As we look back on 2025, it’s clear that this year brought incredible innovation, practical solutions, and inspiring stories from labs around the world. From cutting-edge cellular imaging to behind-the-scenes looks at manufacturing, our readers showed us what matters most: tools that work, science that inspires, and stories that connect us to the bigger picture.
Here are the five most popular blogs from 2025:
5. Built for What’s Next: Promega Expands Lyophilization to Meet Tomorrow’s Demands
Sometimes the most exciting innovations happen behind the scenes. This March, a 46,000-pound stainless-steel lyophilization chamber made its way through Promega’s Feynman Manufacturing Center, more than doubling their lyophilization capacity. Lyophilization isn’t just about preserving reagents—it’s about stability, flexibility, and reducing experimental error. Whether you’re reconstituting with buffer, water, or your own sample, lyophilized products give you control over concentration and formulation in ways liquid reagents can’t match. For researchers relying on consistent, high-quality reagents like CellTiter-Glo®, this expansion represents a promise: that the tools you depend on today will be there tomorrow.
Key takeaway: Behind every great experiment is infrastructure built to last.
4. Bioluminescence vs. Fluorescence: Choosing the Right Assay for Your Experiment
If you’ve ever stood in front of a protocol wondering whether to go with bioluminescence or fluorescence, you’re not alone. This April blog tackled one of the most fundamental decisions in assay design, breaking down the core principles behind each detection method. Fluorescence relies on external excitation and offers unmatched versatility for imaging and multiplexing, while bioluminescence generates its own light through enzymatic reactions, delivering exceptional sensitivity with virtually no background interference. This blog provides practical guidance on when to prioritize sensitivity over spatial resolution, what trade-offs exist between phototoxicity and signal stability, and how to match instrumentation to experimental goals—complete with a comparison table that made decision-making straightforward.
Key takeaway: There’s no “best” detection method—only the right one for your experiment.
3. 20 Years of Organ Transplant Testing with Maxwell® Instrumentation
Some partnerships stand the test of time. For twenty years, the transplant lab at Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (DCi) in Nashville has relied on Maxwell® instruments for automated nucleic acid purification—and they were the very first lab to adopt the technology back in 2005. This July blog told their story through Christina Sholar and MacKenzie Gartner, who shared how Maxwell instruments have become indispensable workhorses processing 150-200 samples per week for critical HLA typing in solid organ and stem cell transplants. MacKenzie described how easy it is to train new technicians, while Christina emphasized the instrument’s reliability during high-pressure, 24/7 on-call situations where precious samples and urgent timelines leave no room for error.
Key takeaway: Great tools earn their place in the lab over time through reliability, ease of use, and trust.
2. Glo-ing Above and Beyond: Simplifying Science with MyGlo® Reagent Reader
What happens when you put powerful technology into a compact, user-friendly package? You get the MyGlo® Reagent Reader—and happy researchers! This January blog featured Ipsita Kundu, a third-year PhD student at the University of Cincinnati studying therapies for DIPG, a devastating pediatric brain cancer. When her lab needed a reliable solution for luminescence-based cell viability assays, MyGlo® delivered. Its compact design lived right in the cell culture hood, eliminating transport risks; the intuitive web-based CellTiter-Glo® app automated data analysis for instant results; and seamless integration with Promega’s industry-leading assays ensured accuracy. Ipsita’s enthusiasm said it all: “I’ve never been happier with a piece of technology!” For early-career researchers balancing complex experiments with limited resources, MyGlo® represented time reclaimed, stress reduced, and confidence restored.
Key takeaway: The best lab tools disappear into your workflow, freeing you to focus on the science.
1. Understanding Wnt Signaling Through β-Catenin Localization in Live Cells
When a signaling pathway is implicated in cancer, fibrosis, immune modulation, and neurodegenerative disease, understanding how it works is critical for developing therapies. This June blog on Wnt/β-catenin signaling showcases how live-cell imaging bridges the gap between molecular interactions and cellular outcomes. The Wnt/β-catenin pathway governs essential processes like growth and repair, but when dysregulated—particularly through mutations in genes like APC or CTNNB1—it drives disease, with about 90% of colorectal cancers involving pathway disruptions. Traditional reporter assays provide population-level data but can’t reveal where β-catenin localizes or how individual cells respond. Using the HiBiT Protein Tagging System with the GloMax® Galaxy Bioluminescence Imager, researchers can now watch β-catenin move from cytoplasm to nucleus in real time, confirming not just that a pathway is active, but how cells respond at the single-cell level.
Key takeaway: Seeing is believing—when you can watch proteins move in live cells, you’re not just measuring a pathway, you’re understanding it.
Looking Ahead to 2026
As we close out 2025, these five blogs remind us of a few important truths. Great science requires great tools that are reliable, intuitive, and built to meet real-world demands. It also requires curiosity, creativity, and the willingness to dig deeper, whether that’s watching proteins move in live cells or understanding the infrastructure that keeps reagents flowing.
Most importantly, science is a human endeavor. Behind every breakthrough is a group of passionate researchers and a company like Promega committed to supporting the work that matters.
What will 2026 bring? More innovation, more collaboration, and more stories worth sharing. We can’t wait to see what you discover!
Latest posts by Johanna Lee (see all)
- A Live-Cell NanoBRET Assay Shines Light on Toxic RNA–Protein Interactions in Myotonic Dystrophy - February 26, 2026
- Your Science in Review: Our Top Blogs of 2025 - December 30, 2025
- Polyserine Targeting: A New Strategy Against Neurodegeneration - September 30, 2025
