WSLH Senior Data Scientist Kelsey Florek sat down for an interview with ASBMB Today, the member magazine of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, to talk about what bioinformatics is, Kelsey’s work at the WSLH, and her career journey.

Read the interview

 

In accordance with Wis. 343.305, the WSLH provides specimen collection kits to law enforcement agencies, hospitals and clinics for the purpose of an OWI investigation. The contract with the current OWI kit vendor has expired and a new contract has been awarded to a new vendor.

As of January 1, 2022, the WSLH will be using Tritech, a commercial supplier, to assemble and ship the OWI blood kits. The kit components will look slightly different but will remain the same in terms of function, quality and integrity. The ordering process may be completed using the Tritech ordering link.

Please read this memo for more information.

Please note the following changes to the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene’s operations due to the observance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

The table below lists the hours of operations for our Clinical Specimen Receiving department. We will have staffing to accept clinical specimens at both our 2601 Agriculture Drive and our 465 Henry Mall facilities.

NOTE: Our Environmental Health Division will NOT be accepting samples on Dec. 24th or Dec. 31st.

As always, if you have an off-hours emergency, please call the WSLH Emergency Pager at 608-263-3280.

 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has added, by emergency rule, screening for Pompe disease to the Wisconsin Newborn Screening Program’s panel of conditions. This rule will go into effect once it is published in the Wisconsin State Journal, which is expected to occur on January 10, 2022.

For more information on this rule and Pompe disease, please read this joint WI DHS and WSLH letter.

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be closed on Thursday, November 25, 2021 for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Our Specimen Receiving departments will observe the following hours of operation for the Thanksgiving holiday:

 

 

 

UW Oshkosh graduate student Sarah Woody spent this past summer looking at heavy metal concentrations in sediment, plant and muskrat tissue at Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. Sarah collaborated with Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene Trace Elements Clean Lab (TECL) scientists to perform the sample processing and analysis for her research.

See Sarah in her waders collecting samples in the Marsh and in her lab coat in the TECL in this video produced by UW Oshkosh

Since 2015, scientists in the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) Communicable Disease Division (CDD) have been collaborating with Dr. Jon Temte, UW professor of family medicine and UW School of Medicine and Public Health associate dean for public health and community engagement, on the Oregon Child Absenteeism Due to Respiratory Disease Study (ORCHARDS).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded research has been helping families and schools in the Village of Oregon, WI, track and understand seasonal influenza and other respiratory illnesses.

WSLH CDD scientists test ORCHARDS specimens for influenza and other respiratory diseases, but early in the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t also perform SARS-CoV-2 analysis due to limited supply and testing constraints at the time.

However, the WSLH stores the ORCHARDS specimens after testing and earlier this year CDD scientists analyzed archived specimens collected from students between September 2019 and June 2020 for SARS-CoV-2 and performed whole genome sequencing.

Through this process researchers found that the first-known case of household transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Wisconsin happened in March 2020.

Learn more about the ORCHARDS discovery from these articles –

UW-Madison news release – As schools reopen, Oregon virus surveillance project helps families navigate complex time

Wisconsin Medical Journal – Evidence of Early Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Involving a School-aged Child

Wisconsin State Journal – UW flu study in Oregon School District expands to COVID-19

A paper published online in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reports on a collaboration between the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) housed at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) along with the WSLH’s Trace Elements Clean Lab and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) studying lead isotopes in precipitation during the Saharan dust incursion into southeast U.S. last summer.

From the abstract: “This storm provided a means to evaluate the influence of Saharan dust in North America confirmed by independent satellite and ground observations.”

The photo below from NASA Worldview shows the dust storm cloud in June 2020.

Please note the following changes to the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene’s operations due to the observance of the Labor Day holiday.

The table below lists the hours of operations for our Clinical Specimen Receiving departments.

As always, if there is an emergency, please call the WSLH Emergency Answering Service at 608-263-3280.

 

 

Although Manasi Passi-Simhan’s freshman year at UW-Madison may have been mostly virtual in the classroom, her participation in the Undergraduate Research Scholars (URS) program provided in-person learning at the WSLH Trace Elements Clean Lab and a promising start to a long research career.

According to UW-Madison, “URS is dedicated to enhancing the academic experience of UW-Madison students by providing first- and second-year undergraduates, and transfer students in their first year at UW with opportunities to earn credit for participating in research and creative practice with UW-Madison faculty and staff.”

Manasi (right) was paired with WSLH Assistant Scientist Sean Scott, PhD, (left) to conduct lead isotope research on dried blood spots. This summer Manasi and Sean continue their collaboration as she participates in the UW Honors Summer Sophomore Apprenticeships program and they look at the history of metals deposition in ponds in the UW Arboretum.

Sean was awarded a URS Exceptional Mentorship Award for their work. According to URS Director Hannah Bailey, “The relationship between URS Mentors and their URS Scholars is unique on our campus. This high-impact mentorship practice provides early undergraduates with valuable skills that help them pursue scholarship at the next level.”

We asked Manasi to tell us about her experience over the past year and her plans for the future.

 

 

Tell us a little bit about yourself –

I am a rising sophomore at UW-Madison, majoring in Biology and Environmental Studies with a focus in evolutionary and population biology. I am from Milwaukee, WI, and some of my interests include swimming, documentary/film-making, astronomy, and hiking.

What interested you about participating in the Undergraduate Research Scholars program?

I was looking for a way to gain some research experience in a university setting and felt like URS did a good job of bridging that gap between high school and university for new students. Additionally, URS appeals to a large range of majors, from the humanities to STEM, which I found to be really exciting.

How were you matched with Sean as a mentor? 

As a URS scholar, we are asked to list our top 5 research topics from a master list. We are then paired with one or two of our five choices for an interview. Luckily, I was paired with my top research choices, which was how I got the chance to join Sean in the WSLH lab.

Tell us a bit about the research you did this past year at the WSLH and also the research project you are working on this summer?

Over the past school year, I worked on developing a methodology to measure blood spots for Pb (lead) isotope ratios to come up with a more effective way of tracing Pb poisoning. The data was collected through the use of a multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer and provided us with the conclusion that blood spots could be used to measure isotopic ratios fairly accurately with little interference. With further testing and peer review, the use of blood spots to trace Pb poisoning could become a strong candidate for state health departments in the future.

This summer, I chose to focus my research on the Pb analysis of two ponds in the UW Arboretum. My project looks at the accumulation of metals in sediment caused by storm water runoff. By sampling differing layers of the core samples, we can effectively create a historical timeline of the ponds based on the changing Pb sources.

What did you like most and least about the research project? 

I find the hands on experience paired with the one-on-one nature of the research to be really fun. It’s nice to have a mentor that is so enthusiastic about their field of research as it makes it even more interesting.

One drawback of the research project is the amount of time it takes to process the samples prior to measuring and analyzing – definitely a lot of pipetting!

How did the pandemic affect your research project – or did it not affect it? What was it like being a freshman in college during the pandemic?

Having started university in the middle of a pandemic, Zoom meetings and emails (opposed to face to face discussions) became a daily occurrence. Thankfully, I was one of the lucky few who was able to work in-person every month which made the research far more interactive.

What are your plans for the future? How do you think participating in the URS program will help you accomplish these goals?

I plan on completing my degree and hopefully continuing my research with my mentor as well. I am thankful to have gotten the chance to start the research experience so early in my career as I feel like I have a much better understanding of what research really is on a university level; I hope to be able to incorporate all I have learned into my profession one day as well.