Postdoctoral researchers, Drs. Emilyn Matsumura and Elizabeth Henry from Dr. Bryce Falk’s Lab in the Department of Plant Pathology, received funding from the USDA’s HLB Multi-Agency Coordination (MAC) program, which serves to coordinate and fund research for citrus HLB interventions. Their project will focus on developing tools to target the insect that transmits HLB. Currently, HLB has no cure, and effective intervention strategies have been difficult to find, primarily because the bacteria responsible for the disease cannot be manipulated in a laboratory, which make it difficult to better understand its biology.

The UC Davis Microbiome Special Research Program is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019 Microbiome Graduate Research Award. A total of fifteen graduate students were selected for the award out of thirty-six applications. Each awarded proposal will receive $1,000 to help with costs related to their microbiome research.  The application process demonstrated the various areas of microbiome research at UC Davis and ranged in diverse applicant backgrounds from plant pathology, entomology/nematology and animal science to applicants from anthropology, computer science, nutrition and psychology. 

Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse places on the planet. Like rainforests, they are teeming with species that live symbiotically with one another. They cover less than 1% of the ocean floor yet harbour a quarter of all known marine species. As well as astonishing beauty, this biodiversity provides spawning and nursery grounds that economically important fish populations need to thrive. They protect coastal communities from storm surges. They provide millions of jobs through tourism, fishing and recreational activities - and they are also important sources of new medicines being developed to treat cancer, arthritis, bacterial infections, Alzheimer's, heart disease, viruses and other illnesses. If coral reefs go, this will all disappear.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have partnered with a federally compliant pharmaceutical company to analyze the chemical and biological profiles of cannabis for the benefit of law enforcement, health care providers and scientific professionals.   The agreement with Biopharmaceutical Research Company, which is registered with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, is among the first of its kind. UC Davis and BRC researchers will analyze legally acquired cannabis materials in BRC’s labs to understand the chemical composition of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, cannabidiol or CBD, and other cannabinoids. There will be no cannabis on the UC Davis campus or any UC Davis-owned or leased property as part of this research.

Simran Sandhu, a medical student at UC Davis School of Medicine, has been honored with this year’s Daniel T. O’Connor, M.D., Memorial Research Grant. Sandhu earned the award for his translational research examining how different pathologies may result in gut and skin microbiome imbalance in patients. Sandhu works on human microbiome research with Raja Sivamani, associate professor of Clinical Dermatology at UC Davis Health.

Director Jonathan Eisen compiling list of Microbiome Centers from the US and beyond.

A robotic gripping arm that uses engineered bacteria to “taste” for a specific chemical has been developed by engineers at the University of California, Davis, and Carnegie Mellon University. The gripper is a proof-of-concept for biologically-based soft robotics.  “Our long-term vision is about building a synthetic microbiota for soft robots that can help with repair, energy generation or biosensing of the environment,” said Cheemeng Tan, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis. The work was published June 26 in the journal Science Robotics. 

Nick was one of two recipients of the Danone North America Gut Microbiome, Yogurt and Probiotics Fellowship Grant, which awarded each recipient a $25,000 scholarship. The scholarship will help Nick pay for RNA sequencing services in order to identify the genes that Bifidobacterium strains use to grow on specific HMOs (human milk oligosaccharides). Nick Jensen is a graduate student in the Microbiology Graduate Group working in the laboratory of Professor David Mills. Nick’s research focuses on the genomic and ecological basis of carbohydrate metabolism in beneficial microbes such as Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. 

A parasitic amoeba that causes severe gut disease in humans protects itself from attack by biting off pieces of host cells and putting their proteins on its own surface, according to a study by microbiologists at the University of California, Davis. “We’re very excited about how this ties into amoebic infection and into broader themes in cell biology,” said Katherine Ralston, assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, College of Biological Sciences.

Professor Andreas Baumler was featured in an article by Emma Yasinski at The Scientist regarding his team's recently published evidence that at least in some mouse studies, the problem of reproducibility may come down to the bacteria in the model’s gut.