archives, facilities and data
- International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC)
- Archives nucleotide sequence data from raw reads to annotated sequences; members are DDBJ, EMBL-EBI (ENA) and NCBI.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- UniProt
- Protein sequence and function knowledgebase run by EBI, SIB and PIR; Swiss-Prot is manually reviewed, TrEMBL automatically annotated; launched December 2003.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- RCSB Protein Data Bank
- A wwPDB partner; its home page lists 262,513 experimental structures and more than one million computed structure models.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
- International network launched in 2001 that serves species distribution data and scientific names through one open portal.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- Dryad
- Membership-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit incorporated in 2012 that curates open research data in all fields; it began with ecology and evolution.Website ↗ · Our guide →
Standards and formats
- ARRIVE guidelines
- Checklist for reporting animal research in vivo, on a site run by NC3Rs; resources include a study plan, author checklists and training.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- MIxS (Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence)
- Genomic Standards Consortium metadata checklists and environmental extensions describing how a specimen was sampled and sequenced.Website ↗
- OBO Foundry
- Community developing interoperable ontologies for the biological sciences under a published set of principles.Website ↗
- Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing
- Adopted 29 October 2010, in force 12 October 2014; covers prior informed consent and benefit sharing for genetic resource research.Website ↗
Preprints and indexes
- bioRxiv
- Free archive for unpublished life sciences preprints in 25 categories, run by openRxiv; founded in 2013 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- PubMed Central
- NLM-NCBI free full-text archive, public since 2000, with more than 10 million article records plus NIH-deposited manuscripts and preprints.Website ↗ · Our guide →
- arXiv Quantitative Biology (q-bio)
- Ten categories including Genomics, Populations and Evolution, Molecular Networks and Quantitative Methods.Website ↗ · Our guide →
64 pages across 11 topic areas
Research Methods & Statistics
- Bacteriology vs Microbiology: What Is the Difference?Comparison
Bacteriology studies bacteria; microbiology studies all microorganisms. A side-by-side comparison of scope, methods, training, biosafety, funding and…
- Biology vs Biochemistry: Key DifferencesComparison
Biology is the study of life at every scale; biochemistry is the study of the chemistry of living things. Compare scope, methods, training, funding an…
- Cell Biology vs. Molecular Biology: What Is the Difference?Comparison
Cell biology studies the whole cell and its compartments; molecular biology studies DNA, RNA and protein. How they differ in scale, methods, tools and…
- Genetics vs Epigenetics: What Is the Difference?Comparison
Genetics studies the DNA sequence and how it is inherited; epigenetics studies the chemical marks on DNA and its packaging proteins that change how ge…
- Genetics vs Genomics: What Is the Difference?Comparison
Genetics studies individual genes and how traits are inherited; genomics studies whole genomes and how their parts interact. Compare scale, methods, d…
- How to Read a Phylogenetic Tree: Nodes, Branch Lengths and Bootstrap Values
Nodes, branch lengths, tip order and the numbers on the branches (bootstrap values vs Bayesian posterior probabilities) explained with a worked interp…
- What Is Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A thorough answer to "what is biology," covering its major branches, the NIH/NSF/USDA funding landscape, common research methods, and career and train…
- What Is Biophysics?
Biophysics uses the concepts and instruments of physics to explain how biological molecules, cells and organisms work. Subfields, methods, funders, so…
- What Is Cell Biology? Research Areas, Methods, Funding, and Career Paths
A complete guide to cell biology: what it studies, its subfields, core methods such as microscopy, cell culture and flow cytometry, cell line authenti…
- What Is Conservation Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A guide to conservation biology: what it studies, its major sub-disciplines, the federal and private funding landscape, common research methods, and t…
- What Is Developmental Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A complete guide to developmental biology: what it studies, its major sub-disciplines, the real NIH/NSF/private funding landscape, core embryology res…
- What Is Entomology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A thorough answer to "what is entomology," covering its major subfields, the NSF/USDA NIFA/NIH NIAID funding landscape, common research methods, and c…
- What Is Evolutionary Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
What evolutionary biology studies, its major sub-disciplines, who funds it (NSF, NIH, USDA and private foundations), core research methods, and typica…
- What Is Genetics? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A thorough answer to "what is genetics," covering its subfields, the NIH/NSF/USDA funding landscape, common research methods, and career and training…
- What Is Marine Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A thorough answer to "what is marine biology" — what it studies, its major sub-disciplines, who funds the research (NSF, NOAA, NIH, ONR), typical meth…
- What Is Microbiology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A complete answer to what microbiology is: its subfields, the real NIH/NSF/USDA/private funding landscape, core research methods and equipment, and ty…
- What Is Molecular Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
A complete guide to molecular biology: what it studies, its major sub-disciplines, the real NIH/NSF/private funding landscape, core lab methods, and t…
- What Is Mycology? The Study of Fungi Explained
Mycology is the scientific study of fungi, including yeasts, molds and mushrooms. This guide covers its subfields, methods, culture collections, fundi…
- What Is Systems Biology? Research Areas, Funding, and Career Paths
Systems biology studies biological organisms as integrated networks of interacting components, combining measurement, mathematical modelling and compu…
- What Is Wildlife Biology and Wildlife Management?
Wildlife biology is the science of wild animal populations and their habitats, and wildlife management is the applied practice built on it. How the fi…
- What Is Zoology? Subfields, Methods and Research Compliance
Zoology is the scientific study of animals. This guide covers its subfields, field, specimen and genetic methods, societies, funders, and the permits…
- Zoology vs Ecology: Key DifferencesComparison
Zoology is the study of animals; ecology is the study of how organisms interact with each other and their environment. Compare scope, methods, complia…
Laboratory Operations & Safety
- Aseptic Technique in the Lab: Complete Guide (vs. Sterile Technique)
Aseptic technique for cell culture and microbiology: what it is, how it differs from sterile technique, biosafety cabinet vs. laminar flow hood, disin…
- Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) Requirements: Facility and Equipment Buying Guide
A procurement-focused breakdown of BSL-2 facility, equipment, and documentation requirements, plus how to evaluate biosafety cabinet certifiers and eq…
- Cell Culture Basics: A Beginner's Guide for New Lab Members
A beginner's guide to mammalian cell culture covering equipment, aseptic technique, media, passaging, cell counting, contamination control, and biosaf…
- Cell Culture Contamination: Identification, Causes, and Prevention
How to identify bacterial, fungal, yeast, and mycoplasma contamination in cell culture by visual and microscopic signs, what causes each, prevention p…
- Cell Culture Reference Numbers: Vessel Surface Areas, Media Volumes and Seeding Densities
A reference table of flask, plate and dish surface areas, media volumes, dissociation volumes and seeding densities for cell culture, plus a worked sc…
- Cell Passaging Protocol: Confluency, Split Ratios, and Scheduling
The full cell passaging workflow: confluency and doubling-time timing, split ratio selection, the adherent/suspension protocol, seeding density, and s…
- Confocal Microscopy: Principle, Setup, and When to Use It
How confocal microscopy works, when it beats widefield fluorescence, the parameters researchers must set and report, and the sample-prep, artefact, an…
- Containment Level 3 Laboratory vs. CL2: Canada's Biosafety Standard ComparedComparison
CL2 vs. CL3 containment laboratories under Canada's Biosafety Standard (CBS): facility engineering requirements, PHAC/HPTA licensing, and how the term…
- Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM): What Lifetime Measures That Intensity Cannot
FLIM measures how long fluorophores stay excited, not how many photons they emit — a readout that is largely concentration-independent. A practical gu…
- FRAP (Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching): Designing and Interpreting the Experiment
A practical guide to fluorescence recovery after photobleaching: choosing the bleach ROI and bleach depth, normalising the curve, using the effective…
- Gram Stain: Procedure, Reagents and How to Read the Result
A step-by-step Gram stain protocol with reagent timings, a purple-vs-pink results table, worked organism examples, and the single most common cause of…
- Hemocytometer Cell Counting and Viability: The Complete Guide
A complete, derivation-first guide to manual cell counting with a hemocytometer: chamber geometry, the counting formula explained from first principle…
- In Situ Hybridization (ISH): Probe Design, Controls, and Readout
In situ hybridization detects a labeled nucleic-acid probe bound to its complementary target inside intact cells or tissue, preserving spatial informa…
- MTT Assay: Cell Viability Measurement and Pitfalls
A complete guide to the MTT assay for cell viability and cytotoxicity: the tetrazolium-to-formazan mechanism, seeding/incubation/solubilization workfl…
- Super-Resolution Microscopy: Choosing Between SIM, STED and SMLM
A practical decision guide to SIM, STED and single-molecule localization microscopy: what each measured on the same specimen, why labelling density an…
- Western Blot Blocking Buffer: Choosing BSA or Milk by Target
Milk casein is a phosphoprotein that competes with phospho-specific antibodies, and milk biotin saturates streptavidin. BSA avoids both but costs more…
- Western Blot Loading Controls: Housekeeping Protein vs. Total-Protein Normalization
A loading control is only interpretable inside its linear range. How to choose between housekeeping-protein and total-protein normalization, how to ru…
- Western Blot No Bands: Troubleshooting Decision Tree
A symptom-first decision tree for western blot failures: no bands, ghost bands, multiple bands, faint bands, smiling bands, and high background, start…
- Western Blot Protocol Basics: Step-by-Step Walkthrough
A complete step-by-step western blot protocol covering sample preparation, SDS-PAGE, membrane transfer, blocking, antibody incubation, detection, and…
- Western Blot Transfer Buffer: Towbin, Methanol and SDS Decisions
Transfer buffer composition is four decisions - buffering system, methanol, SDS, and the transfer apparatus - made against protein size and membrane.…
- Zebrafish Husbandry: Water Quality, Housing, Breeding, and Health Surveillance
A practical guide to zebrafish (Danio rerio) husbandry for research facilities: water quality management, housing and stocking density, feeding, breed…
Research Data Management
- CyVerse: Cyberinfrastructure and Data Repository for Plant Biology and Life Sciences
CyVerse is an NSF-funded, open-source cyberinfrastructure platform providing data storage, bioinformatics analysis tools, and DOI-issuing dataset publ…
- Dryad Data Repository: Costs, Curation, and DMP Fit
A practical look at Dryad's curated submission workflow, its CC0-default licensing, current Data Publishing Charges, and where it fits relative to Zen…
- GenBank: NCBI's Foundational DNA and Genetic Sequence Database
GenBank is NCBI's open, annotated archive of all publicly available DNA and RNA sequences -- the base nucleotide layer that many other genomics reposi…
- Paleobiology Database (PBDB): Fossil Occurrence & Taxonomic Data Repository
The Paleobiology Database (PBDB) is a free, community-curated repository of fossil occurrence and taxonomic data, covering the Phanerozoic under a CC…
- WormBase vs. FlyBase vs. MGI vs. ZFIN: Model Organism Databases ComparedComparison
A side-by-side comparison of the four major model organism databases -- WormBase (C. elegans), FlyBase (Drosophila), MGI (mouse), and ZFIN (zebrafish)…
Laboratory Equipment & Instrumentation
- Annexin V/PI Apoptosis Assay by Flow Cytometry: Controls, Timing, and Setup
How to set up an Annexin V/PI apoptosis panel on a flow cytometer: the calcium-dependent binding mechanism, the buffer error that silently produces fa…
- Cell Sorting by Flow Cytometry: Nozzle, Sheath Pressure, Sort Mode, Purity and Post-Sort Viability
How nozzle diameter and sheath pressure are chosen from cell size, why sort mode is a droplet-conflict rule rather than a quality dial, what purity mo…
- Mycoplasma Testing Methods Compared: PCR, Culture, Indicator Cell Culture and Luminescence
A method-selection guide to mycoplasma detection: direct culture, indicator cell culture with DNA staining, NAT/PCR and enzymatic luminescence compare…
- Western Blot Densitometry in ImageJ: A Defensible Quantification Procedure
A darker band is not the same claim as a band that measured darker. How to verify the linear range with a dilution series, subtract background consist…
Research Integrity & Compliance
- Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC), Select Agents, and Biosafety Oversight
A compliance map for US research-administration offices: what makes research DURC, how the Federal Select Agent Program registration process works, ho…
- Ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Dickey-Wicker, NIH Guidelines, and ISSCR Standards
A practical guide to the ethics and regulation of embryonic stem cell research: what the Dickey-Wicker Amendment actually restricts, how the 2009 NIH…
- The Federal Select Agent Program: Registration and Responsible Official Duties
How FSAP registration, amendment, and renewal actually work, and the specific duties 42 CFR 73.9 assigns to the Responsible Official.…
Clinical Research Administration
- Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC): How Broth Microdilution Determines It
Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) is the lowest antimicrobial concentration that stops visible growth. This guide covers how broth microdilution…
- Time-Kill Assays: Measuring Bactericidal Kinetics Over Time
Time-kill assays track viable colony counts over time against a fixed drug exposure, revealing bactericidal kinetics, the CLSI ≥3-log10 threshold, and…
Research Information & Identifiers
- Darwin Core occurrenceID: Persistent IDs for Specimens
How Darwin Core's occurrenceID uniquely and persistently identifies individual biological and museum specimen records within GBIF, and why that granul…
- RRIDs Explained: Citing Antibodies, Model Organisms, and Software So They're Findable
How to find, register, and cite RRIDs for antibodies, cell lines, model organisms, and software in a methods section, and why journals increasingly as…
Research Tools & Software
- MAFFT vs MUSCLE vs Clustal Omega vs T-Coffee: Multiple Sequence Alignment Tools ComparedComparison
A technical comparison of MAFFT, MUSCLE, Clustal Omega and T-Coffee for multiple sequence alignment: algorithmic approach, scalability and accuracy tr…
- SnapGene vs. Benchling: Which Molecular Biology Tool Fits Your Lab?Comparison
SnapGene prices named-user licenses publicly starting at $350/user/year for academic labs; Benchling sells its broader cloud R&D platform through cust…
CRediT & Authorship
- Reagent, Cell-Line, and Animal-Model Sharing: Does Providing Materials Justify Authorship?
Providing a reagent, cell line, or animal model doesn't by itself meet ICMJE's authorship criteria. This guide explains why, and how CRediT's Resource…
Laboratory Compliance & Quality
- Biosafety Levels BSL-1 to BSL-4: Containment Requirements Compared
A cross-level comparison of BSL-1 through BSL-4 on the four elements BMBL 6th edition actually uses — standard practices, special practices, primary b…
Technology Transfer & Innovation
- Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) Compliance for International Material Transfer Agreements
How Nagoya Protocol PIC/MAT obligations and the EU's due-diligence regulation shape the ABS-specific clauses a technology transfer office must draft i…
Key terms
- BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council)
- Biosafety Level (BSL)
- Biosafety Level 1 (BSL-1)
- Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2)
- Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3)
- Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4)
- Communications Biology’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
- Current Biology's Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
- Darwin Core
- GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility)
- Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFE Act)
- Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)
- Human Tissue Act (UK)
- PLOS Biology Impact Factor (2026 Update)
- Select Agent List
