Category: BTP News

Three University of Wisconsin–Madison Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) faculty trainers have been honored with Vilas professorships. The professorships, totaling 40 this year, honor extraordinary members of the UW–Madison faculty with awards supported by the estate of professor, U.S. senator, and UW Regent William F. Vilas (1840-1908). Vilas Research Professorship Samuel Gellman, Ralph F. Hirschmann Professor …

Your next bite of local bread or gulp of Madison beer might just have a little piece of Sheboygan in it. Sheboygan yeast, anyway. That yeast will have traveled on collection swabs, been scrutinized in research laboratories at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, pored over in food science classrooms and finally harnessed in the brewhouses and …

The soil supporting a field of crops teems with life. Untold numbers of bacteria and fungi strive for space and food. Most are harmless. Many are vital to creating healthy soil. But farmers worry about a handful of species that cause devastating crop diseases, and they often turn to chemical pesticides to keep those pathogens …

In order to spread their destruction, ovarian cancer cells must break free from their tumor home, travel through the fluid in the peritoneal cavity and attach to the outside of the abdominal organs—surfaces that are, by necessity, not sticky. Despite these challenges, most patients with ovarian cancer are diagnosed after metastasis has begun, resulting in …

Numerous University of Wisconsin–Madison Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) faculty trainers are on recently awarded UW2020 Round 4 projects. The goal of UW2020 is to stimulate and support cutting edge, highly innovative, and groundbreaking research at UW–Madison and the acquisition of shared instruments or equipment that will open new avenues for innovative and significant research. The …

Four Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainees have received Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Edna Chiang from the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program under advisor Garret Suen Benjamin Gastfriend from Chemical and Biological Engineering under advisors Eric Shusta and Sean Palecek Katherine Mueller from Cellular and Molecular Biology under advisor Krishanu Saha Delia Scoville …

Several University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty members who serve as trainers for the Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) have earned prestigious university awards. Bacteriology professor Richard Gourse received the Hilldale Award in Biological Sciences, one of just four Hilldale Awards given out each year. With more than 140 scientific publications to his name, Gourse is a distinguished …

Since the 1970s, millions of women have appreciated the ease of a urine-based home pregnancy test to find out if their family is about to grow. A diagnostic test that’s just as accurate and easy to use would make a big impact in the war on tuberculosis. With more than 10 million affected people worldwide, …

The diminutive size of our aortic valve — just shy of a quarter — belies its essential role in pushing oxygen-rich blood from the heart into the aorta, our body’s largest vessel, and from there to all other organs. Yet for decades, researchers have focused less on damaged valves than on atherosclerosis, the gradual hardening …

For the past five years, CRISPR-Cas9 technology has revolutionized the field of gene editing due to its ease and low cost. But although this technology reliably finds and cuts the targeted stretch of DNA sequence, fixing that cut as desired has been something of a hit-or-miss process. Error rates as high as 50 percent are a particular …