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Brookhaven National Laboratory

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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 19-Apr-2025 12:08 ET (19-Apr-2025 16:08 GMT/UTC)

Scientists engineer yellow-seeded camelina with high oil output

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using tools of modern genetics, plant biochemists have produced a new high-yielding oilseed crop variety — a yellow-seeded variety of Camelina sativa, a close relative of canola, that accumulates 21.4% more oil than ordinary camelina.

Journal: Plant Biotechnology Journal
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Scientists make and test efficient water-splitting catalyst predicted by theory

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have developed a new efficient catalyst for the most challenging part of “water splitting,” a series of two simultaneous electrochemical reactions that generate hydrogen gas, a green energy source, from water. The new catalyst was designed based on theoretical predictions and validated in laboratory tests and industrially relevant demonstrations.

Journal: Journal of the American Chemical Society
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Study reveals reversible assembly of platinum catalyst

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), and their collaborators have uncovered new details of the reversible assembly and disassembly of a platinum catalyst. The new understanding may offer clues to the catalyst’s stability and recyclability.

Journal: Nanoscale
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Scientists discover mechanism of sugar signaling in plants

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A paper in the journal Science Advances describes how the moving parts of a particular plant protein control whether plants can grow and make energy-intensive products such as oil — or instead put in place a series of steps to conserve precious resources. The study focuses specifically on how the molecular machinery is regulated by a molecule that rises and falls with the level of sugar — plants’ main energy source.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Modern plant enzyme partners with surprisingly ancient protein

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that a protein responsible for the synthesis of a key plant material evolved much earlier than suspected. This new research explored the origin and evolution of the biochemical machinery that builds lignin, a structural component of plant cell walls with significant impacts on the clean energy industry.

Journal: The Plant Cell

Brookhaven Lab Biophysicist F. William Studier awarded Merkin prize in biomedical technology

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

F. William Studier, a senior biophysicist emeritus at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has won the 2024 Richard N. Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology for his development in the 1980s of an efficient, scalable method of producing RNA and proteins in the laboratory.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Speedy, secure, sustainable — that's the future of telecom

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new device that can process information using a small amount of light could enable energy-efficient and secure communications.

Journal: Nature Photonics

Two Brookhaven lab scientists named AAAS Fellows

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

he American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has recognized two staff scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory with the distinction of Fellow: Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for High Energy Physics Dmitri Denisov and Senior Chemist Anatoly Frenkel.

High-resolution lidar sees birth zone of cloud droplets

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists demonstrated the first-ever remote observations of the fine-scale structure at the base of clouds. The results show that the air-cloud interface is a transition zone where aerosol particles suspended in Earth’s atmosphere give rise to the droplets that ultimately form clouds. The research will enable scientists to gain insight into how changes in atmospheric aerosol levels could affect clouds and climate.

Journal: npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation

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