research

Professor Derfogail Delcassian has been awarded $1 million in non-dilutive seed funding to accelerate the commercialization of her work on targeted molecular therapies for hard-to-treat cancers.

Research published today in Nature Nanotechnology by Niren Murthy’s lab presents a new acid-degradable linker that rapidly hydrolyzes in endosomes but is stable in the blood. This development could significantly increase the efficiency of delivering mRNA through lipid nanoparticles, critical for delivering mRNA-based therapies to cells.

Researchers in Professor Messersmith’s lab have created a family of polymers from a new, stabilized alpha-lipoic acid, which could lead to versatile, high-performance and environmentally friendly recyclable adhesives.

Adam Arkin’s lab has developed a new technique called, barcoded overexpression bacterial shotgun library sequencing (Boba-seq), that will make it much easier for researchers to discover the traits or activities encoded by genes of unknown function in microbes.

A team of researchers led by Professor Patrick Hsu has discovered the first DNA recombinase that is programmable, allowing the user to specify any desired genomic target sequence and any donor DNA molecule to be inserted. The bridge recombinase mechanism promises to expand genome editing beyond CRISPR and RNA interference (RNAi) to offer a unified mechanism for programmable DNA rearrangements. Bioengineering graduate student Nicholas Perry is also a lead author of the study, along with other researchers from the Arc Institute.

Berkeley researchers led by Professor Michael Yartsev, working with scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, have identified the part of the brain in Egyptian fruit bats that controls vocalizations and found that it contains similar neural wiring and genetics to the part of the human brain that controls speech.

How isochoric preservation can protect food, organs — and even the planet. Professor Boris Rubinsky discusses the state of the art in cryogenics and preservation.

Professor David Schaffer will lead the new Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub, an incubator that will provide resources and support to entrepreneurs in renewable energy and clean technology.