Biosciences Area Senior Faculty Researcher Jay Keasling and his research team have modified yeast to make the adjuvant QS-21, an important additive to vaccines that stimulates the immune response, making vaccines more effective. This process, developed in collaboration with an international team of scientists, was recently published in the journal Nature.
m-CAFEs Laboratory Research Manager Trent Northen and other members of the Northen lab, including Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Senior Scientific Engineering Associate Suzanne Kosina, and Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) Deputy Director of High Throughput Biochemistry Kai Deng, contributed to the work by leveraging their expertise in plant metabolomics—the study small molecules commonly known as metabolites within cells, biofluids, tissues or organisms—to help the Keasling lab characterize QS-21. Though the collaboration began as an opportunity to apply m-CAFEs tools, namely the Northen lab’s specialized plant metabolomics pipeline, to new data, the results underscore how fundamental research in plant microbiology can support other work across Berkeley Lab in unexpected synergistic ways.
Read more on the Biosciences Area News Center and the Berkeley Lab News Center.
