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.
JGI, EGSB Team Describe Green Algae Discovery
In PNAS, a research team led by Sabeeha Merchant at UC Berkeley has found numerous examples of polycistronic expression – in which two or more genes are encoded on a single molecule of mRNA – in two species of green algae. Go here to watch a video about the work.
Resistance Is Not Futile
Both plants and animals are targeted by rapidly evolving pathogens, including viruses, bacteria and fungi. Thanks to highly adaptive immune receptors, humans can mount a new antibody response towards infection or a vaccine over the course of a week. Plant immune receptors, however, do not typically change over the lifetime of an individual. Berkeley Lab scientist Daniil Prigozhin collaborated with Ksenia Krasileva from University of California, Berkeley to study plant immune receptors using pan-genome sequencing, a technique which allows them to scan all genomes for every strain in a species within a particular branch on the tree of life. Their pan-genome analysis, published recently in The Plant Cell, showed that some plant immune receptors show a surprising degree of diversity within species. In addition, it allowed them to study how innate immunity evolves, where new receptor specificities come from, and the costs associated with making new receptors, such as the potential for autoimmunity.
New Insights into a Gene Silencing Complex
The multi-protein structure polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) is involved in “silencing” genes so that they are not “read” by the cellular machinery that decodes genetic information, effectively keeping the genetic information in the “off” state. PRC2 silences genes by chemically depositing tri-methylation marks on histone H3 at lysine 27. Failure to regulate the activity of PRC2 not only impairs the process of development, but also contributes to the reversal of cell differentiation and the uncontrolled cell growth that are the hallmarks of cancer.
A team of scientists at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have uncovered the molecular basis for the recruitment of PRC2 to certain locations of the genome and for the regulation of its activity. In a study published January 22 in Science, the researchers describe the structure of PRC2 while bound to a biologically relevant chromatin target. Using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), they uncovered crucial structural and functional information about this key regulator of cell differentiation and identity.
Shine On: Avalanching Nanoparticles Break Barriers to Imaging Cells in Real Time
The diffraction limit is a fundamental property of light that has long prevented optical microscopes from bringing into focus anything smaller than half the wavelength of visible light (~200 nanometers), which is at least an order of magnitude larger than the tiny protein machines that keep cells, and us, running. A team of researchers co-led scientists in Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry and Columbia University’s school of engineering developed a new class of crystalline material that, when used as a microscopic probe, overcomes the diffraction limit without heavy computation or a super-resolution microscope. The amazing new material, called avalanching nanoparticles (ANPs), will advance high-resolution, real-time bio-imaging of a cell’s organelles and proteins, as well as the development of ultrasensitive optical sensors and neuromorphic computing that mimics the neural structure of the human brain, among other applications. The work was reported in a cover article in the journal Nature.
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