Biosciences Area

Biosciences Area Cohosts Conference on Growing the Circular Bioeconomy

The Biosciences Area recently joined the California Air Resources Board, UC Berkeley, and UC’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources in co-hosting the California Bioresources Economy Summit, aimed at harnessing biotechnology to convert California waste streams from farms, forests, and landfills into valuable low-carbon fuels and products.

Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences Mary MaxonAssociate Laboratory Director for Biosciences Mary Maxon keynoted the two-day conference as it kicked off January 29 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. In her presentation, Maxon noted that expansion of the $370 billion per year U.S. bioeconomy could create more than 1 million jobs while reducing annual carbon emissions by up to 450 million tons.

Building Standards for Neurophysiology Data

Researchers from Berkeley Lab and the Allen Institute for Brain Science will receive $2 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a next-generation data format and software ecosystem for the Neurodata Without Borders: Neurophysiology (NWB:N) project. With funding from the Kavli Foundation, Berkeley Lab scientists Oliver Ruebel and Andrew Tritt in the Computational Research Division and Kristofer Bouchard in the Biological Systems and Engineering Division led the development of the beta version of NWB:N 2.0, and will continue to advance the development of NWB:N as part of the NIH BRAIN Initiative. Berkeley Lab’s leadership in the NWB:N development would have not been possible without the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project BRAINformat: A Data Standardization Framework for Neuroscience Data. Berkeley Lab also hosted a user engagement hackathon earlier this year, bringing together users to help them adopt NWB:N.

Read more from Computing Sciences.

Biomaterials Workshop Report Released

On July 16-17, 2018, Berkeley Lab hosted a workshop on opportunities to develop new materials made by biology that focused on inorganic and organic/inorganic composites. This event brought together researchers from across the lab to identify areas for collaborative research that bridge biology, chemistry, materials science, and computing. The workshop was held in anticipation of two recent workshops, one each hosted by the Department of Energy and Department of Defense, to develop a Berkeley Lab perspective for these types of materials. Caroline Ajo-Franklin, Peter Fischer, and Jay Keasling hosted the two-day meeting. The workshop report, which was compiled based on participant discussions and was reviewed by the participants, is now available for download.

Metabolic Engineering of Lipids Improves the Respiratory Function of Biofuels and Bioproducts Hosts

While much is known about how enzymes and molecules are involved in cellular respiration, the understanding of the respiration system as a whole remains limited. Researchers at the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have gained insight into how cellular respiration is affected by the membrane environment in which it occurs. By engineering lipid synthesis to carefully control the membrane composition, researchers found that lipids, which consist of fatty acid molecules and determine membrane viscosity, also tightly control the rate of bacterial and yeast respiration. As lipid synthesis in these hosts is often engineered in order to produce molecules, these findings suggest new ways by which the pathways to produce biofuels and bioproducts could be optimized to maintain proper respiratory function, thereby increasing production. For more, read the JBEI news story.

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