Graduate Student Stories

Worms Reveal Just How Cramped Cells Really Are

In a new study published in Science Advances on September 10, a team of UC Davis researchers tracked the movement of fluorescent particles inside the cells of microscopic worms, providing unprecedented insights into cellular crowding in a multicellular animal. They found that the cytoplasm inside the worms was significantly more crowded and compartmentalized than in single-celled yeast or mammalian tissue culture cells, which are more commonly used to gauge internal cellular dynamics.

Championing Mentorship Through Marine Research: Claire Murphy Receives Top CBS Graduate Award

Claire Murphy, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Population Biology Graduate Group, wants everyone to feel like they belong in research. Based at the Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML), Murphy studies how tiny seagrass crustaceans avoid being eaten by fish, crabs, and other predators. Since coming to UC Davis in 2020, she’s mentored 11 UC Davis undergraduates, including five independent summer research projects.

Restoring Voices—and Identity—with Neuroengineering

Lee Miller vividly recalls the day in 2021 when he met a woman who had lost the function of her vocal cords. In hoarse, whispering tones she explained how her voice had been instrumental to her vocation. Losing it, she said, undercut her life’s purpose. He had to listen carefully to hear her faint words, but the lesson “was really powerful.”

Fish Teeth Show How Ease of Innovation Enables Rapid Evolution

It’s not what you do, it’s how readily you do it. Rapid evolutionary change might have more to do with how easily a key innovation can be gained or lost rather than with the innovation itself, according to new work by biologists at the University of California, Davis, who studied how teeth in certain fishes evolved in response to food sources and habitats.

Their work was published Feb. 26 in Nature.

Alum Receives Early Career Fellowship

Victoria Watson-Zink, Ph.D. ’22, a postdoctoral evolutionary marine biologist, received the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Hanna H. Gray Fellowship last month. This year’s fellowship supports the transition of 25 early-career scientists to leading labs and becoming tenured faculty.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Why Zika Virus Hijacks a Protein Needed for Brain Growth

The mosquito-borne Zika virus is known for causing microcephaly, a birth defect in which abnormal brain development results in a smaller-than-expected head. A new study published Jan. 13 in mBio shows that the Zika virus hijacks a host protein called ANKLE2, which happens to be important for brain development, to assist its own reproduction. Because Zika, unlike most related viruses, can cross the placenta, this can have disastrous consequences in pregnancy.