biology

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Milestones

Bruce Ames, developer of a simple, widely used test to detect carcinogens, is dead at 95

UC Berkeley biochemist developed 'Ames test' to identify substances likely to cause cancer

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Awards

David Baker, a UC Berkeley Ph.D., awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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Awards

Alumnus Gary Ruvkun shares 2024 Nobel Prize for discovering microRNA

Fish swim among seaweed and anemones

Campus & community

New center to advance use of seaweed in the global economy

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Researchers simulate an entire fly brain on a laptop. Is a human brain next?

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A Q&A with the new dean of biological sciences, Richard Harland

Aileen Liu, Hernan Garcia, Christian Paiz and Arianne Eason sit in chairs on a dark stage and talk

Berkeley Talks: What is understanding? Berkeley scholars discuss

outline sketches of grains: corn, wheat and rice

Agriculture accelerated human genome evolution to capture energy from starchy foods

an orange slice of bread and an orange liquid in a white bowl being topped with a drop of amber liquid from a pipette

Can fungi turn food waste into the next culinary sensation?

a ball of blue blobs with hundreds of orange hairs sticking out

Creature the size of a dust grain found hiding in California’s Mono Lake

glowing green elongated worms cluster together like segments of an orange

Do smells prime our gut to fight off infection?

people on hillside gather around person gesturing to pinyon pines

Working with Tribal nations to preserve pinyon forests and pine nuts

A close-up photo of a plant with a small white flower.

Can engineered plants help make baby formula as nutritious as breast milk?

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UC Berkeley neuroscientist and nanoscientist among this year’s Kavli Prize winners

outlines in red of a woman's torso and four circles containing a thermometer, a face with a rash, a painful knee and a woman sleeping

Tracking down the genetic causes of lupus to personalize treatment

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A conversation with outgoing biological sciences dean Michael Botchan