- So how much of an experimental protocol do you want to understand, before you actually do the protocol. I would say that you need to understand what every, the purpose of every instruction in that protocol. What each of those instructions is trying to achieve.

- I do think it's really, really important to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of an experiment. To understand why you're adding each individual reagent. To understand why the incubation times are what they are. To understand, you know, why all the variables are set the way they are. So I think all of these things are really, really important in an experiment. But I think it's also important to realize that despite the fact that we sort of all value this to a great degree, all of us are also guilty of not doing that to some extant. Because, our understanding of the fundamentals of every experiment for all of us end somewhere. We don't understand every single basic mechanism of all of the ions and all of the you know, chemistry and everything. We don't understand that about all of the aspects of our science. Right? So I think it's important to make sure that you know, for what's rationally possible. So what to the extant to which it's something that you can control. So if you can change the buffers, you should understand why you would use different buffers. If you can change the incubation time, you should understand why you would use different incubation times.

- And that is essential. Because, if you understand the molecular basis of what you are doing, when you are facing that problem you'll have a higher chance of finding a good solution to that problem.

- Before you actually sit down and do an experiment, try to conceptualize. If I were to sort of walk through this protocol from start to finish right now, how long is going to take me to do this? Do I have all of the supplies that I need? If this asks for one kilogram of Sodium chloride do we actually have a kilogram of Sodium chloride in the lab right now? Are the steps that I've written out for myself like do they make sense from a practical stand point? So if there is a step that requires me to hold like three agar blocks simultaneously, is that going to like make sense when I actually go and try to do it? Because I only have two hands and I can't hold three things at once. So little practical issues like that. You can catch those if you sit down and try to read through a protocol and visualize yourself doing it before you actually start doing it.

- And generally speaking is true that knowledge begets knowledge. So the more you know, the easier it will be to optimize that given protocol.

- It almost always takes more time to understand all of those aspects, but it's worth it.