Dr. Raquel Peixoto is a visiting associate professor from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a research associate from the Rio de Janeiro Marine Aquarium (AquaRio) in Brazil. She also coordinates the Beneficial Microorganisms of Marine Organisms (BMMO) Network, together with Dr. Michael Sweet (University of Derby), which seeks to unify and facilitate studies on the manipulation of the microbiome associated with marine organisms. Dr. Peixoto is collaborating with Dr. Jonathan Eisen's lab at the Genome Center, focusing on improving coral health through microbiome manipulation and the use of coral probiotics.

Katherine Dahlhausen's microbial curiosity was inspired by a bacterial disease she contracted while traveling. Today, she's a student in the Biophysics Graduate Group and works in the lab of Professor Jonathan Eisen. She helped uncover that treatments meant to combat chlamydia in koalas actually hurt important gut microbes.

The UC Davis Microbiome Special Research Program and the Office of Research are pleased to announce the recipients of seven seed funding awards. Each awarded proposal will receive $40,000 over two years. The seed funding program is designed to catalyze new projects and innovations in microbiome sciences with an emphasis on new interdisciplinary collaborations within UC Davis.

There’s an old saying that “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.” But that may no longer be the case thanks to new materials being developed by UC Davis researchers to line produce bins and for reusable packaging. UC Davis food scientist Nitin Nitin with samples of antifouling, antibacterial plastic. The material could be used for packaging and for lining produce bins. The goal is to produce plastics that both repel bacteria and reduce food-spoilage microbes. The antimicrobial activity comes from chlorine bound to the plastic. It would be recharged by rinsing with a bleach solution. The bacteria-repelling, or antifouling property comes from the plastic itself. It feels slippery, so if bacteria cannot stick to a surface, they cannot grow and form a contaminating film.

UC Davis Biomedical Engineering’s Dr. Jamal Lewis isn’t just researching dangerous shellfish allergies: He lives with them every day. So it’s especially meaningful that his lab has been awarded a two-year, $150,000 grant to research solutions that would help himself and the approximately 1.4 percent of Americans — about 4 million people — who share his health condition. The National Institute of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant will enable the Lewis Lab – which specializes in using biomaterials to control the immune system – to research using materials derived from gut-resident bacteria to avoid unwanted allergic responses.

Professor Bruce German of the UC Davis Food Science & Technology department has spent the past two decades studying lactation and its role in evolution. Among the findings of a group of scientists from across the campus: human milk contains a large proportion of oligosaccharides — short chains of sugar molecules — that babies can’t digest, so they “run right through them.” (If you have a certain kind of diaper-changing experience, you know what this looks like.) The question was, why? German joined with Professor Carlito Lebrilla from the UC Davis chemistry department and School of Medicine to analyze these amazingly complex oligosaccharides. German suspected that these oligosaccharides existed to nourish bacteria, not the baby. He turned to colleague Professor David Mills, a UC Davis molecular biologist, to find out which bacteria could digest these human milk oligosaccharides.

Key scientific partners and funders from around the globe gathered in London today to officially launch the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a global effort to sequence the genetic code of all the planet’s eukaryotes — some 1.5 million known species, including all plants, animals, protozoa and fungi.

Assistant Adjunct Professor Candice Price works in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Price received her Ph.D. in Endocrinology from UC Berkeley and her B.A. in English with a Minor in Biology from Wellesley College.

Stephanie recently completed her Ph.D. in the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at UC Davis with a Designated Emphasis in Feminist Theory and Research. Her dissertation "Eat for your microbes: Reimagining Diet, Health, and Subjectivity in the Probiotic Present" analyzes how the science of the human microbiome shapes advice about what to eat and how to engage with our multi-species bodies. Stephanie's interest in the human microbiome is shaped by her research in the fields of science and technology studies and food studies.

University of California, Davis, microbiologist Jonathan Eisen has been outspoken in his disdain for the burgeoning biome market, calling out one of the companies on Twitter as the “Theranos of microbiome companies” a reference to the infamous blood-testing firm whose founder was indicted on fraud charges in June.  “I just think that it’s early to be saying that we can make recommendations about what people should do based upon one of these microbiome diagnostics,” said Eisen.