Biosciences News

UC Berkeley has announced a new campus initiative, the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), that aims to launch the world-changing startups of today, while cultivating the innovative leaders of tomorrow. Opening this fall, BBH will focus on people working at the convergence of the life sciences with the physical, engineering, and data sciences. Amy Herr, a faculty engineer in the Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division and UC Berkeley professor of bioengineering, has been named executive director of BBH.

Scientists and engineers from Berkeley Lab teamed up to create the EcoPOD, a unique platform that can be used to study all aspects of self-contained environments with unprecedented precision and control. Essentially a high-tech growing chamber, the EcoPOD is about the size of a Mini Cooper perched on one end, which allows plants to be grown under highly controlled conditions. The EcoPOD was developed to be able to study the interactions between plant biology, soil, and the atmosphere.

N. Louise Glass, a senior faculty scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division and professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, has been elected into the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) alongside 119 other distinguished new members and 30 international members.

Blood pressure monitors are a common at-home tool for monitoring heart health, but they don’t look at the health of the endothelium, the lining of the blood vessels. And endothelial function is a powerful predictor of heart attack and stroke. Berkeley Lab has developed a technology using cuffs, like those used for taking blood pressure, to monitor both endothelial function and endothelium-independent vasodilation. Studies on human subjects have verified that the cuff-based method is more sensitive and costs a fraction of the current method.

Anaerobic fungi, which die in the presence of oxygen, thrive in herbivore guts and help them digest their host’s last leafy meal. In their evolutionary history, these fungi branched off early from aerobic fungi, which can breathe oxygen — just like we do. Oxygen is a rich source of energy, and because anaerobic fungi can’t harness it, scientists long held that these fungi don’t have the energy to make complex compounds called natural products. Yet, analyzing the genomes and genome products of four anaerobic fungal species has revealed that this group is unexpectedly powerful: they can whip up dozens of complex natural products, including new ones. The work was partly enabled by the “Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science” (FICUS) collaborative science initiative between the JGI and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. Read the full science highlight on the JGI website.