Colorful illustration of spherical lipid nanoparticles. Digital illustration of coiled molecules assembled into larger constructs. 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship logo alongside researcher headshot Side by side colorized positron emission tomography images of two brains in coronal cross-section.
  • New Science Study Provides Further Insight Into Plant Cell Division

    Biosciences Postdoctoral Researcher Estelle Schaefer was the lead author of a new study on plant cell division orientation released by Science on April XX. The study developed while Schaefer was affiliated with the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in France and provides further insight into the actual mechanics of cell division in plants. One phase of the cell division cycle is called mitosis, which is when replicated chromosomes are separated into two new nuclei. Mitosis occurs in several steps and in plants includes preprophase. Schaefer’s work focused on the preprophase band of microtubules, intracellular structures responsible for various movements within…

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  • The Scientist Profiles Mina Bissell

    The April 1 issue of The Scientist magazine profiled Mina Bissell, Distinguished Scientist at the Biosciences’ Biological Systems and Engineering Division. The article covers Bissell’s pioneering work in cancer research over the period of 40 years and how she was instrumental in researching the field of tumor microenvironments. Read more at The Scientist.

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  • Could This Enzyme Help Turn Biofuel Waste into Something Useful?

    Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories working at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have resolved the protein structure of the enzyme LigM, which is utilized by the soil bacterium Sphingomonas to metabolize aryl compounds derived from lignin, the stiff, organic material that gives plants their structure. Their work is reported in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more in the Berkeley Lab News Center.

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  • JBEI Paper Awarded ‘Publication of the Year’ by the Journal of Biological Engineering

    The 2016 Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) publication “End-to-end automated microfluidic platform for synthetic biology: from design to functional analysis” has been selected as the Journal of Biological Engineering Publication of the Year. Gregory Linshiz, former post-doctoral researcher and Director of Synthetic Biology Informatics Nathan Hillson conceived the project that served as the basis of this research. In the paper the authors present a programmable, multipurpose microfluidic platform and associated software and apply the platform to major steps of the synthetic biology research cycle: design, construction, testing, and analysis. The formal announcement of the award will be made at this year’s Annual…

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  • Bissell Awarded Fourteenth Annual AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

    Mina J. Bissell, Distinguished Scientist in the Biological Systems and Engineering Division will be awarded the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research at the annual meeting on April 1. The Award was first established in 2004 to honor individuals who have made significant fundamental contributions to cancer research, either through a single scientific discovery or a collective body of work. The AACR honors Bissell for her pioneering work, which has identified the roles of the extracellular matrix and three-dimensional architecture in programs of gene expression in tissue morphogenesis and cancer. Her research contributions…

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