While it only accounts for 3 percent of cancers nationwide, 91 percent of pancreatic cancer patients succumb to the illness within five years of diagnosis. Assistant Professor Chang-il Hwang developed miniature organ models that allow him to study pancreatic cancer from its earliest stages with the hope of improving diagnosis.
A new, holistic approach to biology is giving researchers new insights into how the Dengue and Zika viruses attack their hosts and, in the case of Zika, affect brain development.
During oocyte quality control, a decision is made whether each oocyte should continue and join the reserve of eggs or undergo cellular death. New research from Neil Hunter’s laboratory at UC Davis reveals the surprising way that this critical oocyte quality control process works.
Researchers at UC Davis and the University of Alberta, Canada, have made preliminary discoveries about how Zika and hepatitis C viruses reproduce at the cellular level, providing new insight into a family of viruses that also includes West Nile and dengue.
Michele Igo was recently named the associate dean of undergraduate academic programs. Her educational research will help shape the way students learn biology.
To gain an understanding into how viruses spread, and ultimately evolve, Samuel Díaz-Muñoz, assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis, explores the hustle and bustle of viruses’ social lives in a new paper published in Cell Host & Microbe.
If you’ve ever tried to untangle a pair of earbuds, you’ll understand how loops and cords can get twisted up. DNA can get tangled in the same way, and in some cases, has to be cut and reconnected to resolve the knots. Now a team of mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists has unraveled how E. coli bacteria can unlink tangled DNA by a local reconnection process. The math behind the research, recently published in Scientific Reports, could have implications far beyond biology.
Assistant Professor Sean Collins, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, has received a $1.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health to advance the development of “smart” immune cells for therapies to treat cancer and other diseases. The five-year NIH Director’s New Innovator Award aims to provide new insight into how to engineer immune cells to control their recruitment and response to tumors.
