MBIB News

In Science, a team led by Jean-Marie Volland, a scientist with joint appointments at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems, and Silvina Gonzalez-Rizzo and Olivier Gros of the Université des Antilles, described the morphological and genomic features of a giant filamentous bacterium, along with its life cycle.

Holger Mueller, a faculty scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, has received a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to develop next-generation electron microscopy technology to visualize the inner workings of cells at near-atomic resolution.

A recent study published in Nature Plants used a combination of genetic mutation and X-ray crystallography, conducted at the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology, to reveal structural details of a key enzyme involved in plant signaling.

Peter Agbo, a staff scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division, with a secondary appointment in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, has proposed a novel method for direct ocean capture of carbon using microbes. Removing CO2 from the oceans will enable them to continue to do their job of absorbing excess CO2 from the atmosphere.

A Berkeley Lab team analyzed the genotypes and phenotypes of several Arthrobacter strains to correlate cellular functions to their location at varying depths within a single sediment core and in nearby groundwater. They found that Arthrobacter, as a genus, has remarkable flexibility in altering its suites of carbon degradation genes. This genomic variation was found to be linked to the individual strain’s environment and is the basis for Arthrobacter’s ability to break down a wide variety of complex carbon sources.