Professor Graham Coop and postdoctoral researcher Michael “Doc” Edge, both of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, warn that these “direct to consumer” DNA testing services could be vulnerable to a sort of genetic hacking.
In a study published today in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists from the University of California, Davis, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife use two decades of kelp ecosystem monitoring data to chronicle the catastrophic shift in 2014 from a robust bull kelp forest to a barren of purple sea urchins.
The College of Biological Sciences celebrated its annual Fall Welcome event last Friday, commemorating the start of a new academic year. Faculty, staff, students, friends and family gathered in the Life Sciences Courtyard for food, beverages and celebration.
Last year, Associate Professor Siobhan Brady and her colleagues published “a core set of genes that are critical in nitrogen metabolism” in Nature. For her research, Brady was recognized with the 2018-2019 College of Biological Sciences Faculty Research Award.
In December 2018, Distinguished Professor Venkatesan Sundaresan and his colleagues published in Nature a method that allowed them to produce clonal seeds directly from plants, bypassing the sexual reproduction process. Replicating this process in the lab could prove vital to providing the world’s farmers with high-yielding, disease-resistant or climate-resistant food crops.
