Sigma BioBlogs

• Reid Hayward of University of Northern Colorado studies the protective effects of exercise on chemotherapy patients
• Hakim Djaballah, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s High Throughput Screening Core Facility.
• Condie Carmac, Manager of the Cancer Genetics Lab at Baylor College of Medicine
• Sigma’s own Tania Nolan, qPCR expert
• Phil Lorenzi investigates the use of L-asparaginase on solid tumor cells
• Chris Dieni, PhD focuses on the mechanisms of protein phosphorylation
• Frank Sleutels lab  studies gene regulation and how it’s influenced by packaged chromatin in the nucleus. They find science as addictive as M&M’s!
• John Rinn is a Harvard researcher solving the mysteries of large non-coding RNA’s and still making time for tricks and turns on the snow runs.
• Tara De Silva – by day she’s Probing White matter studying oligodendrocytes.  By night, she’s Finger…  Zinc Finger
• Beverly Chilton – She does Cancer research focusing on hormone regulation in the female reproductive system, and is a life long science fan.
• Dana Carroll-  a thought leader for using zinc finger nucleases in genome editing.
• Ricardo Reis, from Portugal, Post-Translational modifications of a homeodomain transcription factor
• Sarah Wyatt is a midwestern scientist who has worked with NASA studying gravitational biology

Thanks to all of our interview subjects!  It’s an honor to get to know you better.

Don’t let go of those “impossible” dreams.  Tania Nolan, Ph. D., Global Manager Sigma Life Science, and leading expert on RT-qPCR, certainly doesn’t.

Where her bio began

Dr. Nolan had every intention of going into computer engineering with a focus on hardware, until the mid-1980’s.  While at home with her second baby, she turned on the TV and happened upon an hour-long program on DNA analysis.

She was hooked.  She read every textbook she could find on molecular biology, and then enrolled in a “distance learning university” in her native England.  A year later she was enrolled as a full time student in biology/biochemistry at the University of Salford near Manchester—more convenient and better able to meet her needs as a single mother.

Making the transition from computers to biology was not easy.  She recalls a plant biology class in which the professor referred to ‘xylem’.  Everyone else knew what he was talking about, but she was stymied trying to look up ‘zylem’ in the pre-Google world of text books.

Becoming a world leader in RT-qPCR

Of course, she graduated with honors, and enrolled in graduate school at the University of Manchester.  There is where she became interested in novel and better ways to analyze gene expression—first in the life cycle of the yeast C. albicans, which causes thrush and many other problems for immunocompromised patients, and then later in breast cancer as an AstraZeneca Postdoc Fellow.

RT-qPCR is just her cup of tea. After Northern Blots and P32 labeling, being able to quantify mRNAs in real time is a real relief.

Dr. Nolan is considered one of the world’s leading experts on RT-qPCR.  You might say she wrote the book—or at least major parts of the textbook “The A-Z of Quantitative PCR.”  In 2009 she became one of the prominent scientists who devised MIQE (Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments.)  These guidelines, which aim to standardize qPCR techniques and ensure that published results conform to the same requirements, so that these experiments can be properly interpreted and repeated.  MIQE has become an accepted as a best practice instrument in molecular biology labs.

Optimizing the assay is one of her main areas of expertise, and she travels the world for Sigma speaking about qPCR.  Besides the EU and America, she has been to Japan, Singapore, Maylasia, and South America.  Africa and the Middle East are on her ‘to go’ list.

A passion for music

Her travel kit includes two clarinets—one pitched in A and one in B flat.  After a few years of reading books during her travels, she decided to return to music.  She recalls with great pleasure returning to London at 10am with jet-lag after running a qPCR workshop in the USA so that she could attend a weekend workshop starting that evening with the great British clarinetist, David Campbell.

She wants to develop a music-based relaxation workshop, perhaps as a lunchtime activity for the workplace.  Making music develops teamwork, she says; she can envision pulling together a variety of instruments, even using non-trained individuals on drums and in other percussion roles.

Rising to the challenge

Having started her family before starting her career definitely shaped Tania Nolan’s life.  It made her determined to avoid the single parent poverty trap and do something significant with her life.  She continues to do research and writing projects, and is currently involved in getting some of her qPCR expertise on the web as short instruction videos.

**This blog is brought to you by the new OligoArchitect™ Primer and Probe Design tool from Sigma Life Science.**

Students, teachers and the scientific community are coming together to address the question: How will your Bio shape the future?

Tell us!  Visit www.sigmabiogrant.com to enter the Sigma Biogrant Video Challenge!

Scientists, researchers, life science professionals – you know the power of Bio and the effect it has had on your life.  Team up with a student you know to inspire and inform their project.  Help us to shape the next generation of life scientists.

The next generation consists of teenagers who dream of science.  They see the diagram of a cell in high school bio and say “I want to know how THAT works”.

They watch frog’s eggs develop into tadpoles right before their eyes, and get excited by bread mold.

So to the science teens we say, start dreaming.  Let us know how a grant could help your lab.

Learn more about the Sigma Biogrant Video Challenge from Sigma Life Science Vice President of R&D, Patrick Sullivan.

People across the United States are preparing turkeys,  sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and many other delicious delicacies for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Feast.

One of the traditions for Thanksgiving, is to express gratitude for the happenings of the previous year.

Today, the Sigma Life Science blog staff would like to give thanks for the science community.  We took a chance this year on using social media to get in touch with the larger science community, and the reaction has been one of warm welcome and great discussion.

Pumpkin pie, like my mom is making (courtesy Wikimedia commons)

Here are just a few of the scientists who have participated in our Where Bio Begins world since January 2010! We thank them, and you all for being a part of this great year.

• Where does your bio begin? Thanks to all who entered fascinating photos, videos, and stories on how bio began for them!
• John Rinn – Harvard researcher solving the mysteries of large non-coding RNA’s, and making time for tricks and turns on the snow runs.
• Tara De Silva – by day she’s Probing White matter studying oligodendrocytes.  By night, she’s Finger…  Zinc Finger
• Beverly Chilton – She does Cancer research focusing on hormone regulation in the female reproductive system, and is a life long science fan.
• Frank Sleutels lab – Studying gene regulation and how it’s influenced by packaged chromatin in the nucleus. They find science as addictive as M&M’s!
• Dana Carroll-  a thought leader for using zinc finger nucleases in genome editing..and one of the most gracious and welcoming people I’ve ever met.
• Sarah Wyatt- Midwestern scientist who has worked with NASA studying gravitational biology

Sarah Wyatt and I have something in common.  Everyone from our sleepy  little towns  thought we were smart enough to be a doctor or a nurse.  Now they just shake their heads, as she is a gravitational biologist who has studied plants for NASA, and I get to interview her and then post it to “the internets”.

Sarah grew up a farm girl in Western Kentucky.  She always loved nature, climbing trees and pitching in to help run the family farm (Here’s where our stories diverge..  I did the cooking, fed the family and the cuter animals)

While in college she met Joe Kuc, who was studying signal transduction in plants. Impressed with his approach, she adopted some of his philosophies into her own teaching style.  This includes the allocation of her time as follows:

1. 20% Outreach to the community
2. 40% Research
3. 40% Teaching

After receiving her PhD, she did a post-doc with with NASA researchers at  NC State as part of NSCORT The NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training. There she studied the effect of gravity on plant growth, and has been studying it ever since. For Sarah, the real fascination lies with the fact that  plant life has intelligence independent of a nervous system used to relay external signals from the environment..

She believes that plants might be the highest life form on earth…if you challenge that point she will let you know about totipotency…the plant cell’s ability to differentiate…then undifferentiate, assuming an entirely new role.

This post brought to you by Sigma Life Science Plant biotech products

John Rinn is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, but not like the professors I remember.   Those guys were 40 years older than me, and their knowledge was gained from 20-30 years in the lab.  John Rinn knows cool skater and snowboarder lingo (moguls, lines, turns, trix), is the same age as me, and his bioknowledge comes from playing with new technologies to demonstrate the unthinkable.

His Nature publication on LincRNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs)  has RNA experts divided over whether or not non-coding RNA’s are functional.   By developing technology to look closely at non-coding RNA’s, his lab has identified over 5000 LincRNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs).  They are functioning RNA’s that play a part in cell cycle regulation, and maintaining embryonic stem cell pluripotency.  Dr. Rinn is also investigating epigenetic aspects, which he describes as Genomic Origami.

The beginning of bio for Rinn was not a direct path.  He chose a university based on its proximity to mountains for snowboarding…and his life long hero is middle to long distance runner Steve Prefontaine…whose motto is “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift”

Thanks to his passion for new types of runs in snowboarding, Rinn injured himself and was bound to a hospital bed, and that’s where science really started to open up for him.

John Rinn gets some air

WBB: Where does Bio Begin for you?

JR: With coffee!  I spend 9-10am typically as an hour of reflection.

WBB: Interesting.  I’ve heard it said by more than one scientist that downtime is when great breakthroughs and ideas happen. Is that true for you?

JR: Yes. I actually get the best ideas when I go snowboarding.  It’s then that I have the time for my mind to drift, and dream up new experiments.

WBB: So you feel that snowboarding and science go well together?

JR: Yes…In snowboarding, if you do the same thing over and over again…it just gets old.  So you try different combinations of tricks…from a cliff to a mogul through trees to another mogul then jump off a cliff…that makes a beautiful run.  It’s the same with experimentation, except this time instead of looking for lines down the mountain you are trying to uncover beauty and truth by combining different experiments.  One experiment is not the key, it’s the “line of experiments”.  You need a combination that is synergistic.

WBB: So snowboarding and science do have a lot in common!

JR: Yes! And pain is always a part of the learning.  In snowboarding it’s injuries.  In science it’s in negative experiments.

WBB: Be careful out there!

This post brought to you by the following Sigma Life Science Bioareas

• Biomapping- Genomics tools and resources
• Epigenetics tools and resources
• Bioreprogramming -Stem Cell Biology reprogramming tools and resources

We have been using biowords for weeks now to describe everything; biocool, bioblog, biotweeple, biofacebooking, biosocial, biobling…

The word for today is “Biocontest”.

The contest is something we planned when we first posted our Wherebiobegins twitter account.  We knew that if there were great prizes like a Targeted Knockout, a CompoZr Integration kit, or an Apple® iPad,  we would see some creative biosparks flying across the web.

Here’s how it will work:

• Think back, and determine the story of what sparks biology for you.  Nature? experimentation?
• Tell your PI you need time to create an entry that will win a CompoZr ZFN
• Tell the story either through an essay, a video, or an image .
• Go to WhereBioBegins.com/contest and upload it.
• Tell your friends to vote for your entry! “Category” prizes will be awarded based on popular votes.
• Check back frequently to see if you are winning!
• Know your legalese

If you have problems with your submission, please email yfgsuggestions@sial.com.

Good Luck!  We look forward to seeing your entries!