University of Calgary researcher Fathima Ishara Isham joins the Absolute Gene-ius hosts to explore infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a coronavirus that affects poultry health and egg production, and to discuss her research comparing qPCR and digital PCR for viral detection. The conversation also covers IBV persistence, experimental challenges, and how greater analytical sensitivity could help researchers investigate low-level viral signals that qPCR may miss.
Chickens cough, coronaviruses persist, and molecular methods can reveal more than meets the eye.
In this episode of Absolute Gene-ius, University of Calgary researcher Fathima Ishara Isham joins Lisa Crawford and Jordan Ruggieri to explore infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a coronavirus that affects poultry health and can disrupt egg production. Ishara explains how IBV can move beyond the respiratory tract, why vaccination strategies differ for broilers and layers, and the practical challenges of animal studies involving large sample sets and multiple time points. She also walks through her study comparing qPCR and digital PCR for IBV detection, including quantification range, limit of detection, precision, specificity, and testing of real-world tissue, swab, air, water, and dust samples. Her findings highlight how digital PCR can detect low-level viral signals in samples that tested negative by qPCR, raising new questions about persistence and infectivity.
In Career Corner, Ishara shares her path from Sri Lanka to Canada, the value of mentorship, and why saying “I don’t know” can be a strength. Plus, she recalls a proud cell-culture milestone and one illuminating immunofluorescence mistake.
Jordan Ruggieri 00:00
How about you're going to learn more about chickens than you could ever imagine, including that they cough.
Lisa Crawford 00:04
They cough. Okay.
Jordan Ruggieri 00:06
Have you ever heard of coughing chicken?
Lisa Crawford 00:08
That sounds like a little inn, like a bed and breakfast, The Coughing Chicken.
Lisa Crawford 00:23
Welcome to Absolute Gene-ius, a podcast series from Thermo Fisher Scientific. I'm Lisa Crawford,
Jordan Ruggieri 00:29
and I'm Jordan Ruggieri. And today we're delighted to welcome Fathima Ishara Isham to the show.
Lisa Crawford 00:35
Ishara holds a master's in science in veterinary medical sciences from the University of Calgary, where she currently works as a researcher. We take a deep dive into infectious bronchitis virus, which can disrupt poultry health and egg production worldwide. Trust me, you're going to learn more about chickens than you could ever imagine, including that they cough.
Jordan Ruggieri 00:53
Don't be a chicken, just stay around for this great conversation.
Jordan Ruggieri 01:00
Ishara, thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of Absolute Gene-ius. We made it, and I'm very excited to have you with us today.
Fathima Ishara Isham 01:09
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Jordan Ruggieri 01:11
Can you give a little bit of a background on the science that you're working on?
Fathima Ishara Isham 01:17
Yeah, sure. So, before I came here, I was back in Sri Lanka for my master's. I was working on antibiotic resistance in E. coli. So I was looking in antibiotic resistance for both hospital wastewater samples and also in natural water bodies like rivers, lakes, wells, because we have a lot of lakes and like wells back in Sri Lanka, which we use for consumption. So after I moved here for my master's, I did kind of like a switch, and I started working with viruses. So I was a master student at the Careem’s lab, predominantly they were working with IBV, so it is a coronavirus, an RNA virus, and it was infecting poultry, so chicken, so we were looking into, like, the pathogenicity, immune responses, things like that in the IBV virus.
Jordan Ruggieri 02:08
Can you describe what, what is IBV, and why is it considered such a persistent challenge for chickens, for poultry systems, you know, worldwide?
Fathima Ishara Isham 02:19
IBV is again a coronavirus. We all know about influenza because of the current situation, like it has very high mortality rate, and like you have to clear out farms, so it doesn't do that for the birds. But what it does is it kind of like, especially in layers it reduces the egg production, so it reduces the amount of eggs that are produced if the IBV strain that is infecting, is infecting, like targeting the reproductive tract. The different scenarios can happen based on when it is infecting, like some chicks, they might get infected at a very young age, like maybe one week, two week, three weeks, they must be infected, the infection, like you give vaccines, the infection is cleared, so we call them false layer syndrome. So we're very healthy on the outside, so they usually start producing eggs by around 18, 19, weeks. Then you realize, oh, you have these chicks for like hens for like 18 weeks, and now they are not producing eggs, so it's like you've put in money for them, like you for 18 weeks, and then you realize, “Oh, they're not producing good eggs.” Sometimes it could be like you could directly see if it is affecting, like infecting adult birds. You would see like some, they are forming like the egg quality of the eggs, basically could be not good. Like you will have like some strains of IBV cause shell-less eggs, so it comes without a shell or you could have like thin shells like misshapen eggs or like perfect on the outside but when you break it you would see like a watery albumin. So all of this it depends on different strains of IBV based on the strain and when it is infecting the effects could be like different.
Jordan Ruggieri 03:57
What does IBV stand for?
Fathima Ishara Isham 03:59
Oh, it's infectious bronchitis virus. So it is an upper respiratory tract infection. So it infects, like from the nasal tract to the upper, like the upper is part of the respiratory tract.
Jordan Ruggieri 04:10
Interesting. And so if it's upper respiratory, are there are you investigating the methodology and the pathway in which it goes from upper respiratory into reproductive tract, is there any knowledge, or is that kind of the research you're looking at, is how it actually goes from one to the other?
Fathima Ishara Isham 04:30
It's a very old virus, been here for a very long time, and a lot of research done on it. So, like, there are papers that show it is going through why, like viremia is happening through monocytes, macrophages, and even lymphatic tissue. One research that I participated it was, we were like looking into B cells to see whether it is infecting B cells. Yeah.
Lisa Crawford 04:50
Really important question that I think every one of our listeners is wondering about. Do chickens cough?
Fathima Ishara Isham 04:56
That can be one of the clinical symptoms. Yes. Like, when we do control experiments, we also look for like clinical signs. So they kind of sneeze, kind of like cough. Then you have like those symptoms.
Jordan Ruggieri 05:10
That was the best question. I would.. It was on my list of "How do you know?" So, so do do farmers, and, and you know, anyone that has, you know, you know, chicken coops, or they're involved in this market, are they constantly looking for this? Is this, do they screen for this virus, or is this more of a, you know, “I've noticed my chicken wasn't feeling well,” trying to figure out exactly what's going on and what needs to, what needs to happen.
Fathima Ishara Isham 05:44
So, like, as far as I know, this is like one of the first vaccines. Like they're vaccinated right at birth, like at day one they're given one vaccine.
Jordan Ruggieri 05:51
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Fathima Ishara Isham 05:53
So if it is broilers, also like the first day they are given, especially for layers, they are like you have like a vaccination regime and there is like, you give one vaccine at day one, then at two weeks, five weeks, nine weeks, and right before they start laying eggs at 18 weeks. So it is like routinely you give them like they're routinely vaccinated, but in case like you see like a drop in egg production or things like that, then I think they come in with like a sample and you try to check with whether the virus is affecting.
Jordan Ruggieri 06:24
Interesting, is this one of those, you know, like respiratory illnesses, is this a fast-mutating virus? So, is it something that they get, have to get regular vaccinations for? Is this something that poultry and chickens, they, you know, gets vaccinated once, and it's something that lasts for a while?
Fathima Ishara Isham 06:44
For broilers, they are like 45 days, right. So it's not like you vaccinate them multiple times.
Jordan Ruggieri 06:45
Ah, I got it. Okay.
Fathima Ishara Isham 06:49
But for layers, then they're, they're, they're for around two, one and a half to two years. So that you, they do get like booster shots after their first shots.
Jordan Ruggieri 07:00
No, makes total sense. And are there any challenges when actually looking or researching this type of virus? Is there different sample types that are tough to actually look at viral load? Is there anything about sample collection, or what are some of the challenges when, when trying to detect and research the virus?
Fathima Ishara Isham 07:25
I think with control experiments, since it's like been established for a long time, and the lab that I'm working in has been working with this virus for over 10 years. We have kind of like a very strong established protocol. In terms of that, we don't find any challenges, but I would say the main challenge we have is since these are like animal experiments, and usually if you like go in and try to do. We usually do multiple time points, like you after infecting three, 7, 10, or like four, 8, 12, like you go multiple time points, and you have multiple groups. It's not usually two groups, you have three, four, depending on the what your objective is. Number, a lot of groups, and each time point has like six birds at minimum, because you to give out statistically significant results, you need at minimum six birds. So, the major challenge would be we have a large number of birds to work with at a given time, so we do a lot of like flow cytometry studies. It's all like logistics, right. So the flow cytometry facility at the university runs from eight to four, and we have to give them like 60 to 100 samples, so and they need at least like three four hours to work on the sample, so we have to submit the sample by 12, so we start the risk, the euthanasia and the cell extraction process the previous day, and we work throughout the night. So it is kind of those challenges, because the number of birds are high, I feel like that's the major challenge we had.
Jordan Ruggieri 09:01
I mean, if you're, if you're collecting samples at multiple time points from multiple birds, then yeah, you're going to have a whole, a lot to work with, and to try to detect, and even, you know, single columns or single tube formats can get really cumbersome over time, so.
Fathima Ishara Isham 09:17
Also, like it's an animal experiment, right. It, one, it is very expensive when you do an animal experiment. We want to ideally take as much sample as possible to use for at least one to two studies. And also, since we are, it is you that like it's also like, since you are euthanizing birds, you're using a lot of birds, you don't want it to be just to solve one question or one objective. So you try to maximize as much as possible. Like for example, most of the studies that I did, a colleague of mine, he was a PhD student, he was working on the reproductive track, so what we, he does is like we bring in birds, we don't know which gender they are, so we have to screen them for male versus female, he won't be using any of the male birds, like he only needs female birds, but we have like 30, 40 male chicks, and you don't want to euthanize 40 male chicks for nothing. So, what we do is, okay, we come up with another experiment that is not based on gender. Most of the experiments I did that is how we did. So, like, he works on the female chicks at the same time I work on the remaining male chicks, so that we are not euthanizing 40 birds for nothing. So, yeah, things like that, like practical things.
Jordan Ruggieri 10:33
Want to talk a little bit about your publication in comparing qPCR and digital PCR, looking at IBV. Can you give us a little bit of background on maybe what you were trying to accomplish or what you were looking at for that particular publication?
Fathima Ishara Isham 10:51
The entire comparison study started as, we had another PhD student who was working with microRNA. She was doing in silico analysis. She was trying to profile microRNA expressions. She was trying to predict, come up with a prediction model. So we want, we bought, got the digital PCR to analyze with the microRNA. So I was asked to optimize the machine for her and have everything ready to go, so that once she comes in, like we can use her samples, go for the analysis. So it started as just optimizing the machine, because it was a new machine, right. And nobody in the lab knew how to use it. We wanted to make sure that we knew it well. So once I started optimizing and doing tweaks and things, then me and my PI, we decided, “Oh, since we are already going to use the machine and do some things, why not do a comparison study?” Because at that point we didn't find any papers in poultry, like there were a lot of studies done in the human studies and mice, but not in poultry, like not for poultry viruses. So we were like, okay, let's see how this, like we can do a comparison study specifically for poultry virus, and see how it is going.
Jordan Ruggieri 12:01
When you were looking at qPCR and digital PCR, were you looking more at maybe what were the differences, or at what levels you could detect the, you know, IBV? Or exactly kind of what were the parameters that you landed on for comparing the two?
Fathima Ishara Isham 12:20
I looked at different parameters to start with. We were looking for the quantification range, like what is the range that the qPCR is detecting, what is the range the digital PCR is detecting. So, and then after we determined the range, we went into the limit of detection, like how sensitive, like up to what level can the qPCR and digital PCR detect. Then we went into assay precision. Like how precise are these two measurements? So we did precision with two different ways. So I looked at the repeatability, like if the same person is doing the experiment, how is the repeatability of the data and the reproducibility, like if it is done over different, like over period of time by the same person or by different people, so how is it going. Then we moved forward and looked into sensitivity, like we brought in different samples, like we had the primers for IBV, but we brought in like other avian viruses, bacteria, uninfected tissue samples, and just normal environmental samples, like water in poultry farms, and then we looked, how is the sensitivity going. And then we went into our samples, like the samples we had in our lab, and like, which were already run with the qPCR, we took them and put it, like I put it into the digital PCR, and saw how it is like working with the real samples. Then we did a very interesting thing. We took all the negative samples from the qPCR and put it into digital PCR, and so, how like with it is coming out as positive. And an interesting thing we noted is, so we usually do tissue sampling and swab sampling in the lab. So, for tissue sampling, all the samples, like I used eight samples. All the eight samples that were negative in the qPCR turned out to be positive for the digital PCR. For the swab samples, again I used eight samples. Out of eight, seven samples that were negative, like showed that were negative in the qPCR, turned out to be positive in the digital PCR. Then we did another interesting thing. Another colleague of mine, another PhD student, he was collecting samples from, like, the farms. He was taking air samples, water samples, and dust samples from farms, and he was running them for IBV. So he was, he would collect air at different points in the farm, like dust at different levels, and then he used to run qPCR, so I took his samples and ran. So most of it turned out to be negative in the qPCR, so I took those samples and ran them in the digital PCR, and they also turned out to be positive.
Jordan Ruggieri 14:58
What implications does that have for farms? Is there a, is there a level at which IBV becomes concerning? You know, maybe digital PCR is able to see things, you know, a little bit too sensitively, or is that important information for layers?
Fathima Ishara Isham 15:19
So, in my study I only saw whether these negative samples are positive or not, like. So I can't for sure say, “Okay, you need this amount of virus to show an infection,” but it should be an, like, that, that showed that we should do another study, like another control study, to see whether these small levels of IBV, whether they are actually infectious or not, so it would be another study on a whole level, and I have not seen any study done like that. Not just for IBV, even for other poultry viruses, where they detect a trace level with the digital PCR, and they go in with that sample to see whether it is causing any infection, so I'm not sure, but that would be a very interesting study to look into, like with at what after what level is it like, “Oh, it's okay, because it's not infectious anymore.”
Jordan Ruggieri 16:11
Seems like it would be an interesting thing to know, right, and be able to even potentially watch for levels getting too high, so you, you might be able to catch it before it spreads too much, right? Maybe that, that's is that kind of that future look, you know, future studies that that might be interesting for the team to do?
Fathima Ishara Isham 16:32
Yes, like when we were discussing, like as a group, when we were discussing after we had the machine, and when we were like after I got in, got my results, and we were discussing that, was one of the things we were thinking. Because usually with chicks they have this habit of picking on their own fecal droppings, and that's a very like well-established method of how reinfection occurs. So we were thinking, like, “Yes, we should go in and see how, like, whether these trace levels in the water, say for example, or in their droppings, fecal droppings, like whether this is actually causing reinfection or not.” And another thing we did was that we had some cecal tonsil samples that were collected at later time points, and cecal tonsils in chicken is one place where the IBV is persisting, like you have prolonged infection, and you find it after a very long time. So, and like even negative samples of cecal tonsils were positive in digital PCR, but we didn't do any further studies to see whether this level of IBV in cecal tonsils is actually causing another infection, so those would be like very good studies to look at in future.
Jordan Ruggieri 17:43
Interesting. What would be your take on when to consider maybe one method over the other? Is are there any, any, you know, considerations or thoughts that you have on, you know, maybe when qPCR is okay versus when you might want to utilize digital PCR?
Fathima Ishara Isham 18:03
Yes, so especially for chicken samples, like I said, we deal with a large number of samples, right. At any given time, we have, like, for a single tissue, 60 to 70 samples. So it is not ideal to use it at the first go. So I would always say, let's say it depends on the objective of the study also. Let's say we are designing a study to see whether the virus is persisting after a certain number of days. So, you, we could always start with getting the sample in, running it in a qPCR, coming up with the samples, and whatever is negative, then you go back and do another digital PCR. So, after primary screening with qPCR you can go back and do it with digital PCR. Another like interesting study we usually do in the lab is like we look for different tropism of the virus. Like I said, IBV is a respiratory tract virus, but it has, it is shown to affect multiple organs, like there are studies based on different strains, they affect, like they infect different organs, like kidney, reproductive tract, GI tract. We did a study to show that it is infecting immune organs, so, and we did another study to show that it is infecting B cells, so we are always constantly looking at the tropism of the virus, like, what, what, what different organs is it infecting. So, let's say I'm taking a particular strain of IBV, and I'm checking whether it is infecting the cecal tonsils or bursa, and it is turning out to be negative. It, I would say, it is always good to go back and see if it is infecting, like, check it with digital PCR and see whether I find the virus, especially if I can see lesions of the virus in the tissues. Because sometimes when we are testing we might be too late, so we don't see the virus itself, but we can see the infection like lesions. In instances like those, I would say you can always go back and after doing a qPCR we can go and based on the results check it with the digital PCR.
Jordan Ruggieri 20:05
I just have one more question on my end in regard to the science. Do you work with any types of controls, and what does that control setup look like? I mean, I'm assuming are you running standard curves with these or can you talk a little bit about some of the controls you utilize?
Fathima Ishara Isham 20:23
In the experimental setting, we always have controls like if it is a basic study between infected and virus, then you always bring a group of chicks that are not infected, so it depends on the objective. We have like one, two, or three control groups. When we are running the qPCR, we always like usually to look for IBV. We look at the N gene because it is the most conserved gene region, right. So we look at the N gene and we have like the genome sequence, which we are looking for, and we synthesize it in a plasmid, like we outsource it and get the plasmid cell, we do like a serial dilution and do the standard curve, and but in my lab, the common practice what we do is like every experiment we start, we prepare our set of primers, we have the same like this, if let's say we are going with, we usually do SYBR Green qPCR, so we have the same batch of SYBR Green, we go with it, and we use the same things and run the standard curve for each experiment.
Jordan Ruggieri 21:34
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Lisa Crawford 21:47
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Jordan Ruggieri 21:56
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Lisa Crawford 22:11
And now let's get back to our conversation.
Lisa Crawford 22:17
What we like to do for this segment is just talk to you more about you specifically, your life, your journey through science and into the career you're in now, just to, you know, understand how it is that you started out and any advice you may have for future scientists. So, my first question for you is, when do you remember first becoming interested in science in general?
Fathima Ishara Isham 22:40
I think of an exact time, but I think from a very, very small age. Like I've always been interested in science. I can't think exactly when, but I've always known I would be going into the field of science, and specifically research, because back in Sri Lanka it is not very common. Like when you say you are interested in science, you're indirectly saying I want to be a doctor. So I've never like it had never been like I've never wanted to be like wanted to go into medicine. Like it's because I feel like it's very stressful career, and also not everybody can pull it off, like way too much responsibility, I think. But I've always been interested, I can't think of an exact time.
Lisa Crawford 23:24
What was it about? Do you remember what it was about science that interested you specifically?
Fathima Ishara Isham 23:30
I think just the nature of like asking questions, and then coming, like, you know, thinking of things like, “Oh, why does it happen, or how does it happen?” And I've always been like looking into this, specifically biology, like how things work within your body, or this is how these systems work, or this is how this particular disease progresses, like things like that. It's very interesting.
Lisa Crawford 23:56
Tell us a little bit about your journey, you know, from your master's in Sri Lanka, and how you ended up where you are now, and you know what, is it about maybe the viruses and the chickens even that are particularly interesting to you?
Fathima Ishara Isham 24:10
Yeah, so I didn't do a master's, I did a bachelor's in Sri Lanka, so I did my bachelor's, and I specialized in biology, so I looked into both my majoring subjects were zoology, botany, and molecular biology. And when I did my research, it was like I said, in antibiotic resistance of E. coli, so mostly into microbiology and AMR and stuff, things like that. And after my bachelor's, I worked at the university, like, so I did my bachelor's in at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, and I worked for a year as a teaching assistant back there. Then got this opportunity in for the masters, and it was like I didn't have any poultry background. So I was new to chickens, then, and also working with viruses, because back in Sri Lanka, resources also were like, obviously, we do not have like the resources we have here in Canada, right. So, specially working with RNA viruses was very difficult in Sri Lanka, because RNA is very tricky, right. It is not very stable. So you need specific conditions, you need good, great, like your reagent should be like high quality, like. So it in Sri Lanka, it is considered to be very, like, at least when I was working, and in the labs that I was work working in, it was like a very challenging thing to work with RNA. And so it was all new to me, coming here, working with chickens, and I also did a lot of in vitro work, like I worked with cells the first time for me, I've never worked with cells. So doing cell culture. Then also we moved on to do organ culture. We did like tracheal organ cultures in the lab, again something very new to me. So yeah, so did my master’s here and worked and in the same, like working in the same lab as a research assistant.
Lisa Crawford 26:06
One of the things we talked to a lot of people about, and there's a through line through a lot of their careers, is mentorship. And you know, for a lot of people, there's maybe one, maybe two people in their career that they've met who've really been a mentor to them and helped them kind of find their way. And I was wondering if there's anyone that you have that you would see as someone who really helped propel your career in the direction it's gone?
Fathima Ishara Isham 26:28
My master's PI, Dr. Careem. Like he's also a Sri Lankan from the University of Peradeniya so we were from the same university. So on LinkedIn we kind of had a lot of all the same people that we were following. So that is how he came across my profile. So when he contacted me, I was briefly in Qatar for some time, so he was like, he was like, “I'm interested in doing some study,” and then I thought it's like a scam message, and then, like, you've been to his profile, the work was very interesting and then got in here . As an immigrant, like you, it's not just the master’s itself, right. Like, you're in a new country, everything is new to you, the culture, people, the lab, the work I am doing. So everything was new to me, and I was like, he even to this day, like, I consider him to be like a huge mentor and a blessing.
Lisa Crawford 27:25
I love that. Along those lines, is there anything that you would share with someone who maybe wanted to get into this area of science, or just start their program, start their journey into science? Is there anything that you would want them to know that maybe you wish you had known, or just a piece of advice?
Fathima Ishara Isham 27:42
For me, my major problem was like I always felt like I'm faking it. So I would say I don't know. I think if others have like a feeling that to be like one, it is normal, everybody's feeling it, and like you know, you're not fake, like you're not alone in it. And the other thing would be like always ask for help, like it's okay to say “I don't know, I have never done this before.” Because especially if you come from, if you're coming from like, like me, if you're an immigrant coming from like an underdeveloped country, at least the works labs I have worked in, the facilities are much less. We don't have as many resources as that, what is here. And so it is normal for, like, immigrant, like anybody who is coming from that background, not to have done as extensive work as the others who are in these settings have done. So, it's okay to say, “I have never done this, or I have not done this like this,” because back in Sri Lanka, our always the priority is to reduce the cost, so at times the quality goes down too, because you're trying to bring down the cost. So it's okay to say, “I don't know this or I have not done this or I have never done this like how it is being doing here” like I think. And I think that's even true even if you are like somebody who has worked here and like you know in one lab from one lab to another lab practices will be different the same technique might be like followed a different way so it's always okay to say I don't know.
Lisa Crawford 29:23
Yeah, no, I think that's so important, in basically every industry, you know. And like you had said earlier, the more you open yourself up to other people, the more you guys can share ideas, the new perspectives you get, and you know, everything just moves forward more smoothly, I think, than if you were to kind of isolate.
Jordan Ruggieri 29:39
Let's add, maybe one more question. I have one, one more. It's a two-parter that we normally ask. What was your proudest moment so far in your, in your lab work? And maybe what was an embarrassing moment?
Fathima Ishara Isham 29:54
Proudest moment, I would say the, um, it's actually a very small thing, like the cell culture work, because nobody in the lab. Like my lab, did do cell culture work, but way back, and then it kind of went away, like they, they stopped working with cell culture systems. And when I came into the lab, the cell culture work was not there, and my PI had a few samples in the nitrogen tank, like I said, a few cell lines in the nitrogen tank, and he worked. Like that was my first assignment to start reviving all the cells, create a stock, and like build back the cell culture, because he wanted to go back into in vitro studies. So I kind of worked with so many different cell lines, and when I was starting to do it, and when I was like, “Okay, able to establish like a particular stock,” and like go with, and have like a organized, like do like stocks for like multiple cell lines and establish it. I would say that was like the proudest moment. Yes, embarrassing moment. Okay, we do this technique, immunofluorescence assay, and I've done it multiple times, so it's - I've done it like many times, and like it's not something new to me. So we do this, but you have to do it in the dark, because it's fluorescent, right. So, and after you do it, you take pictures, and like I start taking pictures with the slides, and like I go for like a long time, and then usually what I do, I do is I do like entire day, like I go at eight into the room, and then I sit and take pictures, like until six, seven in the night. So and then with time I'm seeing like the quality of the pictures is less and I'm adjusting the settings, doing multiple things, and then I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and then it clicked to me I had left the lights on. Very significant, it was not like I couldn't see anything, but I can see a difference, and I'm like, and I was even thinking, “Okay, maybe it was the staining itself,” and I was thinking, “But like the entire set I stained it together, so I don't know why one, like some slides are stained better than the others,” and after a very long time I realized are the lights.
Jordan Ruggieri 32:22
That is amazing. Well, Ishara, thank you so much for joining us on the episode for Absolute Gene-ius. We had a great time, I learned a lot, and I know our listeners did as well.
Fathima Ishara Isham 32:35
Yeah, thank you so much. I enjoyed it a lot.
Lisa Crawford 32:39
That was Fathima Ishara Isham, Research Assistant at the University of Calgary. Don't forget to subscribe to Absolute Gene-ius wherever you get your podcasts, so you can catch upcoming episodes as they drop. This episode of Absolute Gene-ius was produced by Sarah Briganti, Matt Ferris, and Matthew Stock. Stay curious, and we'll see you next time.
Jordan Ruggieri 32:57
While we're opening up Midtros, I wore a chicken costume to one of the meetings here and I got back a new nickname after wearing the chicken costume, guys. And it was Cluck Norris.
Lisa Crawford 33:10
Why did you wear a chicken costume?