Science education

2023 Promega iGEM Grant Winners: Tackling Global Problems with Synthetic Biology Solutions

Posted on by Michele Arduengo

On June 15, 2023, we announced the winners of the 2023 Promega iGEM grant. Sixty-five teams submitted applications prior to the deadline with projects ranging from creating a biosensor to detect water pollution to solving limitations for CAR-T therapy in solid tumors. The teams are asking tough questions and providing thoughtful answers as they work to tackle global problems with synthetic biology solutions. Unfortunately, we could only award nine grants. Below are summaries of the problems this year’s Promega grant winners are addressing.

UCSC iGEM

An immature night heron against the green surface of Pinto Lake. 2023 Promega iGEM Grant Winner, UCSC iGEM seeks to mitigate these harmful aglal blooms.
A night heron hunts on Pinto Lake, California.

The UCSC iGEM team from the University of California–Santa Cruz is seeking a solution to mitigate the harmful algal blooms caused by Microcystis aeruginosa in Pinto Lake, which is located in the center of a disadvantaged community and is a water source for crop irrigation. By engineering an organism to produce microcystin degrading enzymes found in certain Sphingopyxis bacteria, the goal is to reduce microcystin toxin levels in the water. The project involves isolating the genes of interest, testing their efficacy in E. coli, evaluating enzyme production and product degradation, and ultimately transforming all three genes into a single organism. The approach of in-situ enzyme production offers a potential solution without introducing modified organisms into the environment, as the enzymes naturally degrade over time.

IISc-Bengaluru

Endometriosis is a condition that affects roughly 190 million (10%) women of reproductive age worldwide. Currently, there is no treatment for endometriosis except surgery and hormonal therapy, and both approaches have limitations. The IISc-Bengaluru team at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India, received 2023 Promega iGEM grant support to investigate the inflammatory nature of endometriosis by targeting IL-8 (interleukin-8) a cytokine. Research by other groups has snow that targeting IL-8 can reduce endometriotic tissue. This team will be attempting to create an mRNA vaccine to introduce mRNA for antibody against IL-8 into affected tissue. The team is devising a new delivery mechanism using aptides to maximize the delivery of the vaccine to the affected tissues.

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Left-Handed DNA: Is That Right?

Posted on by Ken Doyle

There’s a certain group of people (including this blog post author) who derive no small amount of amusement from seeing stock photos of DNA and pointing out flaws in the structure. It’s even more amusing when these photos are used in marketing by life science companies. The most common flaw: the DNA molecule is a left-handed double helix.

What does that even mean? DNA, like many organic chemicals in biology, is a chiral molecule. That is, it can exist in two structural forms that are mirror images of each other but are not superimposable (enantiomers). Just like your left and right hands are mirror images of each other, the two DNA structures are left-handed and right-handed double helices. The DNA double helix is chiral, because its building blocks (nucleotides) are chiral.

Two DNA helices that are mirror images

It can be challenging, at first glance, to tell whether an image of DNA is left-handed or right-handed. Various helpful hints are available; however, the one that I’ve found easiest to remember is described in a blog post by Professor Emeritus Larry Moran at the University of Toronto:

Imagine that the double helix is a spiral staircase, and you’re walking down the staircase. If you’re turning to the right as you descend, the DNA structure is right-handed; if turning to the left, it’s left-handed. In the image shown earlier, the DNA molecule on the right is a right-handed double helix, while its mirror image is left-handed.

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The BTC Institute: Serving Youth Skills and Science for Summer

Posted on by Riley Bell

World Youth Skills Day provides a unique opportunity to emphasize the importance of equipping young people with experiences, skills, and opportunities in the workforce. This celebratory day falls on July 15th and was officially declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 2014.

At Promega, we are constantly adhering to invest in the future generations of science—and the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTC Institute) serves this mission best. The BTC Institute is a non-profit organization that provides educational, scientific, and cultural opportunities for people of all ages. Each summer, the organization hosts a wide range of experiences including camps, programs, and field trips to support individuals interested in science. In the spirit of World Youth Skills Day, let’s take a look at some experiences that are offered for young learners in summer 2022.

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Promega Highlights Innovative Work with Brazil Young Researcher Award

Posted on by AnnaKay Kruger


In late May 2022, Promega invited the nine finalists for the Promega Brazil Young Researcher Award to present their work at a Student Research Symposium on the Promega Madison campus.

Scientists from around Brazil recently traveled to Madison, WI, USA as part of the Brazil Young Researcher Award

The Brazil Young Researcher Award program was created to acknowledge exceptional work by Brazilian students utilizing Promega products in their research. These student researchers were recognized for their achievements and were given the opportunity to present their innovative research to Promega scientists as part of a week-long immersive experience on the Promega campus.

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BTCI Summer Programs Provide Learning Opportunities to All Ages

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

The BioPhamaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTC Institute) is a non-profit organization that provides opportunities for people of all ages to learn about life science and biotechnology. This summer, BTC Institute hosted a variety of programs supporting teachers, potential first-generation college students, and many other groups. Each program supports an overall goal to support scientific understanding in our community.

A Celebration of Life: Being Healthy on Earth and In Space

BTC Institute has collaborated with the African American Ethnic Academy in Madison, WI for over 25 years to offer a summer science program for upper elementary and middle school students. This year, A Celebration Of Life XXVI welcomed 13 students from grades 4-8 every morning for two weeks. Students made ice cream, engineered water filtration devices, and used bioluminescence to learn about preventing the spread of germs. Outside the lab, the students learned tai chi from a Promega employee and toured the Promega culinary garden. Along the way, students learned about historic and contemporary STEM professionals of color associated with each focus area, including astronaut Victor J. Glover and teen entrepreneur Nabil Hamdan.  

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Monochromator vs Filter-Based Plate Reader: Which is Better?

Posted on by Johanna Lee

When it comes to purchasing a microplate reader for fluorescence detection, the most common question is whether to choose a monochromator-based reader or filter-based reader. In this blog, we’ll discuss how both types of plate readers work and factors to consider when determining the best plate reader for your need.

How do monochromator-based plate readers work?

Monochromators work by taking a light source and splitting the light to focus a particular wavelength on the sample. During excitation, the light passes through a narrow slit, directed by a series of mirrors and diffraction grating and then passes through a second narrow slit prior to reaching the sample. This ensures the desired wavelength is selected to excite the fluorophore. Once the fluorophore is excited, it emits light at a different, longer wavelength. This emission light is captured by another series of mirrors, grating and slits to limit the emission to a desired wavelength, which then enters a detector for signal readout.

Monochromator-based plate reader
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Biotechnology Teaching Online: A New Way to Look at Scientific Notebooks

Posted on by Promega

This post is written by guest blogger, Peter Kritsch MS, Adjunct Instructor BTC Institute.

When I was in the middle of my junior year in high school, my family moved. We had lived in the first state for 12 years. I had gone to school there since kindergarten. Although it wasn’t a small district, I knew everybody and, for better or worse, everybody knew me. Often the first reaction I get when I tell people when we moved is that it must have been hard to move so close to graduation. The reality is . . . it really wasn’t. In fact, it was quite liberating. See, I didn’t have to live up to anybody else’s expectations of who I was based on some shared experience in 2nd grade. I had the opportunity to be who I wanted to be, to try new things without feeling like I couldn’t because that wasn’t who I was supposed to be. 

As long as I refrained from beginning too many sentences with “Well at my old school . . . “ people had to accept me for who I was in that moment, not for who they perceived me to be for the previous 12 years. Now, the new activities were not radically different. I still played baseball and still geeked out taking AP science classes, but I picked up new activities like golf, playing basketball with my friends, and even joined the yearbook. I know . . . “radically different.”  The point is that the new situation allowed me to try something new without worrying about what had always been. 

Peter teaches about biofuels in his virtual classroom.

The pandemic has forced a lot of us to move our classrooms online. In a short period of time, everything changed about how education was done. Our prior teaching experience, including the experience I had with doing blended learning (ooops . . . “back at my old school”), was helpful to a point.  But we quickly found out that being completely virtual was different. And as science teachers, how do you do more than just teach concepts when online? How do you help students to continue engaging in the crucial parts of science – observing, questioning, designing, analyzing, and communicating?

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Screen Media in the Time of COVID-19: Should You Be Reading this Blog?

Posted on by Michele Arduengo

Screen Media. Cell phones. Social media accounts. If you are a parent, you have probably discussed rules of engagement with your children about these things. All of our modern social media platforms are designed to keep us engaged with them by showing us the latest post, the next video or the people now online. Work emails give us notifications when something arrives in our Inbox. Business software platforms like Microsoft Teams send us notifications whenever someone comments in a conversation we have ever been part of. There are many siren signals pulling us toward our screens.

Enter COVID-19, the flu-like illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has already claimed the lives of 210,000 people in the United States, and leaving countless others permanently affected by other long-term health consequences. Spread by aerosol, COVID-19 is most dangerous in places where lots of people congregate in a small area, particularly if they are talking to each other. Consequently, office buildings are empty as many of us work or go to school remotely.

Before COVID-19, if I had a day full of meetings at work, I was running from conference room to conference room, two miles, uphill, in the snow between buildings. Now, a day full of meetings means sitting in front of a computer monitor, trying to figure out how I will get any kind of break between calls. The average number of steps recorded by my pedometer has decreased markedly since March when our remote work started.

Technology has been an incredible blessing during this pandemic—allowing us to continue to work and stay connected with friends and family. Technology is the only way that some people can connect with loved ones in long-term care facilities. It allows students to continue learning through remote classrooms and chats.

But what has been the effect of the increased time spent on screens during this pandemic?

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In Vitro Transcription and the Use of Modified Nucleotides

Posted on by Leah Cronan
In vitro transcription
RNA polymerase unwinds DNA strands for transcription.

Transcription is the production of RNA from a DNA sequence. It’s a necessary life process in most cells. Transcription performed in vitro is also a valuable technique for research applications—from gene expression studies to the development of RNA virus vaccines.

During transcription, the DNA sequence is read by RNA polymerase to produce a complimentary, antiparallel RNA strand. This RNA strand is called a primary transcript, often referred to as an RNA transcript. In vitro transcription is a convenient method for generating RNA in a controlled environment outside of a cell.

In vitro transcription offers flexibility when choosing a DNA template, with a few requirements. The template must be purified, linear, and include a double stranded promoter region. Acceptable template types are plasmids or cloning vectors, PCR products, synthetic oligos (oligonucleotides), and cDNA (complimentary DNA). 

In vitro transcription is used for production of large amounts of RNA transcripts for use in many applications including gene expression studies, RNA interference studies (RNAi), generation of guide RNA (gRNA) for use in CRISPR, creation of RNA standards for quantification of results in reverse-transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR), studies of RNA structure and function, labeling of RNA probes for blotting and hybridization or for RNA:protein interaction studies, and preparation of specific cDNA libraries, just to name a few!

In vitro transcription can also be applied in general virology to study the effects of an RNA virus on a cell or an organism, and in development and production of RNA therapeutics and RNA virus vaccines. The large quantity of viral RNA produced through in vitro transcription can be used as inoculation material for viral infection studies. Viral mRNA transcripts, typically coding for a disease-specific antigen, can be quickly created through in vitro transcription, and used in the production of vaccines and therapeutics.

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S.C.I.E.N.C.E. at Home

Posted on by Promega

Today’s blog is written by guest blogger, Aidan Holmes, biotechnology instructor at the BTC Institute.

For K-12 students and their teachers, the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTC Institute) prioritizes offering in-person, hands-on science activities in classroom, laboratory and outdoor settings.  We are simply one among many educational organizations globally whose traditional program offerings have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

How might we keep sharing our love of science with upper elementary and middle school students?  We decided that one way to do that is to cull resources for parents/caregivers and feature ones we think make for great Science-at-Home experiences for children in these age groups. 

In doing this, we’ve come up with criteria that you may also find useful as you look at activities (including the ones we offer) that you might want to do with the children in your life.  These criteria reflect both practical considerations, assessment of educational values and recognize the impact of current stay-at-home orders. Is the activity:

We will go through these S.C.I.E.N.C.E. considerations and at the end, provide an example of how one of the activities on our website, “Milk Fireworks,” meets our S.C.I.E.N.C.E. goals!

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