October 10, 2024
UC Berkeley researchers in two multi-institutional teams have won major awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to fund pioneering biomedical research. Projects in microbiome engineering and in implantable biologic drug delivery will receive up to $22.7 million and $34.9 million, respectively, from ARPA-H, a federal funding agency that supports transformative biomedical…
October 03, 2024
An interdisciplinary group of UC Berkeley researchers are exploring the molecular mechanisms of friendship in prairie voles using fluorescent carbon nanotube sensors. From parental care to mating systems, scientists have long relied on mouse models to study the critical biological pathways that underpin social relationships. But this model falls short when it comes to understanding…
August 22, 2024
Colonies of these choanoflagellates — members of a group considered to be the closest living relatives of all animals — have their own unique microbiomes. Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra Nevada is known for its towering tufa formations, abundant brine shrimp and black clouds of alkali flies uniquely adapted to the salty, arsenic- and…
August 22, 2024
Polymers derived from alpha-lipoic acid (αLA), a small molecule that aids in cell metabolism, have the potential to provide versatile and environmentally friendly adhesives, but their instability has long been a barrier to their use in practical settings. Now, Berkeley engineers have discovered a new chemical strategy that overcomes this impediment, opening the door to…
August 14, 2024
Scientists will be able to determine the function of genes more quickly than ever with a new high-throughput approach A new technique developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will make it much easier for researchers to discover the traits or activities encoded by genes of unknown function in microbes, a key step toward…
August 07, 2024
Nematodes react to the odors of pathogens by prepping their guts to withstand an infection. Do humans react similarly? Many organisms react to the smell of deadly pathogens by reflexively avoiding them. But a recent study from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the nematode C. elegans also reacts to the odor of pathogenic bacteria by…
May 16, 2024
Climate change has become a pervasive influence in nearly every facet of our lives. From the air we breathe to the food we eat and the vehicles we drive, the way we navigate the world impacts our environment, often in negative ways. UC Berkeley is a powerhouse for energy and climate research where faculty, postdocs…
March 28, 2024
University of California, Berkeley, chemists have devised a novel method to selectively tag tryptophan residues within proteins, potentially leading to the development of new types of drugs and engineered proteins, including those that mediate protein-protein interactions. Led by Christopher J. Chang and F. Dean Toste, the Berkeley team drew inspiration from nature’s synthesis of indole alkaloids, devising an…