Biochemistry Editing and Proofreading Services

Figure 3 shows three bars, each with an error bar, and an asterisk above the third. A reader trying to judge whether it means anything needs to know how many independent experiments sit behind it, whether the replicates were biological or technical, what the error bars represent, and which test produced the asterisk. None of that appears in the figure, in the legend, or in the methods. It was all self-evident to the person who did the work, and none of it survived the trip to the page.

The documents we edit for Biochemistry

Journal articles, their figures, and their legends account for most of what we handle in biochemistry. Methods sections and their reproducibility come next, along with assay and enzyme kinetics reporting, protein purification and characterization sections, and buffer, reagent, and antibody documentation. We also handle structural and biophysical results sections, supplementary information, and data availability statements, together with grant applications, progress reports, dissertation chapters, and oral defense material. Our editors work on the legend that has to carry the experiment.

What the editing involves

The figure legend is where biochemical evidence is either assessable or taken on trust, and it fails most often as a caption that merely names the axes. A reader cannot evaluate a result whose replication structure is invisible. Every legend should state the number of independent biological replicates and, separately, the number of technical replicates within them. Three wells of one preparation and three separate preparations are entirely different evidence, and much of the field's reproducibility problem lives in that distinction. "n = 3" with no word attached to it tells a reader almost nothing.

Error bars need identifying as what they are, whether standard deviation, standard error, or a confidence interval, because those three differ by factors that change the visual impression completely. The statistical test should be named with what was compared and whether any correction for multiple comparisons was applied, given that an asterisk with no test behind it is decoration. The exact sample size belongs in the legend as a single number rather than a range, because "n = 3 to 5" leaves a reader unable to reconstruct any comparison in the figure. Anything normalized should say what it was normalized to, and any image described as representative should say how many were examined.

Reagent identity is the other thing a legend has to carry, in enough detail for somebody else to repeat the work. The antibody's supplier and catalog number, the protein's expression system and purification tag, and the exact composition of the buffer are the variables that most often explain a failed replication. A legend reading "anti-tubulin antibody" has named a class of reagents rather than a reagent. Legends written to this standard let a reader judge the experiment instead of trusting it.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including unpublished data, figures, and manuscripts. We are editors, not biochemists or statisticians, and we offer no opinion on your experiments, your assays, or your results. What we can do is make the legend carry what a reader needs in order to judge the figure.