Weapon In Battle
Against Malaria

Keasling

Yesterday's New York Times featured an article on the development of a super anti-malaria drug that is being led by Jay Keasling, who heads the Synthetic Biology Department for Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division. The Times article cited the $43 million grant recently pledged by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of Keasling's technique for inexpensively making the drug artemisinin. Currently, artemisinin is extracted from the sweet wormwood plant at a hefty price. Through genetic engineering, Keasling hopes to turn E. coli bacteria into artemisinin factories, dramatically reducing the cost of the anti-malaria drug. Full story (registration required). Go here to view a video in which Keasling discusses his research.

Linear collider model

Fellowship Annual Cites
Lab Computing Projects

3D enzyme model

Berkeley Lab's efforts in computer modeling of the Next Linear Collider and in the mathematical challenge of understanding how proteins and DNA interact are featured in the recently published annual report of the DOE's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (CSGF) program. Model colliders are the subject of the story about Robert Ryne and his Accelerator Modeling and Advanced Computing Group. And summer Fellow Julian Mintseries of Boston University, who worked with Life Scientist Michael Eisen, is the focus of "Puzzling Out the Secrets of Life." More about the CSGF program can be found here.