Using a state-of-the-art protein crystallography beamline at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, researchers have captured a critical action shapshot of an enzyme that is vital to the survival of all biological cells.

The human RISC-loading complex is a packet of proteins that helps determine the fate of human cells by controlling whether genetic messages – such as “turn cancerous” – are silenced or expressed. Berkeley Lab researchers now know what this critical complex looks like.

George Smoot of the Physics Division represented Berkeley Lab at the signing of an agreement with representatives of South Korea’s University of Incheon to explore the potential for joint scientific research in energy, biology, accelerators, cosmology, and space. The agreement calls for investigation of possible collaborations in which the University of Incheon would provide facilities and Berkeley Lab would provide research programs.

A particle gun tested at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source and soon to be installed at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source fires liquid droplets less than a millionth of a meter in diameter, hundreds of thousands of times a second or faster. The sample jet sends the droplets across a tightly focused x-ray beam in single file, each droplet so small it contains only a single protein or virus.

By programming cells with short lengths of synthetic DNA on their surfaces, scientists at the Molecular Foundry control how different cell types bind together to form complex artificial microtissues for potential uses in medicine and in medical and biological research.

Synthetic biology can not only provide a simple and much less expensive means of making artemisinin, the most powerful anti-malaria drug in use today, but can also help extend the drug’s effectiveness. Bundling microbial-based artemisinin as part of an anti-malarial drug “cocktail” rather than selling it as a monotherapy should delay or even prevent malaria parasites from developing resistance. Recently, there have been reports of malaria parasites in West Africa showing some signs of resistance to plant-based artemisinin.