Biosciences News

In mid-March, Dr. Jim Bristow’s wife couldn’t stop coughing. Her symptoms pointed to coronavirus, but she couldn’t get tested — in part because of the nationwide test shortage, but also because the pair lived in Vashon, an idyllic town on an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound with scant medical resources.

A cross-disciplinary team of Berkeley Lab scientists with expertise in climate modeling, data analytics, machine learning, and geospatial analytics is launching a project to determine if the novel coronavirus might be seasonal. The team will apply machine-learning methods to a plethora of health and environmental datasets, combined with high-resolution climate models and seasonal forecasts.

Data gathered at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) by an international team of researchers indicate that antibodies derived from SARS survivors could potently block entry of SARS-CoV-2 and other closely related coronaviruses into host cells. Such antibodies could be used as a preventative treatment or as a post-exposure therapy.

Rosanne Boudreau’s job, as the safety coordinator for Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area at its satellite site in Emeryville, California, is to make sure all experiments and research are conducted safely. Before any experiment starts, she will look at all the possible hazards and help implement any controls that should be put into place to mitigate those hazards.

Corie Ralston and Marc Allaire, both staff scientists, have been promoted to new leadership positions. Ralston has assumed the position of Facility Director for the Biological Nanostructures Facility at the Molecular Foundry. Allaire has been appointed Head of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division’s Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB). The BCSB manages six macromolecular crystallography beamlines at the Advanced Light Source (ALS).