MBIB News

Using a forward genetics approach, a team of Biosciences researchers revealed that the enzyme hexokinase (HXK1), which is involved in sugar metabolism in organisms ranging from bacteria to plants to humans, is necessary for the regulation of photosynthesis and metabolism in the green alga Chromochloris zofngiensis. Kris Niyogi, a faculty scientist in Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB), was senior author on the paper, published in Nature Communications Biology.

Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division Director Paul Adams has announced a number of changes in the Division leadership, effective October 1. Earlier this summer, Corie Ralston agreed to serve as the Interim Director of the Molecular Foundry’s Biological Nanostructures Facility. She will step down as MBIB Division Deputy and remain as the Head of the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) at the Advanced Light Source (ALS).

Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) faculty scientist Markita Landry and Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) faculty scientist Niren Murthy are among the seven UC Berkeley faculty named to the 2019-20 cohort of Bakar Fellows. The UCB program fosters faculty entrepreneurship in fields including engineering, computer science, the biological and physical sciences, and architecture. The honor is bestowed on researchers with novel ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit, giving them the money and time to translate their laboratory breakthroughs into technologies ready for the marketplace.

Eva Nogales, a senior faculty scientist Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB), has been named a 2020 Fellow of the Biophysics Society. The international scientific society was created to promote the development and dissemination of biophysics knowledge through meetings, publications, community outreach, and career placement.

Nogales, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator and professor at UC Berkeley, is recognized for her demonstrated excellence in science and contributions to the success and vitality of the biophysics field. In addition, the society cited her efforts to push cryo-EM barriers and the resulting structural insights into the central dogma machinery and cytoskeleton interactions and dynamics in cell division, and her structural studies of microtubules and associated proteins, and of machineries regulating gene expression.

The awardees will be formally honored at the 2020 Annual Biophysical Society Meeting to be held in San Diego February 15–19.

The Hong Kong-based LUI Che Woo Prize organization has named Jennifer Doudna one of three 2019 Prize for World Civilisation laureates. Doudna, a faculty scientist in Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry at UC Berkeley, was awarded the Welfare Betterment Prize for her pioneering discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.

Established in 2015, the international award recognizes and honors an individual or organization contributing to sustainable development, the betterment of the welfare of humankind and the “promotion of positive life attitude and enhancement of positive energy,” according to the announcement. The prizes will be bestowed in a ceremony in Hong Kong on October 3. Each laureate will receive a certificate, a trophy, and a cash award equivalent to approximately 2.56 million U.S. dollars.

Read more in the UC Berkeley News Center.