Skip to content

Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher

After gaining a PhD in Pharmacology/Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge where she researched how naked mole rats have adapted to hypoxia, Laura continued her research career as a postdoc at the Francis Crick Institute/UCL in London and at Cardiff University. Here, she focused on neurodegenerative disease, looking at synapse degeneration during Alzheimer’s disease and working on an iPSC model of Huntington’s disease. After 8 years in the UK, Laura moved back to Germany where she is currently training to become a Patent Attorney, drafting, prosecuting, attacking and defending life science patents by university and pharmaceutical clients.

Discover more about Laura-Nadine on their professional profiles

Articles by Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher

A chick inspecting a broken shell to represent lysed cells after using a good cell lysis method.

8 Cell Lysis Methods to Break Cell Walls

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | April 19, 2023

We must lyse cells to extract our samples, but which cell lysis method is best for your cells? Read this article to learn about eight excellent methods.

Analyzing Apoptosis – A Review of Analytical Techniques

Analyzing Apoptosis – A Review of Analytical Techniques

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | September 24, 2014

Now that we’ve learned about the role of apoptosis in good health and disease, it will be useful to know how we can detect apoptosis in cells or organisms. A variety of apoptosis detection kits are commercially available, and here is a roundup of how they work: TUNEL and DNA damage assays The TUNEL assay…

Apoptosis Gone Wrong: Cell Death’s Role in Disease

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | June 25, 2014

Like yin and yang, apoptosis has a duality.  While it is is a pathway used in the normal maintenance and development of tissues in healthy organisms it also had a dark side. As you can imagine, apoptosis is a tightly regulated process – controlled by the integration of multiple pro- and anti-apoptotic signals. Ultimately the induction…

Life or Death? Apoptosis in Healthy Organisms

Life or Death? Apoptosis in Healthy Organisms

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | May 28, 2014

Everybody has to die at some point. But fortunately, the death of a cell does not mean the end of the organism, at least for us metazoans. Indeed, controlled cell death a.k.a apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is an integral part of the biology of all organisms, from nematodes on up. Apoptosis is central to…

Cell lysis methods

Cell lysis 101: 5 types of cell walls you need to understand

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | June 3, 2013

Did you ever encounter resistance from a mammalian cell line when trying to extract the contents? Probably not, because destroying cell membranes is easy. Cell walls, however, are a different story. They are rigid, protective layers that can be so strong that the organism gives up movement in favor of protection! Cell walls exist in…

How Measurement of Concentration and Purity of Nucleic Acids Works, Part I

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | April 16, 2013

So you’ve isolated your DNA or RNA from your favorite sample. And now, if you are anything like me, the first thing you’ll do is scramble to check the quality and concentration of your extract. You have a few different options at your disposal to perform this crucial analysis, which will let you know whether…

An image of colors to depict care for your pH meter.

A Beginners’ Guide to Non-coding Sequence Alignment

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | March 1, 2013

There is no such thing as “junk” DNA Until recently, vast areas of the genome had been denounced as “junk” DNA, because they do not encode proteins. However, it has become clear that these regions have a large diversity of other functions, from transcriptional and translational regulation to the protection of genes and genome integrity.…

How To Identify Conserved Elements In Genes

How To Identify Conserved Elements In Genes

By Laura-Nadine Schuhmacher | January 25, 2013

Conserved elements are stretches of DNA sequence that are under purifying selection. That means mutations leading to a change of function in this part of the DNA are detrimental to the organism and will not become fixed in the genome, but rather discarded by natural selection. The level of conservation between species gives an idea…

Scroll To Top