The Mammalian Functional Genomics Laboratory in Biosciences’ Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Division has developed a higher-throughput transgenic mouse assay to evaluate the disease-causing potential of human variants in enhancers that turn on gene expression during development. The new approach leverages the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology to create transgenic mice that carry an enhancer-reporter construct at a specific “safe harbor” location in the mouse genome. Because the transgenes are integrated in the same location in the genome there are no position effects, so fewer mice are needed to get reproducible results. To demonstrate proof of principle, the researchers used the new method—which they dubbed enSERT (enhancer inSERTion)—to examine nearly a thousand variants of one of the most well-characterized human enhancers that is associated with polydactyly (extra fingers or toes).
X-ray Imaging Reveals Insights into a Natural Mosquito-Killing Compound
Many of the chemicals used to deter or eliminate disease-carrying mosquitoes can pollute ecosystems and drive the evolution of even more problematic, insecticide-resistant species – but thankfully, we may have better options soon.
Nature-Inspired Green Energy Technology Clears Major Development Hurdle
Heinz Frei, a senior scientist in Biosciences’ Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, seeks to engineer devices that emulate photosynthesis – the sunlight-driven chemical reaction that green plants and algae use to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into cellular fuel. If the necessary technology could be refined past theoretical models and lab-scale prototypes, this idea, known as artificial photosynthesis, has the potential to generate large sources of completely renewable energy using the surplus CO2 in our atmosphere.
New Technique ‘Prints’ Cells to Create Diverse Biological Environments
UC Berkeley researchers have created a new technique that can rapidly “print” two-dimensional arrays of cells and proteins that mimic a wide variety of cellular environments in the body. The technique could help scientists better understand the complex cell-to-cell messaging that dictates a cell’s final fate. David Schaffer, a faculty scientist in Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB), as well as a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Berkeley, is co-senior author on the paper describing the work published in Science Advances.
Merchant Receives Moore Foundation Investigator Award
Sabeeha Merchant, faculty scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, has received an Investigator Award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Merchant, who is also Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology and of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley, will receive five years of unrestricted support to pursue innovative, risky research that has a high potential for significant conceptual and methodological advances in aquatic symbiosis.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- …
- 213
- Next Page »
Was this page useful?
Send
