New research from the labs of MCB Professors Ehud Isacoff & John Flannery reports that insertion of a gene for a green-light receptor into the eyes of blind mice led to signs of reversed retinal degeneration. This gene therapy may soon be used to help restore vision in humans blindness due to retinal degeration.
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This year, we're funding two main initiatives:
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New research from the lab of MCB Professor Richard Kramer shows that a new therapy "could help prolong useful vision and delay total blindness" in humans with deteriorating vision. The treatment, which has been successful in trials with mice, utilizes drug or gene therapy to reduce interfering noise generated by nerve cells in the eye. Reduction of this noise can improve vision for those suffering from vision loss, including common age-related macular degeneration.
“This isn’t a cure for these diseases, but a treatment that may help people see better. This won’t put back the photoreceptors that have died, but maybe give people an extra few years of useful vision with the ones that are left,” says Kramer.
MCB Professor Michael Eisen has been named the new Editor-in-Chief of eLife, a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal for biomedical and life sciences. Eisen has long been a vocal proponent of open-access scientific publishing and reforming research communication.
Congratulations to Associate Professor of MCB, NST & Chemistry Daniel Nomura for winning an ASPIRE Award from the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research! This award "funds high risk, high reward approaches to solving complex problems in cancer research that tend to fall outside the scope of other funding opportunities."
Nomura's lab is mapping hotspots of binding sites in human proteins that have been traditionally considered "undruggable" and developing novel small molecule drugs that bind to those proteins.
What is your favorite class?
My favorite class so far is MCB C100A - Biophysical Chemistry: Physical Principles and the Molecules of Life. It's cross-listed with the chemistry department and is co-taught by a team of 2 professors - one from the MCB department and one from the chemistry department. It's definitely not an easy class, as the chemistry portion of is very math intensive and requires a lot of motivation and hard work, but the course describes key concepts of biology from a very molecular and physical approach. You come out with a good thermodynamic and kinetic understanding of very important concepts and processes such as protein/DNA/RNA structure and enzyme/reaction kinetics.
University of California, Berkeley
Dept. of Molecular & Cell Biology
142 LSA #3200
Berkeley, CA 94720-3200
Phone: (510) 643–3406
Email: mcbchair@berkeley.edu
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