Dr. Laurel Yohe, shares her backpack lab with researchers on the other side of the world.

This summer, Dr. Yohe took part in a field expedition in Vietnam. She was able to work with the local host institution, The Center for Biodiversity Conservation and Endangered Species (CBES). She offered training in the use of her backpack lab which she developed over several years and field expeditions as a Principal Investigator in the Bioinformatics Dept. at UNC Charlotte. The backpack lab allows researchers to perform a variety of task in the field,

A two-day workshop titled “Conserve Bats and Detect Emerging Pathogens” was held at CBES in May of 2024. CBES was honored to have Dr. Laurel R. Yohe from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as the instructor. Dr. Yohe is the author of numerous studies on molecular biology and bioinformatics in bat research.

Although the two-day workshop was brief, it opened up many new potentials for conservation work and research on endangered species through molecular biology applications, both at CBES specifically and in Vietnam in general. Globally, molecular biology has long been used to accelerate species research, providing much higher accuracy results than traditional methods. However, this technology is still not widely accessible in Vietnam due to the costs of setting up laboratories and the high level of expertise required. Therefore, during this visit to Vietnam, Dr. Yohe aimed to present a different perspective on this technology. Thanks to continuous innovations and improvements, laboratories nowadays have become more compact and mobile, with cost-effective and reasonable expenses.

The workshop helped CBES researchers enhance their knowledge of molecular biology and their skills in working with new-generation equipment such as Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION and miniPCR. CBES hopes that in the near future, we can apply molecular biology technology to species research and conservation programs and serve as a bridge to bring molecular biology closer to research in Vietnam.