Archive for Biology

Comparing Proteins at a Glance

A revolutionary X-ray analytical technique enables researchers at a glance to identify structural similarities and differences between multiple proteins under a variety of conditions and has already been used to gain valuable new insight into a prime protein target for cancer chemotherapy.

Computer Simulations Yield Clues to How Cells Interact With Surroundings

Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a computer model of a protein that helps cells interact with their surroundings. Like its biological counterpart, the virtual integrin snippet is about twenty nanometers long. It also responds to changes in energy and other stimuli just as integrins do in real life. The result is a new way to explore how the protein connects a cell’s inner and outer environments.

Predictability: The Brass Ring For Synthetic Biology

DNA sequences and statistical models have been unveiled that greatly increase the reliability and precision by which microbes can be engineered.

Reading the Human Genome

Berkeley Lab researchers have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome.

A Dual Look at Photosystem II Using the World’s Most Powerful X-Ray Laser

Artificial photosynthesis and other new technologies based on metalloenzyme catalysis will benefit from a technique for simultaneously collecting both diffraction and spectroscopy data demonstrated by Berkeley Lab and SLAC researchers at the world’s most powerful X-ray laser.

How Cilia Get Organized

Cilia are critical to good health and a newly discovered cilia partitioning system might be the key

Berkeley Lab Researchers Find New Clue to Clinical Trial Failures of MMP Cancer Therapies

Failure of Highly Touted MMP Cancer Therapies May Be Explained

New Details on the Molecular Machinery of Cancer

New details into the activation of a cell surface protein that has been strongly linked to a large number of cancers and is a major target of cancer therapies have been reported by Berkeley Lab researchers.