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A Smartphone-based Microscope for Treating River Blindness
LoaScope, the latest iteration of the CellScope technology developed in the lab of Daniel Fletcher, turns the camera of a mobile device into a microscope and automatically detects and quantifies infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood. One such parasite, Onchocerca volvulus, is endemic to Africa and can lead to blindness in infected individuals. Treatment with the drug ivermectin is complicated because co-infection by another parasitic worm, the Loa loa, can cause fatal side effects. Expanding on a successful pilot study, the LoaScope was used to analyze the blood of patients in Cameroon, enabling doctors to treat more…
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JBEI Researchers Improve Membrane Protein Expression And Function Using Genomic Edits
Development of robust microbial platforms for bioproduction requires strains that have been engineered to have efficient carbon uptake, energy generation, tolerance to biomass pretreatment byproducts and the export of final product. Many of these optimizations require expression and overexpression of native and heterologous membrane proteins. Over the years, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), and others have successfully found many such engineering targets. However, JBEI has also found that expression of membrane proteins is challenging and can also impact the microbial growth, thus negatively limiting the use of these discoveries. Read more from JBEI.
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Screening for Disease or Toxins in a Drop of Blood
A Berkeley Lab spin-out, Newomics is creating blood-based assays for diabetes diagnosis and management, and for the monitoring of environmental toxins, among other health care applications. The core technology, a multi-nozzle emitter array (MEA) for mass spectrometry, was developed by Newomics founder and president Daojing Wang, a guest scientist in Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE), while he was in the Lab’s Life Sciences Division (now part of the Biosciences Area). Collaborators on the emitter technology included Pan Mao, formerly in Life Sciences, and Peidong Yang in the Materials Sciences Division. Read more in the Berkeley Lab News Center.
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ABPDU a Catalyst for Broader Bio-based Economy
Five years in, the Advanced Biofuels Process Development Unit has established more than 30 diverse partnerships The original scope of the Advanced Biofuels Process Development Unit (ABPDU) was to tackle the barriers to biofuel commercialization. Five years in, its activities have expanded to utilize a broader range of raw materials to produce a variety of bio-based material, chemical, and protein end products. To date, the ABPDU has entered into agreements with more than 30 partners from other national labs, government agencies, industry, and academia. In this article the ABPDU’s partners talk about how this unique facility has supported them in…
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Mina Bissell’s Research Discussed in The New Yorker
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee discussed the work of Biosciences’ Mina Bissell in a feature on worldwide research efforts to understand the factors that determine whether cancer will spread. Bissell, a distinguished scientist in the Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division, has shown that a cancer cell’s local tissue environment affects whether or not it will form a metastatic tumor. The article appeared in the Sept. 11 edition of The New Yorker.
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