Biosciences News

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is supporting the development of a unique microscopy concept pioneered by researchers at Berkeley Lab as part of the Foundation’s Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems Initiative (SASI). The Berkeley Lab effort has received $500,000 and will be led by senior staff scientist Hoi-Ying Holman of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division.

A new project co-led by Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division scientist Christopher Mungall has received a $10 million five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a Center of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS). An international, multi-institutional collaboration, the new center will develop tools to modernize how biomedical information about genetic conditions is captured, stored, and exchanged.

In recent years, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) technology has advanced to the point that it can produce structures with atomic-level resolution for many types of molecules. Yet in some situations, even the most sophisticated cryo-EM methods still generate maps with lower resolution and greater uncertainty than required to tease out the details of complex chemical reactions.

In a study published in Nature Methods, a multi-institutional team led by Tom Terwilliger from the New Mexico Consortium and including researchers from Berkeley Lab demonstrates how a new computer algorithm improves the quality of the 3D molecular structure maps generated with cryo-EM.

Statistician Paul Williams, a staff scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, specializes in investigating the instances where genetics and environment are most closely intertwined. His work focuses on a phenomenon called “quantile-dependent expressivity,” which describes the relationship between the genes that predispose people to certain traits that can be amplified by behavior and environmental factors.

In a study appearing in Nature Plants, researchers from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab report the discovery and characterization of a previously undescribed lineage of form I rubisco – one that the researchers suspect diverged from form I rubisco prior to the evolution of cyanobacteria. The novel lineage, called form I’ rubisco, gives researchers new insights into the structural evolution of form I rubisco, potentially providing clues as to how this enzyme changed the planet.

The work was led by Patrick Shih, a UC Davis assistant professor and the director of Plant Biosystems Design at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), and Doug Banda, a postdoctoral scholar in his lab.