Biosciences News

The projects of 13 Biosciences Area scientists and engineers received funding through the FY18 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. These projects span a diverse array of topics and approaches including the study of microbiomes in relation to patterns of mutualism, crop productivity, and gut health; synthetic biology for engineering biosurfactant production and energy conversion pathways; and the application of technologies such as machine learning, high-resolution optical microscopy, and single-cell transcriptomics. Together, these efforts account for 18.75 percent of the $20 million allocated. Lab-wide, 74 projects were selected from a field of 215.

Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences Mary Maxon joined an international group of policy leaders, NGO, and industry representatives in Berlin last week to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with shifting from current industry practices to a sustainable bio-based economy. Maxon emphasized the importance of translating basic science to innovation by highlighting the Agile BioFoundry, a national laboratory-led consortium to advance biomanufacturing that is managed by Berkeley Lab.

Two proposals, from Biosciences Area researchers Cynthia McMurray and Carolyn Larabell, have been recommended for funding by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) through a new grant program focused on developing collaborative computational tools to support the Human Cell Atlas (HCA). A global endeavor governed by an organizing committee co-chaired by Aviv Regev at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Sarah Teichmann at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the HCA will generate a variety of molecular and imaging data across a range of modalities and spatial scales. To advance the analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of these data, the CZI issued an open call in July 2017 for proposals aimed at creating new computational tools, algorithms, visualizations, and benchmark datasets. After a thorough evaluation process, CZI recommended 85 projects (out of nearly 300 submissions) 
for funding, and will provide $15 million in total over one year for their execution.

Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences Mary Maxon and Bruce Alberts, the chancellor’s leadership chair for science and education in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, co-wrote an editorial on “Science for State Legislatures” published this week in Science. In it, they make the case that state Science and Technology (S&T) Policy Fellowship programs, such as the nearly decade-old program in California’s state legislature (on whose advisory committee both serve), are a critical bridge between the scientific community and the government. Among other contributions, fellows help policymakers understand “science as a second language.” California’s program is itself modeled on the national American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) S&T Policy Fellowship Program, which over 45 years has enabled thousands of PhD scientists, engineers, and physicians to work for a year for the U.S. government. Alberts and Maxon believe that “the establishment of S&T fellowship programs in other states could greatly increase evidence-based policy-making and not only benefit state policy-makers but also help to inform national policy-making and society as a whole.”

“The key design principle of natural photosynthesis is the closing of the photosynthetic cycle on the shortest possible length scale under membrane separation of the incompatible water oxidation and proton reduction environments,” said Heinz Frei, a senior scientist in Biosciences’ Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division. With collaborators Eran Edri, a former postdoctoral fellow in MBIB now at Ben-Gurion University, and Shaul Aloni in the Molecular Foundry Division, Frei developed a fabrication method to make a square-inch sized artificial photosystem, in the form of an inorganic core-shell nanotube array, that implements this design principle for the first time. The method was described in a paper published earlier this year in ACS Nano.