How does a neural circuit get wired up to perform specific computations? The Feller lab recently addressed this question by studying the circuit mediates direction selectivity in the retina (Wei et al, Nature, 2010).
Department News
Below are articles from various sources about members of MCB and their research.
December 09, 2010
November 15, 2010
Assistant Professor of Immunology and Pathogenesis Russell Vance has been selected as one of the two recipients of the 2011 Merck S. Sigal Memorial Awards by the American Society For Microbiology.
October 26, 2010
The Bowes Research Fellows Program has now ended and is no longer accepting applications.
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The Bowes Research Fellows Program at the University of California, Berkeley, is seeking nominations of outstanding recent or imminent Ph.D. and M.D. graduates to be given the freedom to establish an independent research program as an alternative to the traditional postdoctoral experience.
October 13, 2010
Size matters when it comes to the nucleus of a cell and now Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Rebecca Heald and post-doctoral fellow Daniel L. Levy have discovered the signals that control how big the nucleus gets.
October 13, 2010
Howard Hughes Investigator and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Jennifer Doudna has been elected a member of the Institute of Medicine, considered one of the highest honors in the fields of medicine and health. Doudna is one of only 12 IOM members on the UC Berkeley faculty.
October 10, 2010
Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Iswar Hariharan has been granted an American Cancer Society Research Professorship, their most prestigious award. The five year grant will be used to study ways by which excessive tissue growth can be curtailed by manipulating cell metabolism in fruit flies.
October 06, 2010
Diana Bautista, assistant professor of molecular and cell biology, Donald C. Rio, professor of molecular and cell biology and Amy Herr, assistant professor of bioengineering have been singled out as innovators by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will receive special grants designed to fund "transformative research" that could lead to major advances in medical science.
September 30, 2010
More than 200 UC Berkeley postdocs, their family and friends, and members of the campus community gathered at the Bancroft Hotel to celebrate postdocs and their important contributions to the campus.
Postdocs offered their own expression of appreciation honoring Rebecca Heald, professor of molecular and cell biology, as the first recipient of the Faculty Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring.
September 10, 2010
University of California, Berkeley, researchers have taken genes from grass-eating fungi and stuffed them into yeast, creating strains that produce alcohol from tough plant material cellulose that normal yeast can't digest.
The feat could be a boon for the biofuels industry, which is struggling to make cellulosic ethanol ethanol from plant fiber, not just cornstarch or sugar economically feasible.
September 01, 2010
Karsten Weis, UC Berkeley professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, Jan Liphardt, a UC Berkeley professor of physics, and colleagues have traced with unprecedented resolution the paths of cargos moving through the nuclear pore complex (NPC), a selective nanoscale aperture that controls access to the cell's nucleus, and answered several key questions about its function. The research was published September 1st in the journal Nature.