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Your New Best Research Partner: The Structural Genomics Consortium

Research surrounding drug discovery has historically been highly competitive and expensive. Unfortunately, many late-stage drug failures have occurred over recent years, often due to lack of efficacy. These failures have left the industry searching for new means by which to improve early drug discovery efforts aimed at understanding the drug target and its role in disease. One idea that is gaining traction is partnerships to openly share information at the early, precompetitive stages of drug discovery.

I used to think of open access only in terms of publishing data and information—online sites where you could freely access data without a subscription or membership, and without payment.

Structural Genomics Consortium logo.

Meet the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), the international partnership that’s taking open access to a new level in order to advance scientific research for scientists working in a variety of disciplines—structural genomics and beyond. The SGC might just become your new, best laboratory research partner. Continue reading →

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Activating the Inflammasome: A New Tool Brings New Understanding

Innate immunity, the first line of immune defense, uses a system of host pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) to recognize signals of “danger” including invariant pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). These signals in turn recruit and assemble protein complexes called inflammasomes, resulting in the activation of caspase-1, the processing and release of the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1ß and IL-18, and the induction of programmed, lytic cell death known as pyroptosis.

Innate immunity and the activity of the inflammasome are critical for successful immunity against a myriad of environmental pathogens. However dysregulation of inflammasome activity is associated with many inflammatory diseases including type 2 diabetes, obesity-induced asthma, and insulin resistance. Recently, aberrant NLRP3 inflammasome activity also has been associated with age-related macular degeneration and Alzheimer disease. Understanding the players and regulators involved in inflammasome activity and regulation may provide additional therapeutic targets for these diseases.

Currently inflammasome activation is monitored using antibody-based techniques such as Western blotting or ELISA’s to detect processed caspase-1 or processed IL-1ß. These techniques are tedious and are only indirect measures of caspase activity. Further, gaining information about kinetics—relating inflammasome assembly, caspase-1 activation and pyroptosis in time—is very difficult using these methods. O’Brien et al. describe a one-step, high-throughput method that enables the direct measurement of caspase-1 activity. The assay can be multiplexed with a fluorescent viability assay, providing information about the timing of cell death and caspase-1 activity from the same sample. Continue reading →

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One Year Later: Living Organ Donor & Recipient Share Their Story

Jim and John one year later.

John Van Herwynen, Promega Senior Production Scientist, and Jim Stevens, Product Finishing Project Coordinator, on the Promega Madison campus one year after John donated one of his kidneys to Jim.

This article was jointly written by science writer, Nicole Sandler, and Corporate Affairs Communication Specialist, Karen Burkhartzmeyer.

One year ago, on September 14, 2016, two people once connected only through the common denominator of their workplace began sharing a bond that very few people ever experience. That was the day that Jim Stevens, Product Finishing Project Coordinator at Promega Madison, received a kidney from living donor John Van Herwynen, a Promega Senior Production Scientist. The last year, full of emotional successes but also some challenging setbacks, is one that has transformed both of their lives. Organ donor and organ recipient are marking today’s important milestone by sharing their remarkable story. Continue reading →

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Lessons from My Kindergartener’s First Podcast

I am a podcast junkie. In a given week I will listen to 15-20 podcast episodes, while only watching a couple television shows. Podcasts allow me to partake in my favorite pastime, learning, while offering distraction from mundane and time-consuming activities.

Podcasts help me pass the time during my daily 1.5+ hour round trip commute, while running (including during races) and in waiting rooms or airport terminals. Not surprisingly, many of these include science podcasts.

So, I was ecstatic to hear about a new science podcast for kids, Wow in the World, that I could share with my 5-year-old daughter. I considered it an experiment, assuming that she would listen to one or two episodes and lose interest, not expecting her to stay engaged by 20 minutes of audio alone.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Within a few seconds, she was singing along with the theme song and after a couple minutes she was fully engaged and asking questions about what was being discussed. In a world where our DVR is filled with a backlog of recorded shows for her to watch on TV, she had trouble understanding that we had to wait until next week for another episode. In the meantime, she enthusiastically listened to the same episode 3 or 4 times, picking up something new each time.

This particular podcast really honed in on topics sure to spark interest in kids, such as the velocity of poop, tooting cows and slug slime. But they also addressed more abstract subject matter like human origins, G-forces and space science, explaining complex new scientific discoveries in an entertaining and memorable way.

Continue reading →

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A Nickel’s Worth of Free Advice: Biotech and the Law

This year’s participants in Emerging Techniques in Protein and Genetic Engineering, a two-credit graduate course offered in partnership with the Department of Oncology, UW-Madison, held July 17-21, 2017.

Today’s author extends thanks to Heather Gerard, Intellectual Property Manager, Promega Corporation for contributing her expertise to this post.

Students most often come to the BTC Institute with the primary goal of learning about molecular biology technologies. Our mission is to help them update their experimental tool-box, facilitating more capable studies of DNA, RNA and proteins back in their home laboratories.

But what else do we do? Well, we’re glad you asked. Continue reading →

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Reveal More Biology: How Real-Time Kinetic Cell Health Assays Prove Their Worth

What if you could uncover a small but significant cellular response as your population of cells move toward apoptosis or necrosis? What if you could view the full picture of cellular changes rather than a single snapshot at one point? You can! There are real-time assays that can look at the kinetics of changes in cell viability, apoptosis, necrosis and cytotoxicity—all in a plate-based format. Seeking more information? Multiplex a real-time assay with endpoint analysis. From molecular profiling to complementary assays (e.g., an endpoint cell viability assay paired with a real-time apoptosis assay), you can discover more information hidden in the same cells during the same experiment.

Whether your research involves screening a panel of compounds or perturbing a regulatory pathway, a more complete picture of cellular changes gives you the benefit of more data points for better decision making. Rather than assessing the results of your experiment using a single time point, such as 48 hours, you could monitor cellular changes at regular intervals. For instance, a nonlytic live-cell reagent can be added to cultured cells and measurements taken repeatedly over time. Pairing a real-time cell health reagent with a detection instrument that can maintain the cells at the correct temperature means you can automate the measurements. These repeated measurements over time reveal the kinetic changes in the cells you are testing, giving a real-time status update of the cellular changes from the beginning to the end of your experiment. Continue reading →

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Genes to Cells to Genomes: Where Will Your Research Questions Take You?

Award presentation

Dr. Walter Blum wins trip to Promega headquarters as part of Promega Switzerland’s 25th Anniversary celebration.

Walter Blum knew how normal cells worked. He had studied and read about the pathways that regulated cell cycles, growth and development; he saw the cell as an amazingly well programmed, intricate machine. What he wanted to understand was: “Why does a cell become crazy? How does it escape immune system surveillance?”

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Blum, a customer of our Promega Switzerland branch. Dr. Blum won a trip to visit our campus in Madison for a week as part of an anniversary celebration for our Switzerland branch. While here, he got an inside peek at research and manufacturing operations, chatted with our scientists, met with our marketing teams and saw the sights in Madison. We talked about his work and what he learned and is taking back with him from his trip to Madison. Continue reading →

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Measuring Metabolic Changes in T cells with the Lactate-Glo™ Assay

Immunometabolism

Welcome to the emerging frontier of immunometabolism. A decade ago, immunology and metabolism were seen as two distinct areas of study. However, we now know that specific metabolic activities are required for proper immune cell differentiation and function. In tumor microenvironments, immune cells may even alter their metabolism to compete with tumor cells for limiting nutrients.

Glucose metabolism in Naïve vs Effector T cells

What does your car and T cells have in common? They both shift gears! You can shift gears on your car to change the way the engine’s power is used to match driving conditions; when you’re going uphill, you switch to a higher gear. Similarly, when T cells are activated, they change the way they generate energy to match functional needs. This makes sense because activated T cells (known as effector T cells) require more energy and biomass to support growth, proliferation and effector functions.

While cars run on gas, the main fuel for T cells is glucose. Each glucose molecule is broken down into pyruvate while generating 2 ATP molecules. Naïve T cells completely oxidize pyruvate through oxidative phosphorylation to generate 36 ATPs per glucose molecule. However, when T cells are activated and become effector T cells, glycolysis is used to produce 2 ATPs per glucose molecule. Continue reading →

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How Do I Choose the Right GoTaq® Product to Suit My Needs for EndPoint PCR?

We offer a wide array of GoTaq® DNA Polymerases, Buffers and Master Mixes, so we frequently answer questions about which product would best suit a researcher’s needs. On the product web page, you can filter the products by clicking the categories on the left hand side of the page to narrow down your search. Here are some guidelines to help you select the match that will best suit your PCR application. Continue reading →

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iGEM: Saving the World with Science

The University of Chicago 2016 iGEM team group photo (Photo credit: Julia Byeon)

Every year, groups of teenagers gather together and brainstorm ways to save the world—with science. The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to educating young scientists and enhancing open community and collaboration in the field of synthetic biology. They hold a competition every year with hundreds of teams participating from around the world.

Last year, Promega provided cloning reagents to the University of Chicago iGEM team, and they received a bronze medal for their work. We asked two of the team members, Steve Dvorkin and Julia Byeon, about their experience. Steve is a junior and majors in biology; he is co-president of the team this year. Julia recently graduated and works in public policy. Continue reading →