Former MCB Immunology professor and Director of the Cancer Research Lab at UC Berkeley, James P. Allison received the National Academy of Sciences 2018 Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal "for important medical discoveries related to the body's immune response to tumors." He is presently at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Department News
Below are articles from various sources about members of MCB and their research.
January 17, 2018
MCB & Chemistry Professor Jennifer Doudna has received the 2018 Chemical Sciences award from the National Academy of Sciences. The award recognizes her "pioneering discoveries on how RNA can fold to function in complex ways” and her co-invention of CRISPR-Cas9 technology.
January 12, 2018
Research from the labs of MCB Professor Rebecca Heald and Associate Professor Daniel Nomura has revealed the cellular basis of hybrid incompatibility when closely related frog species are interbred.
This finding uncovers why the offspring of female African clawed frogs and male Western clawed frogs can survive, whereas offspring with the opposite set of parent species are incapable of living past the early stages of development.
January 12, 2018
Ming Hammond (Assistant Professor, MCB & Chemistry), Evan Miller (Assistant Professor, MCB & Chemistry), and David Savage (Associate Professor, MCB & Chemistry) have been "identified as representing the future of biochemistry" by the American Chemical Society.
Hammond, Miller, Savage, and 41 other early career biochemical scientists are featured in the January 2018 publication of Biochemistry.
January 03, 2018
Professor of MCB & Chemistry and HHMI Investigator Jennifer Doudna is overseeing a collaboration among the Innovative Genomics Institute at Berkeley and Mars Chocolate to apply CRISPR to cacao crops. As climate change warms and dries the rainforests where cacao plants thrive, researchers are looking for ways to produce crops that will better withstand environmental changes.
January 02, 2018
MCB Professor of Neurobiology and of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering David Schaffer and colleagues "have for the first time used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to disable a defective gene that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, in mice, extending their lifespan by 25 percent."
December 20, 2017
Meet our new faculty recruits, learn about our MCB faculty visiting 4th and 5th graders, read how MCB graduate students raised over $7,000 for Puerto Rico Hurricane relief, and much more!
December 20, 2017
HHMI Investigator and Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Nicole King is one of four UC Berkeley faculty who received a 2018-2019 Miller Professorship Award, allowing her a year to pursue new research directions.
December 13, 2017
Enjoy this festive video, created using imagery from MCB Faculty Labs, and please keep an eye out for our MCB Fall 2017 Newsletter...
December 12, 2017
Edward E. Penhoet Distinguished Chair in Global Public Health and Infectious Diseases and Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology Daniel Portnoy has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.