News By Location

News from CA

Select a state to view local articles and features

Major new initiative to resolve structure of protein families

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences has launched the "Protein Structure Initiative" with the intent to determine the form and function of thousands of proteins over the next decade. Among the grants is one to Sung-Hou Kim, a world authority on protein crystallography at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Funder: NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Strange quasicrystal metal alloys spring an electronic surprise

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international team of scientists has demonstrated that the electronic states of the strange metal alloys known as quasicrystals are more like those of ordinary metals than theorists believed possible.

Funder: Department of Energy

Researchers pin down phenomenon of 'pinning' of magnetic layers

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have made the first direct images of the enigmatic alignment of magnetic domains on both sides of an interface between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic films - - an example of 'pinning' in the kind of layered magnetic structure vital to advanced computer recording heads and memory devices of the future.

Journal: Nature
Funder: Department of Energy

New robotic microarray technology finds novel genes involved in cardiac hypertrophy and recovery

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The first study using robotic microarray technology to screen whole heart tissue from mice found 55 genes involved in cardiac hypertrophy. Moreover, in a discovery that would not have been made using standard biochemical methods, eight genes were found to be associated only with recovery from hypertrophy.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: Department of Energy, NIH

Supercomputer finds a flat universe in BOOMERANG data

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

BOOMERANG collected the largest set of cosmic microwave background data yet analyzed, almost one billion measurements. To extract an angular power spectrum required a special algorithm, MADCAP, developed at the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), plus hundreds of hours of processor time on a Cray T3E supercomputer.

Journal: Nature
Funder: Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, NASA

Mouse genome revealing which DNA sequences activate human genes

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers report that comparative analysis techniques used to identify DNA sequences coding for genes in mice and humans can also be used to identify sequences that regulate the "expression" or activation of genes.

Journal: Science
Funder: Department of Energy

Researchers decode human chromosomes 5, 16, and 19

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute have decoded in draft form the genetic information on human chromosomes 5, 16 and 19. The chromosomes contain an estimated 10-15,000 genes, including those with defects linked to forms of kidney disease, prostate and colorectal cancer, leukemia, hypertension, diabetes and atherosclerosis.

Funder: Department of Energy

Unique study reveals new details on how genes are transcribed

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists at Berkeley have reported the first direct observations of what happens when the message of a gene is being read during the actual transcription of single DNA molecules.

Journal: Science
Funder: Department of Energy

Fruit fly's genome sequence finished in record time: Physical maps are the key to accuracy

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The genome of D. melanogaster, the largest yet sequenced in full, is described in the 24 March 2000 issue of Science magazine, in a series of articles jointly authored by hundreds of scientists, technicians, and students from 20 public and private institutions in five countries.

Journal: Science

Femtosecond pulses at Berkeley Lab's advanced light source

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Strobe-like flashes of synchrotron light lasting less than 300 femtoseconds (300 millionths of a billionth of a second) have been produced for the first time ever off the primary beam of a synchrotron light source.

Journal: Science