COVID-19

COVID Stories: Sourdough bread with a purpose

March 24, 2021

Seniors Brendan Huang and Carolyn Hong

Seniors Brendan Huang and Carolyn Hong, who both have received the COVID-19 vaccine and are in the same social bubble, met in an organic chemistry lab as sophomores, became fast friends and wound up baking sourdough bread together. It’s an adventure that Hong calls “our sourdough journey.” (Photo by Talia Patt...

An expert on 'undruggable' targets tackles the coronavirus

October 5, 2020

Dan Nomura

Nomura in his lab at UC Berkeley. Photo: Elena Zhukova

Throughout the grim reality of a global pandemic that has disrupted normal life for months, one persistent bright spot has been the robust response of the biomedical research community. The battle to develop vaccines and drugs to fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19, the disease which it causes,...

CRISPR and the Code Breaker

March 8, 2021

Visionary biochemist Jennifer Doudna shared the Nobel Prize last year for the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which has the potential to cure diseases caused by genetic mutations. Correspondent David Pogue talks with Doudna about the promises and perils of CRISPR; and with Walter Isaacson, author of the new book "The Code Breaker," about why the biotech revolution will dwarf the digital revolution in importance.

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This is the year that CRISPR moves from lab to clinic

March 8, 2021

Women makes COVID discovery in lab

Scientist makes COVID discovery in lab. (Photo Adobe Stock)

Since my colleagues and I first described CRISPR as a genome-engineering tool in 2012, the technique has transformed fundamental research. More than 15,000 papers containing the term have been published, hundreds of different organisms have been edited and this...

Chemistry senior's advice on surfing the pandemic

February 23, 2021

Katia Gibson

Katia Gibson, (B.S. '21, Chem) surfing last August at Jalama Beach in Santa Barbara County, brought along two surfboards, to get practice time on each. (Photo by Steve Gibson)

The COVID-19 pandemic has separated us, but sharing stories about how members of the campus community have been surviving — and even thriving — since...

UC Berkeley and Gladstone scientists develop new Covid-19 test

December 7, 2020

image for lighting up covid test

In the diagnostic test, a patient sample is mixed with CRISPR Cas13 proteins (purple) and molecular probes (green) which fluoresce, or light up, when cut. When coronavirus RNA is present in the sample, it prompts the CRISPR proteins to snip the molecular probes, causing the whole sample to emit light. This fluorescence can be detected with a...

New test detects coronavirus in just 5 minutes

November 5, 2020

Jennifer Doudna discusses new COVID-19 test

Jennifer Doudna talks with Alex Ehrenberg, a graduate student in integrative biology who is helping organize the FAST trial of saliva tests for COVID-19. Photo: UC Berkeley/Irene Yi

Researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to come...

Crispr, not just for gene editing

October 30, 2020

Illustration of Crispr-Cas activity

Crispr–Cas is part of an ancient bacterial immune system that detects and chops up invading viruses’ DNA. Source: © Science Photo Library

Thanks to the 2020...

Teresa Head-Gordon receives COVID-19 research funding

June 25, 2020

Teresa Head-Gordon

Teresa Head-Gordon, Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, joins three colleagues from Berkeley Engineering who have received funding from the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute for COVID-19 projects.

UC Berkeley launches trial of saliva test for COVID-19

June 30, 2020

COVID-19 saliva based test

Scientists from the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), the same UC Berkeley group that rapidly popped up a state-of-the-art COVID-19 testing laboratory in March, are now trialing a quicker way to obtain patient samples: through saliva. Saliva, collected in the same way companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com get samples for DNA genealogy analysis, can be gathered without medical supervision, and that saves time, money and precious PPE.