Seagrass carpets the seafloor creating a unique and vital ecosystem in shallow marine environments. Sea turtles graze on seagrass leaves while smaller organisms seek refuge in the green fields but, on the microscopic level, seagrass is also home to microbial communities. Such microbes compose the seagrass microbiome and potentially play a role in seagrass ecology.
Grace Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in marine ecology at UC Davis, where her thesis focuses on the analysis of camouflage in marine ecosystems. She is participating in the Leaders for the Future program, a five-month cross-campus collaboration between the Office of Research, the Career Center, GradPathways (Graduate Studies) and our institute. She recently participated in the Food, Ag + Health Entrepreneurship Academy as our 2018 Harkins Fellow.
Native wildflowers were surprisingly resilient during California’s most recent drought, even more so than exotic grasses. But signs of their resilience were not evident with showy blooms aboveground. Rather, they were found mostly underground, hidden in the seed bank, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
Founded in 2015 by Distinguished Professor Pamela Ronald, Plant Pathology and the Genome Center, Science Says started as a project funded by the UC Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy to combat misinformation in food science. Since then, it’s grown into a campus-wide student group.
In a new study appearing in Developmental Cell, Ruensern Tan, a biochemistry, molecular, cellular and developmental biology graduate student, and Assistant Professor Richard McKenney, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, provide a new molecular model to describe the role of motor proteins in restructuring the cytoskeleton for cell division.
Each year, undergraduate students in the College of Biological Sciences with exceptional academic performance are invited to join the Phi Sigma Biological Sciences Honor Society Gamma Delta Chapter. For the 2017-2018 academic year, the Delta Gamma Chapter is hosting multiple events for the society’s members.
Neurobiology, physiology and behavior undergrad Alec Avey’s passion for sports was kindled at an early age. An outside linebacker on his high school’s football team, he took hits on the pitch and suffered his share of injuries. Now, as an undergraduate researcher in Professor Keith Baar’s Functional Molecular Biology Lab, Avey examines and modifies ligaments in Petri dishes in hopes of finding new therapeutics to aid ligament recovery.
When Briana Rocha-Gregg was young, her dream of becoming a scientist didn’t seem like a possibility. The path to higher education was untrodden and unfamiliar to the Stockton, Calif. native. She had no tangible examples of people with a college education in her life. To Rocha-Gregg, practicing science seemed like a privilege only open to special people.
“Even at community college, I had a counselor tell me that I was wasting my time trying to be a scientist because I was a mother, and it wasn’t really feasible to balance those things,” said Rocha-Gregg.
To encourage students to gain hands-on experience, Assistant Professor Rebecca M. Calisi Rodríguez, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, launched the Calisi Lab Undergraduate Research Program. Relying heavily on philanthropic support, the program employs students as researchers in animal science, neuroendocrinology and reproductive behavior. Calisi Rodríguez’s goal is to make sure students don’t sacrifice research opportunities to make ends meet.
Baladi is responsible for bringing new therapies for rare genetic disorders to patients as quickly as possible. She works with health authorities to develop strategies to facilitate accelerated and standard clinical development procedures.
