Thousands of times per year, a family’s moment of joy turns to unexpected grief. A seemingly healthy infant stops smiling or making eye contact. Their limbs grow weak. The tiny child suffers seizures and breathing problems.
Jawdat Al-Bassam, an associate professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Davis, often hears from these families. “I’ve gotten emails from folks all over the world,” he said.
For Mark Winey, the path into biology was deeply personal from the start. Watching his sister live with an inherited metabolic disease sparked a curiosity about genetics that would shape his entire career.
He is this month’s guest on Face to Face With Chancellor May.
Now a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and dean of the College of Biological Sciences, Winey reflects on a journey shaped by both personal motivation and professional passion.
It’s not often that a Nobel laureate visits a UC Davis undergraduate classroom, but this year, a biochemistry class in Kleiber Hall struck “gold”—twice.
Not one, but two Nobel laureates chronicled their scientific careers and answered questions during their virtual visits to UC Davis Distinguished Professor Walter Leal’s winter quarter class, “Structure and Function of Biomolecules.”
Fourth-year biological sciences major and Barry Goldwater Scholar recipient Azucena Virgen studies the regenerative biology of Hydra — a freshwater organism known for its ability to regrow entire body parts — at the UC Davis Juliano Lab. What began as a fascination in a high school biology class in her hometown of Woodland, California, grew into a long-term goal to lead a research lab
Can the bend of a banana give us insight into cancer? What does the shape of a rice grain have to do with infertility? The proteins that give plants their shape and structure are also involved in human disease. A team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, has mapped out the structure of a key player, augmin, in exhaustive detail.
There are many ways to communicate with prospective romantic partners: If you are a Japanese scarab beetle, it’s a matter of distinguishing left from right. New work from U.S. and Chinese scientists, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how these beetles use mirror-image pheromones to find a mate. The work could lead to better monitoring and control of significant agricultural pests.
Inside our cells are tiny engines that supply the energy to sustain life. These protein machines essentially burn our food – producing CO2 and harnessing the energy that is released to sustain growth, movement and even thought.
Each year, roughly 1.6 million people worldwide are born with genetic diseases that disrupt these tiny cellular engines – making life difficult.
“Mutations in these protein complexes are really devastating, and often lethal,” says James Letts, an associate professor of molecular and cellular biology.
In a new study published in Science Advances on September 10, a team of UC Davis researchers tracked the movement of fluorescent particles inside the cells of microscopic worms, providing unprecedented insights into cellular crowding in a multicellular animal. They found that the cytoplasm inside the worms was significantly more crowded and compartmentalized than in single-celled yeast or mammalian tissue culture cells, which are more commonly used to gauge internal cellular dynamics.
Although teaching is a core part of being a professor, most academics learn how to teach on the job. CBS’s Future Undergraduate Science Educators (FUSE) program is changing that.
