News – Page 7 – QB3 Berkeley

Collage of 16 portrait photos of researchers.

Shekhar Wins Funding in Final Year of Scialog: Microbiome, Neurobiology and Disease

July 27, 2023

Eight cross-disciplinary teams with novel ideas to probe the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain will receive awards totaling $1 million in the final year of Scialog: Microbiome, Neurobiology and Disease), an initiative sponsored by Research Corporation for Science Advancement, The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group and the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, with support from the Walder Foundation. The…

Hand in nitrile glove holding petri dish with bacteria samples, with other dishes sitting on table in background.

Greater access to water and sanitation could help curb antibiotic resistance

July 06, 2023

Berkeley-led study highlights key role of community environmental factors in transmission of resistance genes Increasing access to clean water and flush toilets could be an effective way to curb the rise of antibiotic resistance, particularly in urban areas of Africa and Southeast Asia. That’s among the key findings from a new ecological study, published today in Lancet…

Illustration of neural network with red, orange, and yellow splotches representing high activity, connected by green and light blue areas of lower activity and surrounded by purple and black areas of low or no activity.

Karthik Shekhar has been named a 2023 McKnight Scholar

June 20, 2023

The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience has announced the selection of ten neuroscientists to receive the 2023 McKnight Scholar Award. Karthik Shekhar, Asst. Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley, has been awarded a scholarship for his project entitled Evolution of neural diversity and patterning in the visual system. Prof. Shekhar is also a member of…

An illustration of a glowing orb of light near a shadowed forest floor, with small leaves illuminated by the orb.

Photosynthesis, Key to Life on Earth, Starts with a Single Photon

June 14, 2023

Using a complex cast of metal-studded pigments, proteins, enzymes, and co-enzymes, photosynthetic organisms can convert the energy in light into the chemical energy for life. And now, thanks to a study published today in Nature, we know that this organic chemical reaction is sensitive to the smallest quantity of light possible – a single photon. The discovery…

Blue, pink and magenta figures illustrating the ribosome translation of mRNA into protein.

Retooling the translation machine could expand the chemical repertoire of cells

June 13, 2023

Synthetic biologists have become increasingly creative in engineering yeast or bacteria to churn out useful chemicals — from fuels to fabrics and drugs — beyond the normal repertoire of microbes. But a multi-university group of chemists has a more ambitious goal: to retool the cell’s polypeptide manufacturing plants — the ribosomes that spin amino acids…

Eva Nogales Wins Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine

May 31, 2023

Eva Nogales, a senior faculty scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Biosciences Area, has won the 2023 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine for pioneering structural biology that enabled visualization, at the level of individual atoms, of the protein machines responsible for gene transcription, one of life’s fundamental processes. Nogales, who is also a…

Aaron Streets at far right speaks into a microphone with three other speakers sitting at the table beside him.

How does the universe work? Promoting diversity can help answer that.

May 26, 2023

Science has been considered a purely objective field of study that has produced research to cure diseases, map out the anatomies of living things and explore our planet and the universe. But UC Berkeley Bioengineering Professor Aaron Streets says it is important for those who conduct that research “to represent the full diversity of human…

Researchers reveal the ‘hidden’ costs of drinkable water

May 26, 2023

Drinking water treatment technologies are typically evaluated for contaminant removal efficiency, capital costs and health impacts, but these narrow metrics do not fully capture why more than 2 billion people worldwide lack safe drinking water. To tackle this problem, researchers at UC Berkeley argue for an assessment of the “hidden” costs of these technologies, including…

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