A team of Kerafast employees spent one morning last week volunteering at a local Boston-based charity, Cradles to Crayons. The organization helps children 12 years and younger living in homeless or low-income situations by providing them with essentials such as clothing and school supplies. On Wednesday, we drove to Cradles to Crayons from our offices
By Gail M. Seigel, Ph.D. University at Buffalo Have you developed a unique lab reagent that your colleagues might find useful, if only they knew about it? If so, I hope you are seriously considering the possibility of becoming a Kerafast provider. If you’re just testing the waters or are about to dive in, here
Here at Kerafast, we recently welcomed a new member to our product management team. Molly Adams, a third-year bioengineering student at Northeastern University in Boston, joined the company in January as a Product Specialist. She’ll be with us as a full-time co-op student until the summer. As a Kerafast Product Specialist, Molly works on the
In a recent study in Nature, scientists demonstrated how the influenza virus hijacks host cell RNA to proliferate within the human body. The research identified a specific mechanism common across all influenza strains, providing a new drug target with the potential to treat any influenza infection. In the paper, the investigators used the Influenza A,
Research from geneticists at Trinity College Dublin, recently published in Nature Communications, has identified a short list of genes implicated in many neurodevelopmental disorders and diseases, including autism, schizophrenia, ADHD and epilepsy. The study focused on regions of the genome called ‘copy number variants’ (CNVs). Common in humans, CNVs are areas of DNA that are
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by Plasmodium parasites. Anopheles mosquitos act as vectors for the disease, and Plasmodium parasites are transmitted through the bites of infected female mosquitos. Malaria transmission is most common in regions where Anopheles mosquitos are prevalent, such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In 2015, 214 million worldwide cases
Bacteria gain resistance to antibiotics via mutation events in their genome. A recent study published in Nature Communications sheds new light on a gene that decreases mutation rates in Mycobacterium smegmatis, a model for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. M. tuberculosis is a highly infectious microbe that is the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB). According to the Centers
Flow cytometry is a technique enabling the measurement of cells or cell components as they travel via a fluid suspension that passes through a beam of light. According to two recent market reports, the global market for flow cytometry was just over $3 billion in 2012. These reports predict growth to $5.7 billion in 2018
A team of scientists from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a human monoclonal antibody able to protect pregnant mice and their developing fetuses from Zika virus infection. The research, published in November in Nature, was led by a Kerafast providing investigator from Vanderbilt University, co-senior
Viruses are continually finding ways to infect their hosts and evade their defenses. Through the evolution of the human race, we have been continually fighting viruses. A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications demonstrates that, in fact, this fight may have been going on much longer than originally thought. Ancient retroviral origins The