News By Location

Subtle genetic changes that confer an evolutionary advantage upon a species, such as the dexterity characteristic of the human hand, while difficult to detect and even harder to reproduce, have nevertheless generated keen interest amongst evolutionary biologists. In findings published online Sept. 5 in Science, researchers from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have uncovered a specifically human 13-nucelotide change that yields human limb development patterns in a mouse model system.

Certain explosives may soon get a little greener and a little more precise. LLNL researchers added unique green solvents (ionic liquids) to an explosive called TATB (1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene) and improved the crystal quality and chemical purity of the material.

Today's powerful sequencing machines can rapidly read the genomes of entire communities of microbes, but the challenge is to extract meaningful information from the jumbled reams of data. In a paper appearing in Nature Biotechnology Aug. 17, a collaboration headed by researchers at the University of Washington and the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute describes a novel approach for extracting single genomes and discerning specific microbial capabilities from mixed community ("metagenomic") sequence data.

Genomics is accelerating improvements for converting plant biomass into biofuel -- as an alternative to fossil fuel for the nation's transportation needs, reports Eddy Rubin, Director of the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, in the Aug. 14 edition of Nature. Rubin lays out a path forward for how emerging genomic technologies will contribute to a substantially different biofuels future as compared to the present corn-based ethanol industry -- and in part mitigate the food-versus-fuel debate.

Certain sizes of nanostructures may be more susceptible to failure by fracture than others.

Researchers have created a 3-D image of a material referred to as "liquid smoke."