Sequencing (all)

Down the Rabbit Hole: The Search for New England’s Disappearing Cottontail

Posted on by Anna Bennett

Connecticut is a small yet ecologically interesting state. Over 85% of the human population lives in cities, yet more than 60% of the land is covered by forest, creating a diverse mix of habitats where wildlife and urban life overlap. In this landscape, bobcats have staged an impressive comeback over the past several decades, reclaiming their role as one of the region’s top predators. But as bobcat numbers rise, a quieter story is unfolding alongside them: the New England cottontail, the region’s only native rabbit, is vanishing.

a brown rabbit facing the camera with grass in the background.
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Base Editing Brilliance: David Liu’s Breakthrough Prize and Its Impact

Posted on by Kari Kenefick

On April 5, 2025, Dr. David R. Liu stood in the spotlight at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, to receive the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences—one of the most prestigious honors in science.
Dubbed the “Oscars of Science,” the Breakthrough Prizes were launched in 2012 by tech philanthropists including Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner and Anne Wojcicki. These prizes recognize groundbreaking achievements in life sciences, physics, and mathematics, with each laureate receiving a $3 million award—more than twice the amount of a Nobel Prize.

The winners are selected by panels of previous Breakthrough Prize recipients, ensuring peer-driven recognition. The annual ceremony brings together not only the best minds in science but also celebrities, filmmakers, and tech industry leaders, creating an uncommon crossover between pop culture and research, in an effort to bring more public attention as well as funding to scientific achievement.

Dr. Liu was honored for inventing base editing and prime editing, technologies that allow precise, programmable rewriting of DNA to correct mutations linked to genetic disease—without introducing double-stranded breaks. These tools have rapidly transitioned from the bench to the clinic, with at least 15 clinical trials currently underway worldwide targeting diseases like sickle cell anemia, T-cell leukemia, and others.

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Understanding and Combating Legionella in Water Systems with Viability PCR

Posted on by Anna Bennett

Water plays a vital role in countless aspects of daily life—drinking, cooling, recreation and more. However, the same systems that deliver these benefits can also harbor Legionella, a waterborne bacteria responsible for Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia (1). Legionella thrives in stagnant aquatic environments, many of which are human-made and common in modern infrastructure, like in cooling towers, hot tubs and complex building water systems. In this blog, we explore the risks posed by Legionella, the limitations of traditional detection methods and how advanced tools at Promega are transforming water safety monitoring. 

3D illustration showing legionella pneumophilia bacteria in water
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Elevate Your Research: Exploring the Power of 8-Dye STR Chemistry with the Spectrum Compact CE System

Posted on by Promega

In genetic research, staying at the forefront of technology is crucial. The latest breakthrough in human identification comes in the form of 8-dye Short Tandem Repeat (STR) chemistry. This innovation promises unprecedented precision and accuracy in DNA analysis, revolutionizing the way we approach genetic studies. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the world of 8-color chemistry and explore how it seamlessly integrates with the game-changing Spectrum Compact CE System.

Understanding 8-Dye STR Chemistry

The introduction of 8-dye chemistry expands the capability of STR analysis, enabling researchers to analyze more DNA markers with smaller amplicons, providing more robust data from degraded or inhibited DNA samples.  The performance of the 8-color dye chemistries from Promega on the Spectrum Compact CE System is sensitive, with both chemsitries (PowerPlex® 35 GY System and the upcoming PowerPlex® 18 E System) producing 100% profiles from their suggested inputs down to as little as 62.5 pg of DNA. The 18E system produced 100% profiles down to 31.25 pg of input DNA with minimal signal bleed through and low system noise.

Table showing percent STR profiles generated with decreasing input DNA using the PowerPlex 35GY or PowerPlex 18 E chemistry on the Spectrum Compact CE System
Table showing percent profiles generated with decreasing input DNA using the PowerPlex® 35GY or PowerPlex® 18E chemistry on the Spectrum Compact CE System.
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Better NGS Size Selection

Posted on by Darcia Schweitzer

One of the most critical parts of a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) workflow is library preparation and nearly all NGS library preparation methods use some type of size-selective purification. This process involves removing unwanted fragment sizes that will interfere with downstream library preparation steps, sequencing or analysis.

Different applications may involve removing undesired enzymes and buffers or removal of nucleotides, primers and adapters for NGS library or PCR sample cleanup. In dual size selection methods, large and small DNA fragments are removed to ensure optimal library sizing prior to final sequencing. In all cases, accurate size selection is key to obtaining optimal downstream performance and NGS sequencing results.

Current methods and chemistries for the purposes listed above have been in use for several years; however, they are utilized at the cost of performance and ease-of-use. Many library preparation methods involve serial purifications which can result in a loss of DNA. Current methods can result in as much as 20-30% loss with each purification step. Ultimately this may necessitate greater starting material, which may not be possible with limited, precious samples, or the incorporation of more PCR cycles which can result in sequencing bias. Sample-to-sample reproducibility is a daily challenge that is also regularly cited as an area for improvement in size-selection.

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Methods for Quantitating Your Nucleic Acid Sample

Posted on by Sara Klink
Nucleic acid quanitation webinar

For most molecular biology applications, knowing the amount of nucleic acid present in your purified sample is important. However, one quantitation method might serve better than another, depending on your situation, or you may need to weigh the benefits of a second method to assess the information from the first. Our webinar “To NanoDrop® or Not to NanoDrop®: Choosing the Most Appropriate Method for Nucleic Acid Quantitation” given by Doug Wieczorek, one of our Applications Scientists, discussed three methods for quantitating nucleic acid and outlined their strengths and weaknesses.

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Bisulfite Conversion and Next Gen Sequencing

Posted on by admin

WebinarsIn my last entry, I gave a little summary of one of many techniques that are used to study DNA methylation patterns in a loci-specific fashion using the COBRA technique. This time, we’ll take a look at a high-throughput, genome-wide method for analyzing DNA methylation status using a next generation sequencing approache called bisulfite sequencing, or Bis-Seq. Continue reading “Bisulfite Conversion and Next Gen Sequencing”