Invisible adversity

12/08/22 • 57 min

Dr Uri Manor is a researcher at the Salk Institute who studies the dynamics of cells and Aly Putnam is a PhD student at University of Massachusetts in Amherst. They work in different fields and they are at different career stages. What they have in common is that they both have faced and continue to face adversity. They face an adversity of, the more invisible kind, because it's about their life in science as people with disabilities. They face adversity head on with strength, creativity and humor.

(Art J. Jackson, Music: Funky energetic Intro by WinnieTheMoog. Another piece used in this media project: Paper Flakes by Rafael Krux. Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/5695-paper-flakes License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.orchestralis.net/)

Previous Episode

Sneak-peek of SfN 2022

Recently, we had the chance to get a sneak-peek of the meeting with the Society for Neuroscience's current leadership and to play a nerdy game with them. They are: Dr. Gina Turrigiano, Brandeis University researcher and current President of the Society for Neuroscience, Dr. Robbie Greene of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, current chair of SfN’s Public Education and Communication Committee and Dr. Damien Fair from the University of Minnesota, incoming chair of SfN’s Public Education and Communication Committee. If you want to register for the meeting, you can do so here: https://www.sfn.org/meetings/neuroscience-2022/registration .

And we played a nerdy game with them. It's 'we' because this podcast episode is co-hosted by Dr. Jean Zarate, senior editor at Nature Neuroscience, who is also a musician and an actor. This podcast series expands on the things I hear and read and offers conversations with people I meet in the course of my science journalism adventures.
(Art J. Jackson, Music: Funky energetic Intro by WinnieTheMoog. Another piece used in this media project: Legend of One by Kevin MacLeod: Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3973-legend-of-one License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://incompetech.com)

Next Episode

Long-read sequencing: Jonas Korlach, CSO of Pacific Biosciences

When scientists want to know about genes, chances are they use instruments called sequencers. There are quite a few companies that make sequencers. These instruments can give a read-out for example of a stretch of DNA or many stretches of DNA, even entire genomes and many genomes. The challenge has been that the instruments deliver--short reads—short readouts of sequence. What happens then is that scientists face the challenging computational task of stitching together short reads into contiguous sequence. But long-read sequencing is a way to address this challenge.
The method of the year according to Nature Methods is: long read-sequencing. For a story I chatted with scientists at companies and in academia about long-read sequencing. This episode is with Dr. Jonas Korlach, chief scientific officer of Pacific Biosciences, which is one of the companies that offers instruments that can do long-read sequencing.
(Art: J. Jackson. The following music was used for this media project:

Music: Winnie the Moog, Funky Energetic Intro and Acid Trumpet by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3340-acid-trumpet License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license0