News By Location

Berkeley Lab researchers, using a combination of cryo-electron microscopy and 3-D image reconstruction, determined the structure of Cascade, a protein complex that plays a key role in the microbial immune system by detecting and inactivating the nucleic acid of invading pathogens. Microbial immune systems in the human microbiome play a critical role in preserving the health of their human host.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed PCR-free techniques for identifying the most active microbial populations in samples based on the PhyloChip, the Lab's award-winning, high-density DNA microarray. These new techniques will be used in a wide variety of applications including the development of advanced biofuels.

An essential relationship among leading genes and proteins that control the health of the skin has been revealed by a multinational research team. The protein p63 is the "master regulator" for skin's uppermost layers, the epidermis. It does much of its work by directly controlling the chromatin-remodeling protein Satb1, discovered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory over a decade ago and already known for critical roles in the immune system and aggressive breast cancer.

Some ferroelectric materials can develop extremely high voltages when light falls on them, which might greatly improve solar cells if scientists could figure out how they do it. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have solved the mystery for one ferroelectric, bismuth ferrite, revealing a principle that should apply to other materials too. The secret is an electronic "bucket brigade" that passes electrons stepwise from one electrically polarized region to the next.

Invisible terahertz light can detect explosives, image drug structures, and pinpoint skin cancer, but practical tools for using it are scarce. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have made a graphene microribbon array that strongly responds to terahertz light by exciting the collective electron oscillations known as plasmons. The device can be tuned with exquisite precision by varying the width of the graphene ribbons and controlling electron density.

Researchers at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), a joint institute of the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, have reached a crucial milestone that could lead to a new class of materials with useful electronic properties.

Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a "twilight zone" where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year. They appear in the September 2, 2011, edition of Science.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a solution-based technique for fabricating core/shell nanowire solar cells using the semiconductors cadmium sulfide for the core and copper sulfide for the shell. These inexpensive and easy-to-make nanowire solar cells hold great promise for future solar cell technology.