Scientists at the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology contributed resources and data to a recently-published study revealing a new site on the coronavirus spike protein used by antibodies to block the invasion of the virus into healthy cells. The discovery of this new antibody binding site will help scientists as they work to continue improving treatment and vaccine formulations for COVID-19 and its variants.
To Speed Discovery, Infrared Microscopy Goes ‘Off the Grid’
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.
Inhalable COVID-19 Protection via Synthetic Nanobodies
Using protein structures obtained in part at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) produced simplified antibodies (“nanobodies”) engineered to be highly effective at blocking SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Because they are extremely stable, these nanobodies can be aerosolized, stored at room temperature, and self-administered as needed, directly to affected nasal or lung tissues using nasal sprays or inhalers.
Scientists Map Coronavirus Protein Linked to Immune Evasion, Disease Severity
A team of UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab researchers used X-ray crystallography performed at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) to determine the atomic structure of ORF8, a protein secreted by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is thought to help the pathogen evade and dampen response from human immune cells.
Unique X-Ray Microscope Reveals Dazzling 3D Cell Images
A team based at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source is making waves with its new approach for whole-cell visualization, using the world’s first soft X-ray tomography (SXT) microscope built for biological and biomedical research. In its latest study, published in Science Advances, the team used its platform to reveal never-before-seen details about insulin secretion in pancreatic cells taken from rats. This work was done in collaboration with a consortium of researchers dedicated to whole-cell modeling, called the Pancreatic β-Cell Consortium.
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