A groundbreaking new study from the labs of MCB Professors Michael Rape and Richard Harland describes a quality control pathway, called DQC (dimerization quality control), for regulators of the BTB family. DQC removes BTB dimers of abberant composition from interrupting signal transduction in a cell.
Department News
Below are articles from various sources about members of MCB and their research.
A team of researchers led by MCB Professor Daniel Portnoy has discovered that many bacteria in the human gut microbiome, such as the species which cause listeriosis and gangrene, produce electricity as part of their metabolic processes.
MCB Professor David Raulet, Univ. of Ottawa & Ottawa Hospital's Michele Ardolino and their colleagues' paper in The Journal of Clinical Investigation describes the important role Natural Killer (NK) cells may play in targeting tumors when combined with cancer immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors.
They are currently investigating approaches to further enhance the cancer-killing ability of NK cells, and hope to someday profile how an individual's immune system interacts with their cancer, enabling more personalized immunotherapy treatments.
Congratulations to MCB Professor Matt Welch, who was recently named one of 13 new ASCB Fellows! This fellowship recognizes those in the field of cell biology who have exhibited a career-long commitment to the mission of the ASCB.
Professor Welch and the twelve other new Fellows will be recognized at the ASCB|EMBO Meeting in December 2018 in San Diego.
MCB Assistant Professor Eunyoung Park was named a 2018 Vallee Scholar by the Vallee Foundation, which awards $300,000 research grants to exceptional early career researchers and investigators. Assistant Professor Park's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of protein translocation across cell membranes.
New research from the lab of MCB Assistant Professor Polina Lishko describes how flagellar regulatory nanodomains of human sperm are critical to sperm fertility. Hv1 proton channels in those nanodomains are distributed asymmetrically along bilateral flagellar lines to provide the structural basis for flagellar rotation.
The research was published this week in Cell Reports and is a collaboration between the Lishko lab and the lab of Ke Xu, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry.
The Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB) at the University of California, Berkeley seeks candidates for a new position, Professor in Molecular & Cell Biology and Chief Scientific Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI). The expected start date is July 1, 2019.
A team of researchers led by MCB Associate Professor David Savage has designed a novel protein engineering method known as MISER, which slims down the CRISPR-Cas9 protein.
A standard Cas9 protein is composed of 1,368 amino acids and is too large for many biomedical applications. By reducing the size of Cas9 proteins without sacrificing their core features, Savage and his team hope to pave the way to even more CRISPR-based therapies in the future.
New research from the lab of MCB Assistant Adjunct Professor Jacob Corn identified that autophagic degradation of the endoplasmic reticulum, or ER-phagy, in human cells is regulated by ER-remodeling proteins known as Atlastins.
A Public Engagement Grant was awarded to MCB graduate student Dan Kramer (Bateup lab) for his program to bring in-depth science to local elementary schools. The grant is funded by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) through the Science Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation supporting projects that unlock scientific thinking. Congratulations, Dan!