Biosciences News

UC Berkeley scientists have discovered that a common diarrhea-causing bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, produces electricity using an entirely different technique from known electrogenic bacteria—and that hundreds of other bacterial species use this same process. The scientists worked Caroline Ajo-Franklin, a staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry who has a secondary appointment in Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging, on this research. Read more from the UC Berkeley News Center.

Biosciences scientists Héctor García Martín, Jay Keasling, and Jill Banfield (whose primary affiliation is with the Earth & Environmental Sciences Area) were mentioned an article by Amia Srinivasan entitled “What Termites Can Teach Us” published in The New Yorker. Read the article.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of James Patrick O’Neil on August 7 at age  55 from complications related to heart failure. A staff scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, Jim worked at Berkeley Lab for 24 years. He passed away surrounded by family and friends and will be dearly missed. A memorial service will be held at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley on Saturday, October 20, at 2 PM.

In the quest to find the key to a rainforest-dwelling bacterium’s lignin-degrading ability, researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have constructed a gene expression system that outperforms conventional systems, called Jungle Express. Controlling gene expression is crucial to scientists’ ability to perform basic science and biotechnological research to produce enzymes, bio-based products, and biofuels, both at the bench and on industrial scales. Read the Science Short on the Berkeley Lab News Center.

Haloarchaea flourish in hypersaline environments, and researchers are interested in learning how these microbes have learned to adapt from marine to hypersaline conditions by studying the microbial communities in Antarctic lakes. To assess the genomic variation in haloarchaea, a team including JGI researchers characterized metagenomes (collections of partial genomes) from six hypersaline Antarctic lakes. These data allowed researchers to define a haloarchaea “pan-genome,” the total pool of genetic material comprised by all members of a species. The The genome and metagenome data are available through JGI’s Integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes (IMG/M) platform. Learn more on the JGI website.