DNA sequences and statistical models have been unveiled that greatly increase the reliability and precision by which microbes can be engineered.

Artificial photosynthesis and other new technologies based on
metalloenzyme catalysis will benefit from a technique for simultaneously collecting both diffraction and spectroscopy data demonstrated by Berkeley Lab and SLAC researchers at the world’s most powerful X-ray laser.

Cilia are critical to good health and a newly discovered cilia partitioning system might be the key

A cold sulfur spring in Germany is the only place where archaea are known to dominate bacteria in a microbial community. How this unique community thrives and the lessons it may hold for understanding global carbon and sulfur cycles are beginning to emerge from research at the Advanced Light Source’s Berkeley Synchrotron Infrared Structural Biology facility.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed an “adaptor” that makes the genetic engineering of microbial components substantially easier and more predictable.

Berkeley Lab researchers have constructed the first detailed and complete picture of a protein complex that is tied to human birth defects as well as the progression of many forms of cancer. Knowing the architecture of this protein, PRC2, should be a boon to its future use in the development of new and improved therapeutic drugs.

Jay Keasling, Berkeley Lab Associate Director for Biosciences and leading authority on synthetic biology who has engineered microbial “factories” to manufacture a frontline antimalarial drug and biofuel substitutes for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, has won a 2012 Heinz Award. Presented by the Heinz Family Foundation, the award carries with it a medallion and a cash prize of $250,000.

Berkeley Lab researchers have identified the FAM83A protein as a possible new oncogene and linked it to therapy resistance in breast cancer. This discovery helps explain the clinical correlation between a high expression of FAM83A and a poor prognosis for breast cancer patients, and may also provide a new target for future therapies.

Using ultrafast, intensely bright pulses of X-rays from the
Linac Coherent Light Source, an international team of researchers led by scientists at Berkeley Lab and SLAC obtained the first ever images at room temperature of photosystem II, a protein complex critical for photosynthesis and future artificial photosynthetic systems.

Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a tropical rainforest microbe that can endure relatively high concentrations of an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels. They’ve also determined how the microbe accomplishes this, a discovery that holds broad implications beyond biofuels.