EGSB News

Berkeley scientists — including Biosciences’s Jillian Banfield (secondary affiliation with the Environmental Genomics & System Biology Division) and Jennifer Doudna (Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division) — have discovered simple CRISPR systems similar to CRISPR-Cas9 — a gene-editing tool that has revolutionized biology — in previously unexplored bacteria that have eluded efforts to grow them in the laboratory. Read more at Berkeley News.

The award acknowledges JBEI’s VP of Feedstocks for his achievements in enzyme identification and characterization involved in synthesis and modification of the plant cell wall.

Carlsberg Foundation and the Carlsberg Research Laboratory hosted its annual awards celebration on November 29. A record number of four awards were handed out this year to commemorate the Laboratory’s 140th anniversary. The Carlsberg Forum series reflects the strong link between science and business. Each year, the Kaj Linderstrøm-Lang awards are given to prominent scientists for their achievements within biochemistry or physiology, the fields of science in which Kaj Linderstrøm-Lang, a professor at Carlsberg Research Laboratory in the period 1939-1959, distinguished himself as a pioneer.

This year, Professor Henrik V. Scheller, Vice President of Feedstocks at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (Berkeley Lab) and Professor Geoff Fincher, School of Agriculture, Food & Wine, The University of Adelaide, Australia received this year’s Kaj Linderstrøm-Lang Prize as an acknowledgement of their outstanding achievements on identifying and characterizing enzymes involved in synthesis and modification of the plant cell wall. The prize is a plated gold medal and a financial personal award of DKK 40.000.

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Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in collaboration with Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology Division and the DOE Joint Genome Institute developed a versatile system (named jStack) which utilizes yeast homologous recombination to efficiently assemble DNA into plant transformation vectors. The new approach will impact plant engineering for the bioenergy, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries.

A research team led by biologist senior staff scientist Axel Visel, affiliated with the Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology Division, delved into the genetic basis for why snakes have no legs. The team’s research results demonstrated changes in a regulatory sequence associated with a major body plan transition and highlight the role of enhancers in morphological evolution.

Their findings, published in the journal Cell on October 20, have been widely covered in both national and international news media. The publication coincided with a Current Biology article in press (2016) by Leal and Cohn from the University of Florida who also looked at the mystery of how snake limbs vanished. This Washington Post article describes the approaches both teams took to come up with corroborating results.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley researchers have uncovered new clues about the roles of subsurface microbes in globally important cycles. Jill Banfield, senior faculty scientist in the Earth & Environmental Systems Area and professor at UC Berkeley, led the research team that studied soil and water samples containing subsurface microbes collected at a Colorado River basin field site. DNA sequencing of these microbes was performed at the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

As reported online October 24 in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists netted genomes from 80 percent of all known bacterial phyla, a remarkable degree of biological diversity at one location. They also discovered 47 new phylum level bacterial groups, naming many of them after influential microbiologists and other scientists, including ten in the Biosciences Area (with the form Candidatus Surnamebacteria). Phyla-level names have been proposed for Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division’s Cheryl Kerfeld, Krishna Niyogi, and Jennifer Doudna; Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology’s Louise Glass, Kathleen Ryan, Steven Brenner, Mary Wildermuth, and Judy Wall; and the JGI’s John Vogel and Tanja Woyke. The researchers analyzed the metabolic interactions of these and other subsurface microbes to better understand their roles in ecosystem resilience. Read the full story at the Berkeley Lab News Center.