MBIB News

Based on a beamstop technology licensed from Berkeley Lab earlier this year, MiTeGen LLC has launched the Sentinel™ Real-time Intensity Monitoring Beamstop System for X-ray beamlines. The device improves data collection from X-ray scattering experiments conducted by researchers seeking potential treatments for cancer, AIDS, Ebola, and other diseases.

The Compact Dynamic Beamstop technology developed by Diane Bryant and Simon Morton (pictured) at the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology and licensed by MiTeGen was named a finalist in the 2016 R&D 100 Awards earlier this month, along with six other Berkeley Lab technologies and one multi-lab collaborative effort. Recently, the developers and MiTeGen staff presented the device at the 2016 American Crystallographic Association meeting in Denver.

Eva Nogales’ life and research work was highlighted in the PNAS Profile of August 12. The profile, written in recognition of her election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, accompanied the PNAS Inaugural Article of Nogales, a faculty structural biologist in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division. In this article, titled “Near-atomic cryo-EM structure of PRC1 bound to the microtubule,” she uses cryo-EM to visualize, at a near-atomic level, how an essential component of the mitotic spindle maintains critical contact with microtubules to aid cell division.

The work of Eva Nogales and Jennifer Doudna, Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division faculty scientists, were highlighted in the August 18 Nature technology feature article, “Let the structural symphony begin,” a discussion of the current “golden time to do hybrid methodologies,” according to Nogales. Structural biologists, such as Nogales who was interviewed for this article, now have “the tools to tackle important questions about cells’ molecular machinery that would have been impossible to answer just a few years ago.” Combining these imaging methods – selecting from an impressive suite of different imaging techniques – is an increasingly popular approach in the field of structural biology, in which X-ray crystallography has been the premier method for more than a century. According to the article, while “the most powerful insights come from (these) hybrid methodologies that integrate images from several different tools, ” it also has its drawbacks. Read the full article here.

Graham R. Fleming, senior scientist in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division, has been named an Honorary Member of the Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ). The award will be presented at the 97^th CSJ Annual Meeting in March 2017. Fleming will join a select group of only fourteen living honorary members, five of whom are Nobel Laureates. The society was founded in 1878. With its current membership exceeding 34,000, it is one of the most affluent academic societies in Japan, covering most areas of pure and applied chemistry.

A technology developed by Diane Bryant and Simon Morton, of the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division, has been named a 2016 R&D 100 Award finalist. The Compact Dynamic Beamstop (CDBS), a compact, customizable tool for X-ray scattering experiments providing real-time data, is one of seven Berkeley Lab technologies plus one multi-lab nomination including the Lab that made the list of finalists.

Widely recognized in industry, government, and academia as a mark of excellence for the most innovative ideas of the year, the R&D 100 Awards are the only industry-wide competition rewarding the practical applications of science. They recognize the most promising new products, processes, materials, or software developed throughout the world and introduced to the market the previous year. This year’s 100 award winners will be announced in November.