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Berkeley Lab Director Announces Biosciences Leadership Transition
In a town hall meeting on June 28, Laboratory Director Mike Witherell announced that Biosciences Associate Lab Director Jay Keasling has agreed to take on an important new role as Chief Science and Technology Officer (CSTO) for the Biosciences Area, and Mary Maxon, currently the principal deputy for Biosciences, will replace Keasling as ALD for Biosciences, effective July 1, 2017.
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Keasling to Receive 2017 Amgen Biochemical and Molecular Engineering Award
Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences Jay Keasling has been selected as the 2017 recipient of the Amgen Biochemical and Molecular Engineering award, to be presented July 19 at the 20th Conference on Biochemical and Molecular Engineering in Newport Beach, Calif. The award, given in memory of metabolic engineering pioneer James E. “Jay” Bailey, recognizes research excellence and leadership.
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Researchers Find New Mechanism for Genome Regulation
In a paper published June 21 in the journal Nature, Berkeley Lab Biological Systems and Engineering Division researchers Amy Strom and Gary Karpen provide evidence that liquid-liquid phase separation in the nucleus of cells plays an important role in how genes are regulated to be silenced or expressed. They observed that heterochromatin—an unusual part of DNA that generally must be silenced for cells to function properly—is sequestered in droplets that fuse together just like two drops of oil surrounded by water. Understanding this mechanism could open up a third of the genome that was previously inaccessible to genome manipulation and…
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JBEI’s Vy Ngo Awarded Grace Fimognari Memorial Prize
Vy Ngo, student assistant with JBEI ’s Feedstocks Division, part of the Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division was awarded the Grace Fimognari Memorial Prize during UC Berkeley’s Molecular & Cell Biology (MCB) 2017 Commencement. The Prize established in 1969 is awarded to outstanding graduating senior in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) emphasis of the MCB major. Ngo was mentored by Jenny Mortimer, JBEI’s Director of Plant Systems Biology, initially through Berkeley Lab’s Community College Internship (CCI) program in 2015 and then completed the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program in 2016. She continued to intern at JBEI as she transitioned…
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Three Biosciences Employees Complete Emergency Medical Technician Basic Training
Three individuals from the Biosciences Area were among a dozen employees to complete Emergency Medical Technician Basic (EMT-B) training to join Berkeley Lab’s volunteer Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT). The training, provided by Protective Services, comprised more than 170 hours of classroom instruction, hands-on demonstrations, ambulance ride-alongs, and testing. Congratulations to Gaby Fuentes-Creollo, Barrier Facility Manager at Biosciences Operations at Berkeley, Christine Ichim, a postdoctoral scholar in Mina Bissell’s lab in Biological Systems & Engineering (BSE), and Hoang N. Pham, a technical affiliate working with Abby Dernburg in BSE.
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