Biosciences News

Bengalese finches, songbirds that have been used to research the learning, perception, and production of bird song, are the model system used by Berkeley Lab scientist Kristofer Bouchard and Michael Brainard of UC San Francisco to determine the relationship between song sequence structure and brain activity. As reported in their PNAS article published last week, “Auditory-induced neural dynamics in sensory-motor circuitry predict learned temporal and sequential statistics of birdsong,” the researchers studied how the birds brain forms predictions for the timing and identity of specific “syllables” that it has learned to sing.

The Biosciences Area partnered with Biotech Partners (BP) this summer by providing internships to 13 high school students. The mission of the non-profit Biotech Partners is to educate underserved youth in the Bay Area with personal, academic and professional development experiences that increase participation in higher education and access to fulfilling science careers. The Biotech … Read more »

“We have increased the number of viral sequences by 50x, and 99 percent of the virus families identified are not closely related to any previously sequenced virus. This provides an enormous amount of new data that would be studied in more detail in the years to come. We have more than doubled the number of microbial phyla that serve as hosts to viruses, and have created the first global viral distribution map. The amount of analysis and discoveries that we anticipate will follow this dataset cannot be overstated.”

Although the number of viruses is estimated to be at least two orders of magnitude more than the microbial cells on the planet, there are currently less than 2,200 sequenced DNA virus genomes, compared to the approximately 50,000 bacterial genomes, in sequence databases. In a study published online August 17, 2016 in Nature, DOE JGI researchers utilized the largest collection of assembled metagenomic datasets from around the world to uncover over 125,000 partial and complete viral genomes, the majority of them infecting microbes. This single effort increases the number of known viral genes by a factor of 16, and provides researchers with a unique resource of viral sequence information. Read more on the DOE JGI website.

“Obtaining a complete genome of a microbe that is industrially important greatly stimulates research in the area…. We can expect an explosive interest in yeast biology in the coming years.”

To help boost the use of a wider range of yeasts and to explore the use of genes and pathways encoded in their genomes, a team led by DOE JGI researchers conducted a comparative genomic analysis of 29 yeasts, including 16 whose genomes were newly sequenced and annotated. In the study published the week of August 15, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team mapped various metabolic pathways to yeast growth profiles. Read more on the DOE JGI website.

On July 28, Biosciences Principal Deputy Mary Maxon moderated a panel of National Lab and industry speakers who discussed “Advanced Biosciences for Manufacturing: Driving Solutions in Energy, Health and the Environment.” The Capitol Hill event was sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in conjunction with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and the House of Representatives Manufacturing Caucus. Over 100 congressional staffers attended the briefing and asked a broad variety of questions, including those focused on what Congress could do to drive biomanufacturing in the U.S. The program and panel presentations (part 1 and part 2) are posted on the House Manufacturing Caucus website, along with information about other caucus events.