MBIB News

Berkeley Lab and Genentech are collaborating to make the next generation of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the drug delivery technology used in the COVID-19 vaccines. With their combined expertise in structural biology and pharmaceutical science, the team is designing LNPs that can precisely deliver vaccines and therapeutics to target tissues while improving the product’s shelf life and duration of action.

A new study published in Nature confirms for the first time that a single photon–the smallest quantity of light possible–can initiate the first step of photosynthesis, one of nature’s essential processes. The study, conducted by an interdisciplinary team led by Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) senior faculty scientist Graham Fleming and Energy Sciences Area senior faculty scientist Birgitta Whaley, solidifies our current understanding of photosynthesis and will help answer questions about how life works on the smallest of scales, where quantum physics and biology meet.  

The SIBYLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source was used to characterize proteins dreamt up by a reinforcement learning algorithm. The algorithm, developed by researchers in David Baker’s lab at the University of Washington, is powered by the machine learning strategy behind computer programs capable of defeating top human players at board games like chess and go. The advance could create a pathway to greater control when designing therapeutic proteins, vaccines, and other molecules.

As a young man, Kenneth Sauer joined Berkeley Lab four years after arriving in Berkeley for his postdoctoral position with famed chemist Melvin Calvin. By that time, he had accepted an assistant professorship in UC Berkeley’s Department of Chemistry to continue what would be his life’s scientific work on the intricate physical process of photosynthesis. He remained active for over 50 years and was, most recently, a professor emeritus of chemistry at UC Berkeley. Sauer died at the age of 91 following a brief illness on November 6, 2022.

Biophysicist Eva Nogales, a senior faculty scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division, is a 2023 recipient of the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine. Nogales, who is also a UC Berkeley distinguished professor of biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology, shares the prize with Patrick Cramer of the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Germany. The pair were honored for pioneering structural biology techniques that enabled visualization of the protein machines responsible for gene transcription at the level of individual atoms.