Biosciences News

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of eight projects totaling over $5 million to conduct research and development needed to accelerate the US biomanufacturing sector. Part of the Agile BioFoundry (ABF) consortium, these projects will leverage National Laboratory capabilities to address challenges in biomanufacturing.

Members of the UC San Francisco Quantitative Bioscience Institute Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG), in collaboration with Berkeley Lab and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), have identified key chemical building blocks for an eventual antiviral drug against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The newly identified compounds bind to an enzyme produced by the virus, called the “macro domain,” which is known to be crucial for the virus’s ability to replicate in human cells. The authors are writing up a formal manuscript describing the results for submission to a peer-reviewed academic journal, but also published their data directly online on July 1 to accelerate global efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Showing an inspiring knack for innovation under pressure, the global scientific community has developed promising tests and treatments for COVID-19 in the span of just a few months. But moving medical technologies from conception to deployment at such an unprecedented rate comes with a multitude of hurdles, one of which is the obvious challenge of scale. How do companies turn a handful of prototypes or a few flasks of drug-secreting cells into a mass-produced product ready for market? This is the primary focus for process engineer scientists at the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have developed a new set of synthetic biology tools that could unlock advanced plant engineering.

The ability to genetically engineer plants is key for creating sustainable agriculture and renewable energy. But the methods currently used to engineer plants are underdeveloped compared to those for bacteria, limiting scientists in their ability to add preferable traits or delete unwanted ones.

A Berkeley Lab-led team of researchers used multiple high-powered X-ray techniques at the Advanced Light Source to image the process in E. coli bacteria at the micro-, meso-, and nanoscales. The imaging technique they developed enabled them to visualize the bacteria’s chromosome at higher resolutions than ever before, and without the need for labeling, which slows down the process but is required by most other techniques.