Limb regeneration and attosecond research each get $1 million from Keck Foundation

Two University of California, Berkeley, research projects that push the boundaries of their fields have each received $1 million grants from the W.M. Keck Foundation. One grant will fund research on limb and organ regeneration, while the other will support a laser laboratory that probes the movement of electrons on the attosecond timescale. The Keck grants target unconventional, high-risk research that has the potential to transform the fields of bioengineering and ultrafast laser chemistry. One of the projects, headed by Lydia Sohn, associate professor of mechanical engineering, will use innovative microtechnologies to explore what stops mammals from re-growing functional tissue after birth. Sohn will work with Irina Conboy and Amy Herr, both assistant professors of bioengineering, to investigate the cellular and molecular determinants that govern the regeneration of limbs and organs, aiming to gain insights that could lead to important new medical therapies. "There is still no clear understanding as to why mammalian cells are able to develop into limbs during the embryonic stage, but then lose that regenerative capacity after birth," said Sohn. "We will be inventing new tools to isolate and study, at the single cell level, the few cells that are important for tissue regeneration in mammals, and then creating 3-D models to synthetically recreate the regenerative process.