In The Field

From running science experiments on the home field of World Series champions the San Francisco Giants, to connecting with makers in “the nerd nest,” to hundreds of new classroom events, 2014 has been an exciting year for the Bio-Rad Science Ambassador Program. Learn about the latest highlights in this corporate social responsibility program and watch a video of participating students and scientists.

The 2014 West African Ebola outbreak has been an unprecedented public health emergency, with thousands infected across multiple countries and cases spreading internationally. This article examines the science behind this deadly hemorrhagic fever, including its pathogenesis, detection, the challenges it presents in the field, and research into new therapies such as monoclonal antibodies.

Who’s watching over swimmer safety at America’s beaches? Go inside one agency tasked with pioneering new methods for water quality monitoring, and see how its scientists are employing Droplet Digital PCR technology to check coastal waters for harmful pathogens.

What is stain-free technology? How does it work in electrophoresis and western blotting? How does it compare with existing staining techniques? What are its advantages and possible concerns? Here is a technical review of this rapidly growing technological advance.

What does automated protein purification mean today? What might it look like tomorrow? Bioradiations talks to a variety of users about what they’re doing now to implement automation in their purification processes, and what possibilities they envision that will improve chromatography in the near future.

Researchers are having success applying Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR™) technology across many different fields. Here are two such success stories, one involving the application of ddPCR in detecting mutations in iPS cells, the other in predicting allele-specific variation in human brain development.

Droplet Digital PCR has major implications for cancer studies, where the ability to accurately measure biomarkers may result in important insights into cancer genesis and progression. Find out about new findings on micro RNA and Tumor Infilitrating Lymphocytes made possible by ddPCR technology.

Retired satellite engineer Dan Saldana is helping Valley Christian High School in San Jose, CA build a program to send student experiments to the International Space Station. To study microbial growth in microgravity, Saldana and his students turned to Bio-Rad’s pGLO bacterial transformation kits. Learn about the high-flying travels of these glowing bacteria and the science learning that resulted.

Jefferson County, Tennessee, faced tight school budgets and a mandate to “teach to the test” that left little room for hands-on science learning. Learn how biology professor Lisa Eccles worked to reverse this trend by getting involved with the Science Ambassador program, Bio-Rad’s fast-growing initiative to spark excitement about life science in primary school classrooms.

“If we want students to be biologists, let’s start being biologists,” says Ray Cinti, a science teacher at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco. Find out how Cinti’s class is accomplishing this by doing real research on Coast Redwoods genetic diversity using the Biotechnology Explorer Cloning and Sequencing Explorer series.