Physical Biosciences Division One Stop
Science Programs
The Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU) is a state-of-the-art facility for testing and developing the next generation of biofuels technologies. The APBDU provides its collaborators with the ability to produce demonstration quantities of biofuels from biomass such as grasses, wood, and agricultural residues.
Paul Adams of the Physical Biosciences Division is part of a distinguished group of scholars that in a Public Forum essay in the journal Science advocates an end to withholding computer source code in the publication of scientific results, calling the practice a “black box” that is creating far-reaching problems for understanding and reproducing new research findings. In their essay, Adams and his colleagues put forth several recommendations for solving this growing problem. More>
Paul Adams (far left) of the Physical Biosciences Division led a team that used the ALS beamlines at the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology to discover a critical control element with chaperonin, the protein complex responsible for the correct folding of other proteins. The “misfolding” of proteins has been linked to many diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and some forms of cancer. Other members of the discovery team were PBD's Jose Pereira (center right), Corie Ralston (center left), and Ryan McAndrew (far right), and Nicholai Douglas, Ramya Kumar, Tom Lopez, Kelly Knee, Jonathan King and Judith Frydman. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab) More>
PBD Faculty Scientist, Dr. Carolyn Larabell, is featured in both Science Now and The Economist for the work she presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held 16-20 February in Vancouver, BC. Both publications detail the cutting edge processes of
studying and photographing individual cells which Dr. Larabell presented. She describes the process of soft X-ray tomography and how this method of studying
the cell helps gain more insight into the way a cell may operate. She and her collaborators have used the technique to study molecules called peptoids that are
being tested as drugs against Candida albicans, a disease-causing fungus. Using her soft X-rays, Dr Larabell was able to see, in a way that is impossible with
an electron microscope, the holes that the peptoids punch in the nucleolus.
Read the full The Economist article at http://www.economist.com/node/21548149
Read the Science Now article and watch her video at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/scienceshot-x-rays-paint-whole-c.html
