Promega News and Events

Did Dinosaurs Take Too Long to Hatch?

Posted on by Darcia Schweitzer

A different approach to dinosaur embryology has revealed another layer to our understanding of the demise of dinosaurs and rise of mammals as a result of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event. In a 2017 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, a group of researchers led by Gregory Erickson hypothesized that dinosaur eggs may have growth lines present on embryonic teeth that could be used to determine incubation times.

dinosaur-embryo

Not much is understood about dinosaur embryology, aside from what is known about birds. This is in part because fossils of dinosaur eggs, especially those containing embryonic skeletons, are among the rarest in the world. Despite this difficulty, using these fossils to refine estimated incubation times of dinosaur embryos can shed light on their development, life history and evolution.

Historically, paleontologists have assumed that dinosaur incubation periods were rapid based on their extant counterparts, birds. Considered living dinosaurs, birds are a logical surrogate from which to extrapolate dinosaur incubation times. It is important to note that embryonic incubation in birds is different from other living relatives of dinosaurs, modern reptiles. While reptile embryos develop slowly, birds differ by laying fewer, larger eggs with rapid incubation.

Continue reading “Did Dinosaurs Take Too Long to Hatch?”

Plumage Revealed: A 99 Million Year Old Feathered Coelurosaur Tail Trapped in Amber

Posted on by Kelly Grooms

Touching a Dinosaur—Almost

Imagine holding a 99 million year old feathered dinosaur tail in the palm of your hand. The only thing keeping you from actually touching its feathers? A few centimeters of petrified resin. This was reality for the group of scientists who published their findings about this discovery in the December issue of Current Biology (1).

It all began roughly ninety-nine million years ago when a young coelurosaur met an untimely death. Continue reading “Plumage Revealed: A 99 Million Year Old Feathered Coelurosaur Tail Trapped in Amber”

Deciding What to Share: Evaluating Content in a Self-Publishing World

Posted on by Michele Arduengo

Copyright: cuteimage / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: cuteimage / 123RF Stock Photo

A BuzzFeed News analysis of “news” stories during the final three months of the 2016 US presidential campaign revealed that on Facebook, the 20 top-performing fake-news stories from hoax sites and hyper partisan blogs generated 8,711,000 instances of engagement (shares, reactions, or comments) while the 20 top-performing stories from news web sites generated 7,367,000 instances of engagement (1). Basically fake news generated 1.5 million more responses than real news.

This is particularly concerning given that a Pew Research study from July 2016 indicated that 63% of Americans say that family and friends are an important way they get news—they get their news from their social networks (online or offline) rather than from vetted broadcast or print media (2), and 54% of people asked in this same study responded that they “sometimes” or “often” received news from social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

I too must confess that quite often it’s a tweet or a Facebook post that alerts me to a news story or world event. Often it’s even a tweet or a post that leads me to the latest science news. I can’t remember the last time I deliberately watched the 6:00 news, though it was a staple in my house when I was growing up.

So what does all of this mean for science communication, science literacy and a basic understanding of what is really going on in the world? Continue reading “Deciding What to Share: Evaluating Content in a Self-Publishing World”

To Seq, or Not to Seq

Posted on by Nicole Sandler

Seq—shorthand for “sequence”— has become a more recognizable term thanks to a novel and provocative genomics initiative called the BabySeq Project. The project, officially launched in May 2015, was designed to explore the impact of whole-exome sequencing (WES) on newborn infants and their families. A randomized, controlled trial to sequence healthy and sick infants and then provide sequencing information, it is the first of its kind. Those infants randomized to receive WES undergo genetic sequencing of all protein-coding genes and analysis of about 1,700 genes implicated in childhood health, along with 18 years of follow up genetic counseling.29813751-nov-2-blog-post-nicole-600x470-web

The project is directed by Robert C. Green, geneticist and physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, and Alan H. Beggs of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Funding, totaling $25 million, comes from the National Institute of Child Health and Development and the National Human Genome Research Institute. Continue reading “To Seq, or Not to Seq”

Catching a Child Abuser in Five Days

Posted on by Promega

ishi_27jpg

Next week, forensic analysts from all over the world will gather in Minneapolis for the 27th  International Symposium on Human Identification (ISHI). So today, we’d like to share one story from a forensics lab that highlights the importance of collaboration, knowledge-sharing and technology development–since that is what ISHI is all about. 

Crimes against children are especially heinous, and it is vitally important that the offenders are removed from the streets as soon as possible. In today’s blog, Sarah Chenoweth from the Anne Arundel County Crime Lab in Maryland describes a sexual assault case that was solved in just five days. Key to this speed were the collaboration between lab staff and state police, and the ability to quickly and reliably amplify DNA profiles from low-DNA samples. Thanks to the efforts of the investigators involved, parents in Maryland, and possibly nationwide, can sleep a little easier.

On Friday, February 5th, the Anne Arundel County Crime Lab was notified of a sex offense involving a 7-year-old victim. With our efficient DNA workflow, including use of the Fusion amplification kit with our 3500 Genetic Analyzer, we were able to identify the perpetrator in only five days. Continue reading “Catching a Child Abuser in Five Days”

The Cell Line Identity Crisis

Posted on by Nicole Sandler
29981164-Whistle

If you work with cell lines you may have paid attention to the dramatic headline published last month in the online journal STAT, Thousands of studies used the wrong cells, and journals are doing nothing.” In their column The Watchdogs (“Keeping an eye on misconduct, fraud, and scientific integrity”), Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus call out the fact that scientists continue to publish research using cell lines that are contaminated or misidentified. Recent estimates have found that the percentage of misidentified cell lines used by scientists is as high as 20 to 36. The blame here is being placed on the peer reviewed journals for not blowing the whistle. The authors call for journals to put some “kind of disclaimer on the thousands of studies affected.”

This is not a new claim. The continuing problem of cell line misidentification, of lack of authentication, has been covered before in various channels. It’s easy to find news publicizing yet another retracted publication. In May 2015 the journal Nature required authors of all submitted manuscripts to confirm the identity of cell lines used in their studies and provide details about the source and testing of their cell lines.

Continue reading “The Cell Line Identity Crisis”

Make Plans Now to View a Rare Astronomical Phenomenon

Posted on by Sara Klink

Solar eclipse viewing. By Skoch3 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Solar eclipse viewing. By Skoch3 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
During my college years, I witnessed an event that was new to me: A solar eclipse. I made a pinhole projector to watch the moon pass over the sun on a piece of white paper and have to admit, the darkening during midday was quite interesting. However, it was not a total eclipse so there was still some sunlight slipping around the moon. Hence using the pinhole projector to preserve my eyesight.

Next year on August 21, the United States will experience a total solar eclipse. While I will be able to see the solar eclipse in Wisconsin, I will not experience a total eclipse. In fact, I will need to head south and west to states like Nebraska, Kentucky and Missouri to reach part of the US where the moon will fully block the sun. Why is everyone talking about the 2017 Solar Eclipse in 2016? So you can plan your vacation of course!

Have a relative or friend you haven’t seen in a while conveniently located in the total eclipse zone? Ask if they would be willing to cohost a Solar Eclipse party. Alternatively, just ask to stay with friends or family and join up with any public observations of the solar eclipse. You need to plan a family vacation anyway, right? Why not conveniently plan to stay in a location where hey, there’s a total solar eclipse today. Let’s watch! Fun and educational for everyone.

Don’t forget your eclipse viewing glasses (so attractive in cardboard chic) or add filters to telescopes and binoculars for magnified viewing pleasure. Bonus to a total solar eclipse? You can gaze at the moon-blocked sun with your naked eyes for up to 2.5 minutes, depending on location. Just don’t look too long to preserve your retinas.

So if you need an excuse to plan a unique vacation (and maybe appease some rarely seen friends and relatives), consider placing yourself in the swath of the country where the moon will obliterate your view of the sun (for less than three minutes). And if these locations don’t appeal to you, just wait until 2024 when the eastern portion of the US will be treated to a total solar eclipse. Different cities in which to vacation and other relatives to visit!

An Epizootic for the Ages: Revisiting the White-Nose Syndrome Story

Posted on by Michele Arduengo
Map showing the spread of WNS across North America
Map showing the spread of WNS across North America

In March 2016, two hikers on a trail east of Seattle, WA, found a little brown bat lying on the ground in obviously poor condition. The bat was taken to an animal shelter where it died two days later from White-Nose Syndrome (WNS).

This bat was the first case of WNS found west of the Rocky Mountains. It represented a jump in the spread of WNS, and a troubling one. WNS was first detected in a cave in Albany, New York, and since then it has been moving slowly westward at a rate of about 200 miles per year, according to David Blehert of the United States Geological Survey, the laboratory that confirmed the WNS diagnosis for the Washington bat. Before this year’s discovery outside of Seattle, the westward-most case detected was in eastern Nebraska.

WNS, caused by a cold-loving fungus, Psuedogymnoascus destructans (Pd), can kill 100% of the hibernating bats in a colony, and in the ten years since it has been detected and monitored has killed over 6 million bats in the United States and Canada. As of July 2016, bats infected with the fungus have been found in 29 states and 5 Canadian provinces.

According to Blehert, this is probably the “most significant epizootic of wildlife” ever observed; never before have we seen hibernating mammals specifically affected by a skin fungus. What does that mean? Are we looking at extinction for some bat species? What are the ecological consequences of rapidly losing so many individuals to disease so quickly? And, what, if anything, can be done to combat the disease and help bat populations recover?

Continue reading “An Epizootic for the Ages: Revisiting the White-Nose Syndrome Story”

A Crash Course in CRISPR

Posted on by Darcia Schweitzer

CRISPR is a hot topic right now, and rightly so—it is revolutionizing research that relies on editing genes. But what exactly is CRISPR? How does it work? Why is everyone so interested in using it? Today’s blog is a beginner’s guide on how CRISPR works with an overview of some new applications of this technology for those familiar with CRISPR.

Introduction to CRISPR/Cas9

27850283-June-13-CRISPR-image-WEB

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) were discovered in 1987, but it took 30 years before scientists identified their function. CRISPRs are a special kind of repeating DNA sequence that bacteria have as part of their “immune” system against invading nucleic acids from viruses and other bacteria. Over time, the genetic material from these invaders can be incorporated into the bacterial genome as a CRISPR and used to target specific sequences found in foreign genomes.

CRISPRs are part of a system within a bacterium that requires a nuclease (e.g. Cas9), a single guide RNA (sgRNA) and a tracrRNA. The tracrRNA recruits Cas9, while sgRNA binds to Cas9 and guides it to the corresponding DNA sequence of the invading genome. Cas9 then cuts the DNA, creating a double-stranded break that disables its function. Bacteria use a Protospacer Adjacent Motif, or PAM, sequence near the target sequence to distinguish between self and non-self and protect their own DNA.

While this system is an effective method of protection for bacteria, CRISPR/Cas9 has been manipulated in order to perform gene editing in a lab (click here for a video about CRISPR). First, the tracrRNA and sgRNA are combined into a single molecule. Then the sequence of the guide portion of this RNA is changed to match the target sequence. Using this engineered sgRNA along with Cas9 will result in a double-stranded break (DSB) in the target DNA sequence, provided the target sequence is adjacent to a compatible PAM sequence.

Continue reading “A Crash Course in CRISPR”

Vitamin D: Power in Cancer Prevention?

Posted on by Kari Kenefick

This and vitamin D should get your attention.
This and vitamin D should get your attention.

Have you ever noticed that after a good long day outdoors, maybe hiking, at the beach or even working in the yard, you feel really strong and healthy, maybe even more relaxed than after an indoor session in front of the telly or computer? Maybe a February trip to someplace sunny like Mexico or the Canary Islands has given you renewed zest for your normal tasks?

While rest and a change of scenery is never a bad thing, time outdoors and in the sunshine might have gained for you something more than rest and relaxation. If it included a little UVB irradiation, your time outdoors may have increased your serum vitamin D level. And though it’s been presumed for years, we now have proof that higher serum vitamin D3 levels correlate with a decreased incidence of certain cancers. Continue reading “Vitamin D: Power in Cancer Prevention?”