After years of answering questions such as ’Am I doing it right?’, ’Why isn’t it working?’ and ’Could you also…?’, the group of scientists from the Radboud University who invented polyisocyanide hydrogels decided to draw up a protocol that describes absolutely everything. Their work was recently published in Nature Protocols.

’We have been working on this gel for quite some time. The first paper in Nature was published in 2013’, says Paul Kouwer, Associate Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry at Radboud University. ‘With this paper, we aim to enable people to modify the hydrogel themselves and use it effectively.’ Consequently, the majority of the paper focuses on how to apply the gel in cell biology.