Blogs

Have you ever wanted to spend some time in biotech companies, calibrate your lab skills, and make sure that you're teaching students current information? You can do this and more in Winston-Salem!

Twelve community college instructors have the opportunity to spend a month in North Carolina working with folks from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE) at North Carolina Central University, the BioNetwork's Pharmaceutical and Analytical Training Lab and Capstone Center, The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at UNCG, the David H. Murdock Research Institute (DHMRI), Commercialization at Wake... Read more

With much of the continental U.S. suffering from a sub zero temperatures, a group of Bio-Link instructors traveled to sunny Puerto Rico for fun in the sun with warmth and genomics.

The Universidad del Turabo recently hosted the weeklong workshop Genomic Approaches in Biosciences, an NSF-funded project from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Dolan DNA Learning Center (DNALC). Dr. Jose Perez-Jimenez is the PI of a subaward from DNALC intended to increase the training of community college and secondary school teachers in the area of emerging genomics and bioinformatics.

The workshop was conducted both in Spanish and... Read more

Kristine tells us about cloning African violets. The little plantlets are soooo cute!

Every time I think of a clone my immediate image is alien shaped pods with a ton of goo oozing out, and the mad scientist in the corner wearing a lab coat with a crazed look in their eye. And now, I know what it's like to be that mad scientist.

In the same class where I was taking care of NIH-3T3 cells, we did a cloning experiment on African Violets. This was the first experiment we did in the class, so it was... Read more

St. Philip's College will host a biotech career day in partnership with two local high schools; Highlands HS and Southside HS. This event is sponsored by the Perkins grant from Austin community college biotechnology program.

invited to participate are area high schools and biotech companies and institutions in San Antonio. Event is held at 800 Quintana rd, San Antonio Texas 78211 from 9-3pm Read more

In spring 2013, the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE) issued the results of a research study that analyzed the math and English requirements for community college students entering nine popular occupational fields, including biotechnology, nursing, computer programming, and business. The study addressed the question: "What does it really mean to be college and work ready"? I contributed to the research as the only non-mathematician on the mathematics panel. I will briefly summarize my thoughts relating to the math portion of the study; you can download the full report and reach your own conclusions at http://ncee.org/college-and-work-ready/ .... Read more

When I was first introduced to acrylamide gels way back in Fundamentals of Biology, I did not have the privilege of assembling the reagents. But I can remember just loading the gel was intimidating at first, trying to maneuver the fine tip between the plates and hopefully into the barely distinguishable wells of the gel. In the first technique class in SCF's Biotechnology program (nicknamed 'The DNA Class') I developed a false sense of security with gels. Because we mostly handle DNA, the gels that were made and ran in that class were aragrose gels. In my opinion, agarose gels... Read more

Inspired by the 2013 Summer Fellows Forum? Were there topics that should have been discussed that were missed? Share your suggestions now and help us prepare for the next year!

Don't be caught unprepared for Bio-Link Summer Fellows Forum 2014! June 2nd is almost a year away, but you can still join our planning wiki and post your ideas for next year's sessions.

Check out the Bio-Link SFF2014 planning wiki and join now!

The future is on its way! Read more

Judith Fitzpatrick shared this interesting summary from a workshop that she organized for the ATE PI conference.

This workshop was convened because the recent emphasis on entrepreneurial and research based ATE projects is beginning to yield significant intellectual property, i.e. copyright and patents. The panel consisted of Ned Isralesin, a practicing patent attorney, Patricia Campbell, Director, Maryland Intellectual Property Legal Resource Center at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, and Dorian Grumet, Director of Licensee Relations and Compliance at the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) at Rutgers University. There was considerable interest discussion of the... Read more

My lab partner, Allison, and I have been assured that troubleshooting is a desired skill and that we will be grateful for our current Proteins woes later in our careers. And I'm proud to say that despite repeated setbacks, we've put our big-girl lab coats on, looked that ?-galactosidase in its ornery eye, and paraphrased the words of the incomparable "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in the best B movie ever, They Live:

"We have come here to chew bubblegum and purify proteins... and we're all outta bubblegum."

A run-down of the problems we've encountered and the ferreted out causes:... Read more

Biotechnology students Desirey Flores and M. Clayton Speed won cash awards along with 2 nd and 1 st place in the undergraduate poster competition during the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) conference on November 1, 2013, held in New Orleans, LA. Ms. Flores presented a poster entitled "Investigating the Role of 53BP1 in DNA Repair" and M. Clayton presented "Investigating the Role of DNA Repair Enzymes in Replication Associated Damage in Osteosarcoma and Micro-Cell Culture Lines." There were over 140 student presenters attending the meeting. Read more