In the world of science blogging, it would seem, that there ain't many cell biologists (as far as I can tell). What is a Cell Biologist? Well lets just say that one of the main tools of your trade is photographing fluorescent images of cells.
Here is another definition (from the Disciplines of the Life Sciences):
Cell Biologist:
Cell biologists are the psychiatrists of the cellular world. They observe cell "behavior" through a microscope. They give cells drugs. They probe cells with microinjector needles. They shine big lasers ... well it's not always clear what they do with their lasers. A cell biologist asks big cellular questions like "How do cells crawl?" and "What is the meaning of dynamic instability?". At the end of the day, just before heading to the bar, cell biologists fix their subjects in either formaldehyde or a nice tall cool glass of methanol. These cells are then subjected to immunofluorescence and produce the dreaded colocalization death-trap-data ... beware if anyone gives you this type of data. When a cell biologist isn't killing cells, he/she is in a dark bar (cell biologists hate sunlight), getting wasted.
Some blogs maintained by Cell Biologists:
Naked Under my Lab Coat (by Joolya)
Migrations (by Dan)
ScienceSampler (by Evil Gomez and his voracious monkeys ... yeah I'm one of them)
So this is what I'd like to ask of you. If you know of a cell biologist, or ARE a cell biologist and have a blog let me know. I'll try to fix my neglected blogroll and add a special category.
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I am not one but I am interested. I have been looking but there seems to be very few scientist that do bench work blogging.
The trouble is that for us "lab bench" biologists, it's tough to pin a label to us, as you've noted - we all dabble a bit in other areas, the same could be said of neurobiologists, biochemists, geneticists, and others, who also dabble a bit in cell biology.
That said, great idea - I should give more link-respect to my fellow cell bio gang members!
If the criterion is doing a lot of immunofluoresence, then I am definitely a cell biologist. Immunofluoresence is at present my life. You might want to distinguish slightly between people who use cell biology techniques -- which is basically all bench biologists -- and people who study cellular behavior.
Cell biology is sometimes hard to blog about it though -- I try if I can -- because I feel like it is very difficult to make such technical things accessible. People sometimes fail to see the relevance of actin dynamics in the grand scheme of life, the universe and everyhting even if I think it is super cool.
Another thought on the criterion for being a cell biologist blogger: citing plenty of articles from Cell definitely counts one as a cell biology blogger in my book.
I like that ... could also add a few others (JCB, Nature Cell Biology ...) but this would be only for the hardcore cell biologists.
LASERS! I'll show you what I do with my lasers, Transcript!
Just you *dare* to come over the road and I shall FRAP yo' ass till you FRET like a FISH caught out of the SIRF! I shall trap you in my otical tweezers until you FLIP out! Then I shall zap you all the way to CALI and ablate you with my femtosecond Ti:Sapphire!!! Hai-ya!
I got ways to torture cells you haven't even dreamed of. Bwaahahahahaha!!! FLIM! PRIM! BRET! TIRF!
SIRF? Is that some sort of medieval TIRF?
Cell biologist, molecular biologist, protein chemist, structural biologist. . .
I'm a technique whore: http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/labrats
BK.
Hahaha: SIRF and TIRF.
(Simple internal reflection microscopy - weirdly not available from Zeiss in the US or Japan.
link here)
and how exactly do you define a "cell biologist"??.....especially since I do a lot of biochemistry, some pharmacology, but there's plenty of ICCs and immunofluorescence...... and now some "cell biology" (a present project started elsewhere, but ended up in cell-cycle arrest, with the associated changes in cell morphology and what not).
So, where does that leave me? :-)
I do skim through JCB and JCS though.....