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The Alabama Reading Initiative has made a dramatic difference improving the reading proficiency among public school students. So much so that it's often held up as a model for other states. The Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative, also managed under the State Department of Education, strives for similar success. American schoolchildren are woefully behind students in other industrialized nations in their science and math abilities. 

Two lead stories last week in The Times show how Huntsville is working with educators to share its vast knowledge of technology, math and the sciences. HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are playing a key role in educating students and teachers in those disciplines.

To read the rest of the editorial in The Huntsville Times, please click here. 

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A collaborative effort between Epicentre and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology resulted in the development of two novel transposon-based methods for RNA-Seq library preparation. The technique, called Tn-RNA-Seq, can use double-stranded cDNA created from rRNA-depleted RNA to prepare an Illumina sequencing library using only two enzymatic reactions. The researchers generated high-quality RNA-Seq libraries from as little as 10 pg of mRNA (~1 ng of total RNA) with this approach.

To read the rest of the article, click here. 

Dr. Debra Moriarity knew about breast cancer before it knew about her.
 
As a member of the biology faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Moriarity studied breast cancer and had long decided that, with the knowledge she had gained, she wouldn't hesitate to undergo a double mastectomy should the cancer ever find her.
 
And when it did in 2005, Moriarity said "it was odd" being a victim of the disease she had studied.
 

A new partnership between the Genetics and Genomic Sciences (GGS) Graduate Program and research juggernaut HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville will substantially increase UAB’s expertise and exposure in the area of genomics and give students the opportunity to engage in large-scale genomic analyses.
 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Although it affects less than 1 percent of the global population, schizophrenia exacts a large toll in terms of expense and human suffering.  A new study from researchers at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, with colleagues from Columbia University in New York and the University of Pretoria in South Africa, indicate non-familial genetic mutations may account for about half of schizophrenia cases.