SpotlightCoralie Munro Provides Invaluable Assistance to the Biodemography Core
Coralie Munro makes antibodies and other reagents that are the basis for many of the immunoassays that CSDE’s biodemography lab and other similar labs use. Coralie produces and purifies antibodies and reagents in her lab, and unlike commercial suppliers, her selection is research rather than profit driven. Without her reagents, many labs would grind to a halt. Kathleen O’Connor and Ellie have relied on Coralie's reagents since the precursor of the CSDE lab was started at Penn State in 1993, and have done at least 250,000 assays using her reagents, and still use them daily. Because Coralie plans to retire in the next few years, she volunteered a week of her time in December to train Ellie, Catharine Wheaton, an endocrinologist working at Disney's Animal Kingdom, and Dan Wittwer, Laboratory Manager at the Wisconsin Primate Center. Coralie taught them several methods she uses to make the reagents, while allowing them to comb through her 24 years of accumulated lab notes, and ask her advice. Specifically, they were trained in (1) conjugation of steriods to an enzyme, (2) conjugation of antibodies to enzymes, (3) enzyme activation, (4) extraction of steroids from serum or other specimens, and (5) antibody purification. She also provided information about the process of immunizing rabbits to illicit a specific immune response so that they will produce antibodies, and about how the antibodies are harvested and tested. |
Ellie Brindle, Director of the 
