A new study led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), demonstrates the importance of microbial communities as a source of stable enzymes that could be used to convert plants to biofuels. The study, recently published in the journal Nature Microbiology, reports on the discovery of new types of cellulases, enzymes that help break down plants into ingredients that can be used to make biofuels and bioproducts. The cellulases were cultured from a microbiome. Using a microbial community veers from the approach typically taken of using isolated organisms to obtain enzymes. Read more in the Berkeley Lab’s News Center.
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 than 15,000 people with ivermectin without serious complications. Fletcher, a faculty scientist in Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) and chair of the UC Berkeley Department of Bioengineering, is a coauthor on the report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read more from UC Berkeley News.
Biosciences Researcher Helps Map the Microbiome of Everything
The Earth Microbiome Project is a massively collaborative effort to characterize all microbial life on the planet. Representing Berkeley Lab, Eric Dubinsky, a guest scientist working with Gary Andersen in EGSB, as well as Neslihan Tas and Shi Wang in the Climate & Ecosystems Science Division (EESA), were among the more than 300 scientists from 161 institutions worldwide to participate in the project. Dubinsky contributed 124 soil samples and metadata he collected from Hawaii. A meta-analysis of all the microbial community samples collected thus far was published Nov. 1 in Nature. This multi-scale reference database gives global context to DNA sequence data and provides a framework for incorporating data from future studies.
JGI Comparative Genomics of Humongous Fungus Helps Explain Size, Pathogenicity
As part of an international team, researchers at the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) helped sequence and analyze the genomes of four fungi of the genus Armillaria. Often called the humongous fungus, Armillaria form some of the planet’s largest living organisms. They are also among the most devastating fungal pathogens, capable of breaking down all of the components of a host plant’s cell walls.
A Lesson in Logistics from Bacterial Nanofactories
Engineering artificial nanofactories modeled on bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) will require a chain of “logistical” vehicles to deliver the products. Making progress on that front, scientists affiliated with Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division and the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory have detailed the structure and function of a BMC-associated protein involved in electron transfer, a fundamental part of the assembly line that leads to the production of chemical compounds. The study, published in the journal Biochemistry, was led by Cheryl Kerfeld; Marcus Sutter also collaborated on the project. Read more from the MSU-DOE Plant Research Lab.
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