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.

Scientists have long known that chloroplasts help plants turn the sun’s energy into food, but a new study, led by researchers in the Department of Plant Biology, shows that they’re also essential for plant immunity to viral and bacterial pathogens.

Chloroplasts are generally spherical, but a small percentage of them change their shape and send out tube-like projections called “stromules.” First observed over a century ago, the biological function of stromules has remained enigmatic.

Cancer often starts with the reshuffling of DNA—akin to scrambling the pages of a dictionary. Exactly how this happens has long been a mystery. But researchers in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences have now arrived at one promising explanation.

The problem seems to happen at a critical moment: when the cell is fixing a broken string of DNA. This repair process, called homologous recombination, can go awry, says Wolf-Dietrich Heyer, a Distinguished Professor and chair in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

In their most significant gift to UC Davis, alumni donors Charles and Nancy Cooper have pledged $1 million to support undergraduate student research opportunities within the College of Biological Sciences, or CBS.

“The gift is really a ‘thank you’ to the place and the people who helped us along the way, both personally and professionally,” said Charles “Chuck” Cooper. “I came to UC Davis with dreams of being a doctor, and I left with my family and my career. I feel like I owe Davis a lot.”