News Articles

Here in Davis, it's getting warmer, spring quarter is just around the corner, and the energy of campus is high. It’s hard to believe we’re already in March! As usual, there’s been no shortage of activity in the college.

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.

They are experts in a parasitic amoeba, scientific history, the health effects of stress and more, and now these eight faculty members can add a new title: Chancellor’s Fellow.

The recognition is given each year to early career academics doing exemplary work, and the 2025-26 class will be recognized at a reception next week.

Iliya Voytsyshyn, a fourth-year systems and synthetic biology major from Ukraine, entered UC Davis with plans to study cancer. That initial goal grew into a fascination with tools that fuse biology, systems design and gene editing to re-engineer cells.

The 2026 UC Davis Medal, the University of California, Davis’ highest honor, will be awarded to Robert D. and A. Kathleen Grey. The couple have dedicated their lives and careers to the university and the surrounding community for nearly six decades, playing an integral role in the university’s transformation into the world-class research institution it is today.

Gene editing has enormous potential to help feed the world’s growing population, but it’s currently difficult, time-consuming, and only works in some plant species. A big part of the problem is CRISPR/Cas9’s size: it’s too large to be delivered into plant cells.

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.

While there are many achievements and accomplishments still ahead of us this year, some have happened already. Researchers in the Department of Plant Biology received a $5 million Gates Foundation grant to support the expansion of self-cloning crops from rice to other staple foods in areas where availability of high-yield seeds is either unreliable or expensive.

Long ago, on a faraway Aleutian island, a pair of rare beaked whales got stranded. One was saved by biologists and swam back out to sea. The other perished and its skeleton now hangs inland, thousands of miles from home.

Ask students in the College of Biological Sciences (CBS) who the associate dean of undergraduate programs is, and odds are many wouldn’t know. But the behind-the-scenes impact Michele Igo has made on their experience is profound.