As Promega grows globally and locally here at headquarters, the construction of new and expanding facilities are considered with great care to ensure a commitment to sustainability. Between April and November of 2019, the parking ramp located near the Feynman Center received a massive upgrade with long-term impacts on the company’s sustainability goals.
Continue reading “Sustainability Makeover: Parking Ramp Edition”
Over the past decade, microbiome research has provided key insights into the relationship between our gut and our health. There are trillions of organisms in our gut, comprising the microbiome that complements our human biology, distinct from our genome. These gut microbes affect us in many ways, from affecting our mental health to our ability to fight cancer.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Federico Rey and his research group are trying to understand how our diet might help or harm the important microbial communities in our gut. “If we can understand how microbes interact with diet, we can personalize nutrition to match diet with the composition of the gut microbiome and promote health,” Rey says.
Continue reading “Go with Your Gut: Understanding How the Microbiome and Diet Influence Health”
During the week of October 14-18, scientists and science communicators around the world came together for a social media celebration of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Science-a-thon has its roots in Madison, WI, where Tracey Holloway (a professor at UW-Madison) had the idea to raise money to support organizations that advance the careers of women in STEM fields.
This year, Science-a-thon participants collectively raised over $14,500 for three partner charities: the Earth Science Women’s Network, Girls Who Code, and the Society of Women Engineers.
We at Promega were proud to be an active supporter of the event through sponsorship and participation. This year, we had 5 employees share their #dayofscience through daily Instagram story takeovers, as well as their personal social media accounts to give followers a glimpse of #lifeatpromega.
Continue reading “Celebrating and Supporting Women in STEM for Science-a-thon”
With another major Star Wars film about to hit the theaters this year, sci-fi enthusiasts are abuzz with excitement to watch epic lightsaber battles and hyperspace travel. But are these sci-fi concepts more grounded in science or fiction? That is what science communicator Kyle Hill aims to explore.
A Wisconsin native, Hill graduated from Marquette University with degrees in engineering and science communication. Now he resides in Los Angeles, where he built a career writing and talking about the intersection of science and pop culture through his video series, Because Science.
This past weekend at the Wisconsin Science Festival, hundreds of fans gathered to hear Hill share his ideas on how the sci-fi concepts in the Star Wars movies aren’t that far off from actual science.
Continue reading “Kyle Hill Explains the Science of Star Wars at the Wisconsin Science Festival”
Last week, a diverse group of stakeholders attended CRISPRcon Midwest, hosted by the Keystone Policy Center and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The goal of the day-long conference was to emphasize the importance and value of gene editing technology, and how it must be communicated deliberately between scientists, the public, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Julie Shapiro, Senior Policy Director of Keystone Policy Center, acted as Emcee for the event. Given the diverse group of attendees, she mentioned in her opening remarks that the event organizers were “seeking conversation, not consensus” and emphasized the “power of respectful dialogue.” A slide overhead showcased the ground rules for the day, which included statements such as “dare to listen, dare to share, and dare to disagree.”
CRISPRcon aimed to included voices beyond those represented by keynote speakers and panelists, so they incorporated live polling through an online app to keep the audience engaged and an active participant in the conversations throughout the day. From the opening remarks, it was clear that this conference would not just deliver on its promise of thoughtful conversation about the science, but build further understanding about the societal impacts of a rapidly advancing technology.
Continue reading “Discussing the Future of Gene Editing at CRISPRcon Midwest”
Joe Willie Smith has always been a creator. As a young child growing up in Milwaukee, his mother encouraged him to make art and find beauty in the everyday. Following years of work in printing and graphic design (including posters for Gil-Scott Heron and Chaka Khan), Smith began channeling his inspiration and creativity into building playable “sonic sculptures” out of found objects. “They’re not all considered instruments…sometimes I just make soundscapes out of them,” Smith says.
As the artist-in-residence for the Promega Fall Art Showcase, Smith set out to create a sonic sculpture from collected items from the Promega campus. He planned to perform on the instrument at the opening of the Art Show, but his creative process led to something much more—a collaborative experience in sound and color.
Continue reading “Creating Sonic Sculptures with Artist-in-Residence, Joe Willie Smith”In the late-80’s through the 90’s, food and health agencies focused on a mysterious fatal brain disease that infected thousands of cattle. Bovine spongiform encephalitis—or “mad cow disease”—is caused by an infectious protein called a prion. Despite fears that tainted meat would cause the disease to spread to humans, mad cow disease never really made an impact on human health. However, forms of the prion disease such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease do affect humans.
In addition to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, many neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) are now thought to be a result of prion-like activity. There is no cure for these diseases, however, new experimental treatment strategies might help slow the progression of neural degeneration.
Concepcion Sanchez-Cid didn’t know she wanted to be a scientist when she was older. She grew up with a love of music and played the violin, but her curiosity and eagerness to learn drove her down the path for a career in biomedical research.
As a Master’s student at the University of Granada, Concepcion studied biotechnology and landed an internship at the Promega Europe Training and Application Lab (PETAL) in France. She worked with the Applications Team to develop protocols for DNA and RNA extraction from soil. When she decided to pursue a PhD, she received a sponsorship from Promega and enrolled as a student at the University of Lyon while also remaining an employee at PETAL.
Concepcion says that the balance between both worlds—academia and industry—provide her with technical skills and a unique support network that has helped shape her PhD thesis work. “Working at a university and a company at the same time…you get very different feedback from people that are very specialized, and they really know what they’re doing, so at the end you integrate everything,” she says. “It’s one of the things I appreciate most about my PhD.”
Continue reading “Curiosity and Collaboration: A PhD Journey”
Malaria affects nearly half of the world’s population, with almost 80% of cases in sub-Saharan Africa and India. While there have been many strides in education and prevention campaigns over the last 30 years, there were over 200 million cases documented in 2017 with over 400,000 deaths, and the majority were young children. Despite being preventable and treatable, malaria continues to thrive in areas that are high risk for transmission. Recently, clinicians started rolling out use of the first approved vaccine, though clinical trials showed it is only about 30% effective. Meanwhile, researchers must continue to focus on innovative efforts to improve diagnostics, treatment and prevention to reduce the burden in these areas.
Continue reading “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Malaria?”
In May 2017, a surprising discovery was made in the woods of Bayfield County, Wisconsin, just about a 5-hour drive north of Promega headquarters. Jonathan Martin, Associate Professor of Forestry at Northland College, was exploring the forest with an ultraviolet (UV) light in search of fluorescent lichen or plant life. What he found instead was a bright pink glow coming from a most unexpected source—a flying squirrel.
Continue reading “The Secret Fluorescent Life of Flying Squirrels”
