The salutation you use in an email matters.

A salutation is the first thing most people read, it sets the tone for the rest of the email, and it demonstrates your level of professionalism. For good or bad, it also carries the power to influence your reader. And you don’t want the person who reads your email to be annoyed or offended right from the start—especially if your plan is to ask a favor.

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has a monthly publication called ASBMB Today that has both print and online distribution.

Your lab is a bubble. You work with a team of people with supporting, overlapping, or related projects. You might use different techniques, methods, or approaches than your labmates, but overall you’re all working towards common objectives, and trying to solve a few big questions with the science. It’s good to be in that bubble.

Every time someone writes a letter of recommendation for you, it’s important to send a thank-you email expressing your gratitude. It doesn’t need to be a long email (in fact you want to keep it under six sentences), but it should be sincere.

For the maximum benefits, send the thank-you email the same week the letter is done. However, if someone wrote a letter for you last summer and you didn’t know to send a thank-you email, get it done today. It can still count.

Although there are more, here are three reasons you should send a thank-you email:

When you're conducting an experiment or doing a technique, take photos of anything that looks “odd” if your research mentor isn't around to help.

Sometimes, it's easier to describe and troubleshoot a problem if you have a photo to go along with a statement such as: “I don’t think my culture lysed correctly," or "When I filtered the solution, it looked chunky," or "The tissue kept tearing on the microtome."

Obviously, this won't work for all kinds of wet benchwork (such as enzymatic reactions), but when a photo could be helpful it's a great resource to have.