Biosciences News

Carlos Bustamante, a biophysicist faculty scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, received the 2021 Kazuhiko Kinosita Award during the Biophysical Society’s 65th Annual Meeting in February.

Researchers from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and Caltech devised a more efficient way to collect “high-dimensional” infrared images, where each pixel contains rich physical and chemical information. The new technique, implemented at the Advanced Light Source’s (ALS) infrared beamline 1.4, uses a grid-less, adaptive approach that autonomously increases sampling in areas displaying greater physical or chemical contrast. With the new method, scans that would’ve taken up to 10 hours to complete can now be done in under an hour.

Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Director Nigel Mouncey has announced that effective March 1 senior scientist Tanja Woyke is officially the Deputy for JGI User Programs. She had been serving in the position on an interim basis for the past nine months. Woyke will continue to lead the Microbial Program and will split her time equally between these important roles for JGI. JGI User Programs interact with scientists across the world who are interested in collaborating on projects relevant to DOE-related problems. The Microbial Program is one of JGI’s five science programs, and conducts high-impact science focused on terrestrial carbon cycling and plant-microbe interactions.

In PNAS, a research team led by Sabeeha Merchant at UC Berkeley has found numerous examples of polycistronic expression – in which two or more genes are encoded on a single molecule of mRNA – in two species of green algae. Go here to watch a video about the work.

Two Biosciences Area researchers—Natalia Ivanova and Susannah Tringe—are among 65 new Fellows elected into the American Academy of Microbiology’s 2021 class. An honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology, the mission of the Academy is to provide microbiological expertise in the service of science and the public. Fellows are elected annually through a highly-selective peer-review process based on their records of scientific achievement and contributions in the field of microbiology.