Biosciences Area

Cancer Researcher Mina Bissell Receives Two Top Honors

Mina Bissell, a distinguished scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has been selected to receive two prestigious awards for her pioneering contributions to breast cancer biology and medicine. Her research challenged existing dogma by showing that malignant cells behave much differently in a culture than they do in a body. Bissell’s “Dynamic Reciprocity” model asserts that the support molecules within tissues communicate directly with local cells, thus altering gene expression. Her model has amassed impressive supporting evidence in the 40 years since it was first proposed, and has led to an ever-growing number of advances in the understanding and treatment of cancer.

In recognition of her lifetime achievements, including her extraordinary insights into how a cell’s local environment impacts gene expression and tumor formation, the American Philosophical Society (APS) has chosen Bissell as the recipient of the Jonathan E. Rhoads Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Medicine. Additionally, she was selected by the Weizmann Institute of Science as one of two recipients of the 2019 Weizmann Women & Science Award in recognition of her trailblazing career as a woman in STEM.

Learn more on the Berkeley Lab News Center.

Biosciences Area FY18 LDRD Projects

The projects of 13 Biosciences Area scientists and engineers received funding through the FY18 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. These projects span a diverse array of topics and approaches including the study of microbiomes in relation to patterns of mutualism, crop productivity, and gut health; synthetic biology for engineering biosurfactant production and energy conversion pathways; and the application of technologies such as machine learning, high-resolution optical microscopy, and single-cell transcriptomics. Together, these efforts account for 18.75 percent of the $20 million allocated. Lab-wide, 74 projects were selected from a field of 215.

Nitric Oxide Is the Key for Building Breast Tissue from Single Cells in 3-Dimensions

Building on four decades of research, Mina Bissell, Distinguished Scientist in Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division and her colleagues have demonstrated a dynamic reciprocity between the extracellular matrix (ECM) and cell nucleus for tissue-specific gene expression. Using the 3D ECM gel to study signaling from outside the cell to the nucleus they have unraveled a dozen different pathways critical for the formation of phenotypically normal breast tissue. The signaling between the ECM and the nucleus is pivotal, bidirectional, and intricate. In two papers published in eLife this week, Bissell and Dan Fletcher, BSE faculty scientist and Purnendu Chatterjee Professor and Chair of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley, shed new light on how the extracellular matrix communicates with breast cells to generate nitric oxide, forming a loop that influences the pathway a single cell takes to form breast tissue.

Dernburg and Nogales Named Fellows of the American Society for Cell Biology

Biosciences’ Abby Dernburg and Eva Nogales–both of whom are also UC Berkeley professors and HHMI Investigators–have been selected as 2017 Fellows of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon ASCB members by their peers. The award is a lifetime recognition of meritorious efforts to advance cell biology and/or its applications, work in service to the Society, and ongoing loyalty to ASCB.

Mina Bissell’s Research Discussed in The New Yorker

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee discussed the work of Biosciences’ Mina Bissell in a feature on worldwide research efforts to understand the factors that determine whether cancer will spread.  Bissell, a distinguished scientist in the Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division, has shown that a cancer cell’s local tissue environment affects whether or not it will form a metastatic tumor. The article appeared in the Sept. 11 edition of The New Yorker.

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