Biosciences News

Lauren Jabusch has been passionate about sustainability and outreach since her early days as a freshman at UC Davis. Nearly a decade later, she has earned a bachelor’s, a master’s, and most recently a doctoral degree in biosystems engineering. Now a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab, Jabusch investigates the interactions between soil microbes and plants. She was recently profiled by her Alma Mater, UC Davis College of Engineering.

Using the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser, an international collaboration led by scientists at Berkeley Lab and SLAC captured the all four stable oxidation states of photosystem II— plus two transitional states—at natural temperature and the highest resolution to date.

The Biosciences Area’s software developers were invited to participate at the third annual Software Developer Wetlab Bootcamp at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). Ten participants from Agile BioFoundry, DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), JBEI and KBase participated at the training which took place from October 29 to November 2. For more, please read the JBEI news article.

N. Louise Glass, director of the Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology (EGSB) Division, announced new leadership as of October 1, 2018. Changes were implemented to diversify perspectives and ideas within the management of the Division. Ben Brown and Henrik Scheller have agreed to take on positions as Division co-deputies for science; Tanja Woyke and Chris Mungall will now serve as department heads of Functional Genomics and Molecular Ecosystems Biology, respectively.

Data collected at the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) in the Advanced Light Source (ALS) has provided new structural insights into an antibody that protects against the bacterium that causes meningitis and sepis; a protein that unwinds quadruple DNA/RNA helixes; and an antibody targeting interleukin-2 that may provide a means of treating autoimmune disorders.