Northern Ireland’s CoreLIMS programme has achieved another significant milestone by migrating the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service (NIBTS) away from its 15-year-old laboratory information system and onto Clinisys WinPath. The CoreLIMS programme, delivered by Business Services Organisation (BSO), has been set up to support the transformation of pathology services in Northern Ireland by combining the seven information systems used by laboratories across the country onto a single platform...

Blood stem cells from healthy people carry major chromosomal alterations, suggesting we are all genetic mosaics, according to a new study from EMBL and the Max Delbrück Center. Researchers at EMBL and the MDC-BIMSB found that approximately one in 40 human bone marrow cells carry massive chromosomal alterations without causing any apparent disease or abnormality. Even so-called normal cells carry all sorts of genetic mutations, meaning there are more genetic differences between individual cells...

llumina sequencing is a next generation sequencing method used to sequence millions of DNA fragments in parallel. In this video, INTEGRA Biosciences explain how Illumina sequencing works. Standard Illumina sequencing can be split into the following steps, Fragmentation, Addition of primer binding sites and capture sequences, Denaturation, Immobilization, Amplification and Sequencing...

Veolia Water Technologies has designed and installed a bespoke ultrapure water purification system for an Oxford-based biotechnology research company. Based on its existing MEDICA™ Pro 120, the tailored solution ensures that a continuous supply of ultrapure water is distributed and meets all of the exacting requirements for cutting-edge molecular biology. The added advantage for the client is that the system has also increased their laboratory’s production capacity...

In recent years, Second-Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy has established itself as the technique of choice for the study of crystallized biomolecules such as starch, collagen and myosin. Unlike fluorescence-microscopy, SHG microscopy does not involve the creation of excited electronic states, so cell viability issues associated with heating and photo-bleaching are reduced. The report describes typical results from collagen in liver tissue samples generated by SHG microscopy...

The Analytical Laboratory Robotics Topic group (working group) of euRobotics is proud to announce the release of the next iteration of the roadmap for Analytical Laboratory Robotics in Europe entitled the “Research roadmap for laboratory community-Automating discovery: high throughput experimentation, diagnostics and robotics/AI”. Robotics, and associated technologies such as computer vision, mechatronics and artificial intelligence are rapidly evolving....

When it comes to laboratory research, a laboratory shaker is one of the essential pieces of equipment needed in a lab. It is used to mix, stir, and agitate samples in a variety of applications, including chemical synthesis, cell culture, and microbiology. Therefore, it is essential for lab researchers to know what to consider when buying a laboratory shaker. In this article, we will highlight the key factors that lab researchers should consider when buying a laboratory shaker...

A new case study released by Autoscribe Informatics (A Xybion Company) highlights how CIA Labs has streamlined their approval process, reduced the burden of paperwork, and improved their overall turn-around times by adopting Autoscribe’s Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). Based in Saint Joseph, Missouri, Custom Industrial Analysis Labs (CIA Labs) has been in operation for over 30 years serving the pharmaceutical, food and agribusiness industries, as well as testing for various industrial and chemical clients...

Sartorius is collaborating with biopharmaceutical company Sanofi to develop an end-to-end platform for integrated and continuous downstream bioprocessing. Selected as a preferred supplier, Sartorius will contribute its engineering and manufacturing expertise to commercialize ICB platforms based on prototypes developed by Sanofi. In return, Sanofi will grant Sartorius exclusive access to its know-how and patents related to the ICB platform...

A study from the Hackett group at EMBL Rome shows that disrupting the gut microbiome of male mice increases the risk of disease in their future offspring. Researchers from the Hackett group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Rome in collaboration with the Bork and the Zimmermann groups at EMBL Heidelberg changed the composition of the gut microbiota in male mice through common antibiotics, inducing a condition called dysbiosis, and found that...

PharmaKure, a clinical stage pharmaceutical company developing precision medicines for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative diseases, has announced a new epigenetics collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University. This partnership will focus on ‘gene-based environmental biomarkers’, known as epigenetic markers, for calculating risk scores for Alzheimer’s diseases. Together with ALZmetrix^TM, PharmaKure’s blood-based biomarker, this will increase the power of current Alzheimer’s diagnostics...

PacBio, a leading developer of high-quality, highly accurate sequencing solutions, has announced that the University of Tartu, host of Estonia’s National Biobank, has chosen the Revio HiFi sequencing system to sequence 10,000 whole human genomes and unlock new insights from its populational health data. The announcement follows funding from the European Commission and the Estonian government to help Estonia adopt personalized medicine at scale...

Immunologists in the Immune Sensing and Signaling Dynamics Group | ImmunoHUB at Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S) in Porto, Portugal, are using INTEGRA Biosciences laboratory tools to help further our understanding of the human immune system. The research team is using the VACUSAFE safe aspiration system and PIPETBOY acu 2 pipet controller to enhance their investigations into the role of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) in responding to bacterial infections and tumor growth...

Leading centrifugal separation solutions provider Alfa Laval has forged a collaborative partnership with Ireland’s National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) to enhance and expand the Institute’s cell separation training solutions for the biopharma manufacturing industry. Under this collaboration, Alfa Laval has made a CultureOne Primo Separator, the company’s cutting-edge single-use disc stack centrifuge, available to NIBRT’s research and training facilities...

Veolia Water Technologies has designed and installed a bespoke centralised water purification system in a newly refurbished laboratory for a Hertfordshire-based biopharma company. The bespoke solution, utilising existing CENTRA™ reverse osmosis technology, provides a higher make-up rate of purified water to fulfil the company’s requirements...

Touchlight, a biotechnology CDMO pioneering enzymatic DNA production has been awarded a second grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) to continue work with Professor Shelley Minteer's research group, Missouri University of Science and Technology, to further propel the development of DNA-enabled biobatteries. Biobatteries use enzymes to generate electricity from the breakdown of complex fuels, such as carbohydrates, fatty acids and alcohols...

Veolia Water Technologies recently provided lab purification solutions to facilitate the life-saving work carried out by a prestigious University-based research institution. Through early engagement, the Veolia Water Technologies team were able to integrate their solutions within a highly bespoke lab design.Upgrading laboratory facilities in a cutting-edge research institution, which is dedicated to advancing the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of disease, unsurprisingly comes with complex considerations and rigorous requirements...

When the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the United States of America compared their steam-jacketed autoclaves and Priorclave’s non-jacketed laboratory autoclaves side-by-side, they found that jacketed autoclaves used in excess of thirty times more water – with no corresponding benefit. In field tests, Priorclave's laboratory autoclaves operating costs have been documented at more than 80% lower than same-capacity jacketed autoclaves...

SPT Labtech, a global leader in the design, development and manufacture of automated instrumentation and consumables for life science applications, announces its co-marketing collaboration with Roche to deliver a streamlined method for Illumina-compatible Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) library preparation. By leveraging SPT Labtech’s all-in-one automated liquid handling platform, firefly®, this collaboration offers genomics researchers fully automated workflows..