A team of scientists from UC Davis and Rice University are starting small as they begin to figure out how to build an artificial brain from the bottom up.
Celina Juliano, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Jacob Robinson of Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering have won a $1 million Keck Foundation grant to advance the team’s synthetic neurobiology effort to define the connections between neurons and muscles that drive programmed behaviors in living animals.
Three UC Davis researchers, including Assistant Professor James Letts, will receive funding from the Early Career Research Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. They are among 83 researchers at U.S. universities and national laboratories funded by the program this year. The awards are of $150,000 for summer salary and research expenses each year and are intended to last for five years.
The laboratory of Richard McKenney, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology has published new research on the role of the KIF1A motor protein in degenerative disorders in children.
We might one day be able to treat diseases or inherited disorders by rewriting parts of the genetic code in our own cells. The National Institutes of Health established the Somatic Cell Genome Editing consortium, with funding of $190 million over six years, to advance research in genome editing, develop tools and test them in animal models before advancing to human clinical trials.
Jodi Nunnari, a distinguished professor and chair in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, is one of four UC Davis professors who have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others, the academy honors excellence and includes leaders from every field of human endeavor including scientists, artists, performers, poets and political leaders.
CBS’ Dan Starr and Gant Luxton awarded $1.5M for research
This October marks the 10th anniversary of the Allen Distinguished Investigator program, which was launched in 2010 by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen to back creative, early-stage research projects in biology and medical research that would not otherwise be supported by traditional research funding programs.
Structure of mRNA initiation complex could give insight into cancer and other diseases
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., have solved the structure of the complex formed when mRNA is being scanned to find the starting point for translating RNA into a protein. The discovery, published Sept.
Congratulations to Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Jodi Nunnari for being named as one of the newly elected members to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
Last week's second COVID-19 Public Awareness Symposium, organized and run by Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Walter Leal, attracted over 1,000 viewers. You can rewatch it here.
To stay a step ahead of coronavirus, an interdisciplinary team of UC Davis researchers will use mathematics, data science and experimental biology to predict potential mutations of the virus.
