For the past several months, teams of bioscientists have utilized Berkeley Lab’s world-class research facilities to contribute to the national response to COVID-19, resulting in a wide range of promising research. Four videos showcase researcher contributions from across the Biosciences Area, which aim to help address some of the many scientific challenges posed by the pandemic.
X-Ray Technology Sheds New Light on Antibiotic Synthesis
Atomic-scale structural analyses performed at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) are helping scientists understand the inner workings of the enzyme “assembly lines” that microbes use to produce an important class of compounds, many of which have uses as antibiotics, antifungals, and immunosuppressants.
These cellular machines, known as nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs), are large, multi-enzyme clusters that synthesize compounds by passing a precursor molecule from one module to the next, with each “station” catalyzing a change in the molecule. In the past decade, researchers have learned a great deal about how individual NRPS modules work, but an understanding of how the assembly lines function as a whole has been lacking. In the hopes of eventually engineering custom NRPSs to make new and improved medicines, a team led by McGill University began investigating the bacterial NRPS that synthesizes the antibiotic gramicidin.
Cryo-EM Adapted to Visualize Atomic Structure of Synthetic Soft Material
Berkeley Lab scientists have demonstrated for the first time that cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), a Nobel Prize-winning technique originally designed to image proteins in solution, can be adapted to image atomic changes in a synthetic soft material.
MBIB Leadership Changes Announced
Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division Director Paul Adams has announced a number of changes in the Division leadership, effective October 1. Earlier this summer, Corie Ralston agreed to serve as the Interim Director of the Molecular Foundry’s Biological Nanostructures Facility. She will step down as MBIB Division Deputy and remain as the Head of the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) at the Advanced Light Source (ALS).
SIBYLS Sheds Light on Enzyme that Regulates Blood-clotting Factor
A group of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have used the capabilities available at the Advanced Light Source’s SIBYLS beamline to gain insight into an enzyme that functions in blood clotting. ADAMTS13, which stands for a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin-1 repeats, member 13, is a multi-domain protease enzyme whose catalytic mechanism involves a metal. It is the only known protein to regulate the adhesive function of von Willebrand factor (VWF), a blood clotting protein involved in hemostasis.
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