Beth Kenkel is currently a research scientist at a cell therapy company. She is particularly interested in science communication and viral vectors. Follow Beth on twitter @ElizabethKenkel.
Adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors are the most frequently used gene-transfer tools in the study of the brain and spinal cord, which together are known as the central nervous system (CNS). AAVs are popular tools because: 1) their genomes are easy to manipulate, 2) they have ...
Have you ever wanted to selectively kill a subset of cells in your model system? Turns out that with light-inducible photosensitizers and a quick zap of the proper color light, you can do just that. Photosensitizing dyes and proteins have been around for awhile (check out this ...
Cas9 is the genome editing tool of choice for a number of model organisms: mammalian cells, yeast, drosophila, plants, worms, zebrafish, frogs, some bacteria; but not thermophilic (high heat loving) bacteria. Until recently the only available Cas9 proteins were isolated from ...
Signal transduction pathways are a lot like cell phone networks. Protein kinases deliver messages to the next members of their pathways, but where the kinases are located, their signal strength, and how long their signals last all impact transduction of the message. To study ...
Two plasmids that can be used to make inexpensive 100 bp or 1 kb DNA molecular weight ladders were recently deposited with Addgene. A team of undergraduate students led by Dr. Song Tan at Penn State developed the plasmids, pPSU1 and pPSU2. When restriction digested with PstI or ...
What are scientists up to on Twitter? Prior to writing this post, my interest in Twitter was fleeting. I’ve had an account for three years and have only tweeted 6 times: #fail. I’d hoped to use Twitter professionally to network, learn more about alternative careers for ...
Note: Cpf1 is also called Cas12a. There’s a new development for CRISPR-Cpf1 genome editing! A recent paper from Feng Zhang's lab describes how to use Cpf1 for multiplex genome editing. For a few reasons, Cpf1 is a simplified system for editing multiple targets compared to Cas9. ...
Rosella is a pH-sensitive fluorescent biosensor that was recently deposited with Addgene by Dr. Mark Prescott. This system was developed for monitoring and analyzing autophagy of cytosol and organelles in yeast cells. Autophagy (Greek for “self-eating”) is induced by a lack of ...
