MBIB News

A cross-disciplinary effort by Berkeley Lab scientists has yielded a new algorithmic approach for determining 3D molecular structures from single-particle X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) imaging. Peter Zwart of the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division (MBIB) worked with James Sethian and Jeffrey Donatelli of the Computational Research Division’s Mathematics Group to create the multi-tiered iterative phasing (M-TIP) framework, which uses advanced mathematical techniques to extract nano-scale biological structures from sparse and noisy diffraction data. A paper detailing the approach was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using a combination of crystallographic, biochemical, and genetic analyses, Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that the actions of FEN1, an enzyme involved in DNA replication and repair, are guided by electrostatic forces known as phosphate steering. Susan Tsutakawa and John Tainer in the Biosciences Area’s Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division were the lead and corresponding authors, respectively, on the report published this week in Nature Communications. The work reveals key details of this previously unknown mechanism controlling the specificity of FEN1 in healthy cells and provides new directions for cancer treatment research. Read more from the Berkeley Lab News Center.

With funding from the Department of Energy’s  (DOE’s) Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, Berkeley Lab researchers from the Computational Research Division (CRD) and the Biosciences Area are collaborating to explore how brain-inspired computer chips might benefit science.

Human skin is teeming with microbial life, and not just bacteria. An international collaboration among researchers at Berkeley Lab, led by Hoi-Ying Holman, the Medical University of Graz in Austria and at the University of Regensburg in Germany, found representatives of the domain archea–which inhabit some of the most extreme environments on the planet–coexisting alongside more run-of-the-mill microbes. What’s more, according to the paper published in Scientific Reports, the relative abundance of archea varies with a person’s age. Holman, a senior author on the report, is head of Chemical Ecology in the Earth & Environmental Sciences Area and has a secondary affiliation in Biosciences in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) division. Using the Advanced Light Source (ALS), her group developed a rapid and label-free method to screen cells and tell if they’re bacteria or archaea. Read more from the Berkeley Lab News Center.

Researchers led by Berkeley Lab Biosciences’ Cheryl Kerfeld (MBIB), who holds a joint appointment at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, have provided the first atomic-level resolution picture of an intact bacterial microcompartment (BMC) shell. The intact shell and component proteins from the saltwater bacterium Haliangium ochraceum were crystallized at Berkeley Lab; X-ray diffraction data were collected at the Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) and at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. Details of the BMC shell’s structure and composition were published in the journal Science.