In the middle of the South Pacific, about 12 miles west of Tahiti, is a tropical island that soon will emerge as a model ecosystem, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-French research team led by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
Moorea, home of the UC Berkeley Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station and France's Centre de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l'Environnement (CRIOBE), will be the site of an ambitious project to create a comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life on the island. Supported by a new $5.2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Moorea Biocode Project over the next three years will send researchers climbing up jagged peaks, trekking through lush forests and diving down to coral reefs to sample the French Polynesian island's animal and plant life.
Continue reading " $5.2 million grant from Moore Foundation funds ambitious project to barcode an entire ecosystem" »
A personal DNA sequence
is not yet practically useful.
But it could be, argues Prof. Steven Brenner, if we had the right resources.
Brenner calls for the establishment of "a public knowledgebase of human genetic variation and its effect, culled from databases, diagnostic laboratories, and the scientific literature."
Continue reading "The Secrets in Your Genome" »
Devastating over 1 million oak trees across Northern California in the past 10 years, Sudden Oak Death is a killer with no cure. But biologists including CNR's Matteo Garbelotto are looking to the trees' genetics for a solution.
Pink slime at the surface of water trickling through an old mine in California is proving to be a treasure for researchers in their quest to learn more about how bacterial communities exist in nature.
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| Microorganisms thriving in toxic conditions were recovered from a natural biofilm growing at the Richmond Mine in Iron Mountain, California." |
A letter published in
Nature shows that it is possible to follow what microorganisms are doing in their natural environment by identifying the range of proteins that they produce. The technique, utilized in a microbial community thriving in battery acid-like streams underground at Richmond Mine near Redding, Calif., combines recently developed ways to sequence microbial genes with methods to identify the range of proteins from specific microbial members.
Continue reading "Mine Runoff Continues To Provide Clues To Microbial Diversification" »
For 11 years, Jill Banfield has collected and studied the microbes that slime the floors of mines and convert iron to acid, a common source of stream pollution around the world.
Imagine her surprise, then, when research scientist Brett Baker discovered three new microbes living amidst the bacteria she thought she knew well. All three were so small - the size of large viruses - as to be virtually invisible under a microscope, and belonged to a totally new phylum of Archaea, microorganisms that have been around for billions of years.
Continue reading "Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms" »
Until he met the slimy green algae called Chlamydomonas, undergraduate Subhajit Poddar didn’t know he was interested in plant biology. “Once I began working with mutant strains of algae, I was totally hooked,” he says.
Poddar, fourth year in Plant and Microbial Biology, studies the green algae Chlamydomonas under the mentorship of Professor Krishna Niyogi. His research has focused on identifying and cloning genes responsible for two compounds involved in photosynthesis.
Using genetics as a novel tool to understand physiology, Niyogi and his team are isolating genes that are important in determining plant responses to stress and high light conditions. SPUR funds have helped Poddar purchase essential lab equipment necessary to maintain laboratory populations of Chlamydomonas.
Undergraduate research through SPUR is funded entirely by donations to the Berkeley Fund for Natural Resources -- and gifts are accepted online here.
A new study led by researchers from the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology identifies specific gene expression changes in a species of water flea in response to contaminants, lending new support for the role of toxicogenomics in environmental monitoring.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, focused on the water flea Daphnia magna, considered the lab rat of ecotoxicology because of its sensitivity to contaminants in its environment. The organism is commonly used by regulators to monitor freshwater toxicity, but the tests used typically look at levels of toxicity that will kill the water flea within 24 hours of exposure.
Continue reading "New study shows promise of genomics in monitoring environmental toxicology" »
Matthew Stuckey, fourth year in Environmental Economics and Policy and Conservation Resource Studies, is researching how the butterfly Colias behrii colonized the Sierra Nevada.
Through mentorship with Professor George Roderick and graduate student Sean Schoville, Stuckey has been working on cloning nuclear genes to assess genetic variation within and among populations of C. behrii.
Roderick’s team is using genetics to understand how organisms have colonized new areas. SPUR funds have helped provide chemicals and lab supplies necessary for molecular cloning – a technique essential for Stukey’s research.
The SPUR program also benefits the mentors who work closely with undergraduates on their research. For Schoville, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, having Stuckey's help has been a huge benefit. “These undergraduates are some of the brightest students,” he says. “Working with them gives me a great opportunity to see their minds grow and mature.”
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Lagomarsino, third year in Plant Biology, is using nuclear and chloroplast genes to develop a phylogeny, or map of ancestral relationships between species of the genus Heliconia, a tropical plant. Her mentor, Assistant Professor Chelsea Specht in the department of Plant and Microbial Biology, uses molecular and evolutionary biology to understand lineages of related plants.
SPUR funding has allowed Specht to provide Lagomarsino with necessary laboratory materials to expand her research.
The SPUR program offers students a unique opportunity to develop as scientists with a level of independence that has often been reserved for graduate students. Not only does this help make Berkeley students more competitive, it develops of the kind of creative thinking skills so essential to the success of any scientist. “You learn all the techniques” says Lagomarsino, “But then you are also given a certain amount of freedom, and your thoughts are valued.”
For Lagomarsino, research in plant and molecular biology has also given her academic career a clear direction. “Now, I know exactly what I want to do and what I want to study.”
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