A group of Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley physical chemists led by Jay Groves, faculty scientist in Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB), has—for the first time—imaged the process by which an individual immune system molecule is switched on in response to a signal from the environment. This breakthrough led to the discovery that the immune system activation process involves hundreds of proteins suddenly coming together to form a linked network through a process known as phase transition. Critically, the process has a built in time delay which allows the cell to distinguish a genuine receptor stimulation from background chemical noise. The work is described in a paper recently published in the journal Science.
Working the Core: Insights into Transcription Factor IIH Function
A team of scientists from the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division and UC Berkeley has constructed the first complete atomic blueprint of a complicated molecular machine that is crucial to repairing and reading DNA. These protein assemblies, human transcription initiation factor IIH (TFIIH), are essential to survival, yet we know little about how they function because, until recently, it was impossible to accurately describe their structure.
Biosciences Area FY19 LDRD Projects
The projects of 13 Biosciences Area scientists and engineers received funding through the FY19 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. The funded projects span a diverse array of topics and approaches including the harnessing of microbiome data to uncover patterns of mutualism, evaluating radiobiological effects of laser-accelerated ion beams, improving bioenergy yield under drought stress, and the application of machine learning in tomogram segmentation. Lab-wide, 89 projects were selected from a field of 158 proposals. Biosciences Area efforts account for 15.07 percent of the $22.2 million allocated.
Engineering Living ‘Scaffolds’ for Building Materials
Taking their cue from Nature, Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered living cells to act as a starting point, or “scaffold,” for the self-assembly of composite materials. The resulting engineered living materials (ELMs) represent a new class of material that may open the door to advanced applications in bioelectronics, biosensing, and smart materials.
Leading the effort was Caroline Ajo-Franklin, whose lab is part of the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, and who holds a secondary appointment in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division. A study describing the work was recently published in ACS Synthetic Biology.
New Computational Biosciences Group Formed
Researchers from Biosciences and the Computational Research Division (CRD) have formed a new integrated Computational Biosciences Group to develop tools for addressing a range of scientific problems that cross organizational lines. Members of the group include (pictured, from left): Héctor García Martin of the Biological Systems and Engineering and the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Divisions (BSE/EGSB), acting group lead Kris Bouchard (BSE), Chris Mungall (EGSB), Andrew Tritt of the Computational Research Division(CRD), Oliver Rübel (CRD), and Ben Brown (EGSB). Additional members not pictured are: Aydın Buluç (CRD), Silvia Crivelli (CRD), Hans Johansen (CRD), Talita Perciano (CRD), and Peter Zwart of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division (MBIB).
Read more on the Computing Sciences website.
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