News about about MCB faculty, students and staff.
Adjunct Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Gary Karpen and a team of researchers with the "model organism Encyclopedia of DNA Elements" (modENCODE) project have published a new analysis of the fruit fly genome in Science, Nature, and Genome Research that goes beyond the mere genetic sequence to reveal the RNA and chromatin structures that produce a functional organism.
Howard Hughes Investigator and Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Abby Durnburg has been awarded the 2011 Edward Novitski prize by the Genetics Society of America (GSA).
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).
Direction-selective neurons, which respond selectively to motion in one direction, have been characterized in visual circuits across many species. In the retina, it has been postulated that the ability to discern the direction of motion of an object required asymmetric wiring between the retinal neurons. However, the mechanisms that instruct this asymmetric wiring during development were completely unknown.
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.
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.
Nuclear size varies not only among different species, but also in different types of cells in the same species and at different times during development. In addition, cancer cells are known to develop larger nuclei as they become more malignant. Screening for cervical cancer, for example, involves looking for grossly distorted nuclei in cervical cells collected during a Pap smear.
"Pathologists look at nuclear size in cancer cells for staging different cancers, but nobody knows what is behind this," said Rebecca Heald, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jamie Cate, associate professor of molecular and cell biology and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and his UC Berkeley and LBNL colleagues report their success this week in Science Express, a fast-track online publication of the journal Science.