MBIB News

Cheryl Kerfeld’s laboratory, which operates at both Michigan State University and Berkeley Lab, teamed up with researchers at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Delaware to take a first step toward creating artificial cells that lack a lipid membrane.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, delivering ultrafast, high-intensity doses of radiation to tumors can actually reduce the toxicity to surrounding healthy cells, while still directing a potent anti-cancer effect towards the target. Scientists have documented this perplexing phenomenon—dubbed the FLASH radiotherapy effect—in both cell lines and animal models, but they have yet to confirm how or why it works. A new experimental platform that uses X-rays to investigate the FLASH effect brings science a step closer to clarifying its underlying mechanisms, laying the foundation for major strides in the field of radiation oncology.

A team of Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division researchers used synchrotron technology unique to the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Berkeley Lab to probe the conformational states behind electron bifurcation.

Researchers in the Berkeley Synchrotron Infrared Structural Biology (BSISB) Imaging Program developed a technique that combines a novel microfluidic device and infrared spectroscopy to study how a cellulose-degrading enzyme works in real time.

The Biosciences Area’s Nathalie Elisabeth and Jean-Marie Volland collaborated on a study led by researchers from Cornell that produced the first full genome of a species of giant bacteria. Members of the Epulopiscium genus, the largest known heterotrophic bacteria, are a million times larger than E. coli. They live in the guts of tropical marine fish, an environment rich in sodium, which the team’s analysis suggests the bacteria use, along with polysaccharides from their host’s diet, to meet their outsize energy requirements.