EGSB News

A team led by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and her longtime collaborator Jill Banfield has developed a clever tool to edit the genomes of bacteria-infecting viruses called bacteriophages using a rare form of CRISPR. The ability to easily engineer custom-designed phages—which has long eluded the research community—could help researchers control microbiomes without antibiotics or harsh chemicals, and treat dangerous drug-resistant infections. A paper describing the work was recently published in Nature Microbiology.

An international team led by Justin Reese, a research scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Division, analyzed electronic health record data aggregated in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Data Enclave to assess whether metformin is associated with reduced COVID-19 severity in people with prediabetes or polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), two common conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 presentation.

In Cell Genomics, an international consortium led by researchers at the Joint Genome Institute team generated 824 new Actinobacteria genomes, which were were combined with nearly 5,000 publicly available ones and 1,100 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) reconstructed from sequenced environmental samples in a previous study.

A team headed by the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Division’s Chris Mungall, will be part of the National Institute of Health program, Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI). Mungall and his colleagues will be collaborators in the Standards Core, led by the University of Colorado.

Each year, the Berkeley Lab Director’s Achievement Award program recognizes outstanding contributions by employees to all facets of Lab activities. Several Biosciences Area personnel are among the 2022 honorees.