Plasticizers from plastic containers leeching into the contents aren’t just a problem for foods, as Nature reports.

Lately, people around me have started to switch from spectrophotometric-based instruments to fluorescence-based DNA and RNA quantification. Fluorometry tend to be more specific—it doesn’t suffer as much from non-specific contamination—and it’s also more sensitive: fluorescence is often superior to absorbance for low signal-to-noise conditions. On the other hand, fluorometry isn’t nearly as flexible as spectrophotometry. It’s harder, for example, to do continuous enzyme kinetics assays with fluorescence, but if you know the absorbance of the substrate, it’s a snap with a spectrophotometer.