Maize is one of the world’s most widely grown crops. It is used for both human and animal foods and holds great cultural significance, especially for indigenous peoples in the Americas. Yet despite its importance, the origins of the grain have been hotly debated for more than a century. Now new research, published Dec. 1 in Science, shows that all modern maize descends from a hybrid created just over 5000 years ago in central Mexico, thousands of years after the plant was first domesticated.

Jay Stachowicz, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been named the interim director of the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute (CMSI). Stachowicz succeeds the institute’s founding director, Rick Grosberg, a distinguished professor emeritus of evolution and ecology who retired from the university earlier this year.

Each year, undergraduates in the College of Biological Sciences with exceptional academic performance are invited to join the Phi Sigma Honor Society’s Delta Gamma chapter. First started in 1984, the Gamma Delta chapter has long been a marker of excellence for UC Davis students.

Many mammals, from domestic cats and dogs to giant pandas, use scent to communicate with each other. A new study from the University of California, Davis, shows how domestic cats send signals to each other using odors derived from families of bacteria living in their anal glands. The work was published Nov. 8 in Scientific Reports.

UC Davis junior Caroline Donohew watched the everyday power of biology in just five minutes during her summer session class at UC Davis’ Bodega Marine Laboratory, or BML, a coastal research and education facility about 100 miles west of campus. 

While observing a mussel’s muscle through a microscope, “I saw it create a byssal thread in real time,” said Donohew, who is from San Anselmo. “And it was just so cool.” 

Neutrophils, the primary foot soldiers of the immune system, swarm to sites of infection and inflammation by following breadcrumb pathways made up of signaling molecules. But the human body is a complex place, and neutrophils are often simultaneously bombarded with multiple signals, some of which are more important than others. For example, signals of infection or tissue damage require more urgent attention than signals produced by other immune cells.

Two Ph.D. students in the College of Biological Sciences have been awarded prestigious fellowships from the American Heart Association (AHA) to support their research on Respiratory Complex I, a protein complex that generates energy inside human cells.

Christina Kim, a faculty member in the Center for Neuroscience and an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurology, has been selected as a 2023 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award recipient. The award, announced last month, is part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.

Well, it’s fall. And November. Campus is busy this time of year - bikes on the streets, classrooms full and labs bustling with activity. Our students are in midterms, and we’re starting to feel winter in the air. 

Sunflowers famously turn their faces to follow the sun as it crosses the sky. But how do sunflowers “see” the sun to follow it? New work from plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, published Oct. 31 in PLOS Biology, shows that they use a different, novel mechanism from that previously thought.

“This was a total surprise for us,” said Stacey Harmer, professor of plant biology at UC Davis and senior author on the paper.