MBIB News

Lab scientists are developing new ways to see the unseen. Seven imaging advances, including two from the Biosciences Area, are helping to push science forward, from developing better batteries to peering inside cells to exploring the nature of the universe. The animation on the left shows a 3-D journey inside the center of cells, recently described in Cell Reports by scientists in the National Center for X-ray Tomography at the Advanced Light Source. These techniques were previously reported in the Berkeley Lab News Center and have been compiled into this listicle.

New crystallography finding by JBEI and GLBRC benefits bioenergy industry 

During the kraft process used to convert wood into wood pulp, the structural material lignin is partially converted into molecules like stilbene. Stilbenes are also naturally occurring in plants and some bacteria, and may play a role in plant pathogen resistance.

Currently, the deconstruction of plant biomass into cellulose and lignin is an expensive process. Lignin accounts for about 30 percent of plant cell wall carbon, and its conversion into chemicals or fuels could have a significant positive impact on the economics of processing lignocellulosic biomass. Enzymes capable of producing useful compounds from the breakdown of stilbenes and similar molecules could be employed for this. Collaborators from two of the Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers now have gained first-hand insight into how a stilbene cleaving oxygenase (SCO) carries out this unusual chemical reaction.

Ke Xu, chemist faculty scientist in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division, is a recipient of a 2016 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. He was awarded $875K over five years for the development of tools to interrogate biological, chemical, and materials systems at the nanoscale with extraordinary resolution and sensitivity.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation named 18 of the nation’s most innovative early-career scientists and engineers as recipients of the 2016 fellowships. The foundation established the fellowships program in 1988 to provide early-career scientists with flexible funding and the freedom to take risks and explore new frontiers in their fields.

An international team of scientists is getting closer to discovering how plants split water during photosynthesis and produce nearly all of the oxygen in our atmosphere. Thanks to unprecedented, atomic-scale images of a protein complex found in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria captured by ultrafast X-ray lasers, researchers conducted atomic-level experiments to help delineate the mechanism of this system that also yields the protons and electrons used to reduce carbon dioxide to carbohydrates later in the photosynthesis cycle. The effort to uncover the secrets of this protein complex, photosystem II, was led by Vittal Yachandra and Junko Yano in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division and the team’s findings were published this week in Nature.

Two members of the Biosciences Area, Eleanor A. Blakely and Krishna K. Niyogi, were among the five Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory-affiliated researchers elected as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science  (AAAS) this week. This honor is bestowed for distinguished and continuing achievements in advancing science to serve society.