Plants aren't passive. Though we step on grass, brush against branches and pick petals, plants aren't just immobile organisms. And no one knows this better than Tim Metcalf, the director emeritus of the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory.

"They have their own personality," said Metcalf, who was initially hired as a laboratory assistant at the conservatory back in 1971. "Plants do crazy things and they surprise you." 

Sharon Strauss, a Distinguished Professor emerita in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, was among the three UC Davis faculty who have been elected as members of the National Academy of Sciences. They are among 120 new members and 30 international members announced by the academy on Tuesday, May 3.

Less than a week ago I was in the University Credit Union Center for the Dean’s Circle Undergraduate Research Conference. In the image above, you can see what a success the event was. Over 200 CBS undergraduates attended the conference and shared their research posters with peers, visitors and CBS faculty. And each student received a certificate in recognition of their hard work. My congratulations to all of them.

Tetrahymena, a tiny single celled-organism, turns out to be hiding a surprising secret: it’s doing respiration – using oxygen to generate cellular energy – differently from other organisms such as plants, animals or yeasts. The discovery, published March 31 in Science, highlights the power of new techniques in structural biology and reveals gaps in our knowledge of a major branch of the tree of life.

As sessile organisms, plants have to continually adapt their growth and architecture to the ever-changing environment. To do so, plants have evolved distinct molecular mechanisms to sense and respond to the environment and integrate the signals from outside with endogenous developmental programs.

New research from Nitzan Shabek’s laboratory at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, published in Nature Plants, unravels the underlying mechanism of protein targeting and destruction in a specific plant hormone signaling pathway.

Being a parent can be stressful.

For UC Davis biology associate professor Rebecca Calisi Rodríguez, parental behavior has inspired her research as a biological scientists as well as her public advocacy message.

Calisi Rodríguez studies the hormonal shifts that occur in numerous species because of parental instincts. She also is passionate about encouraging the scientific community to be more supportive and accepting of a diversity of people into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers, especially scientists who are mothers.

Every year more than 100 billion garments enter the world's landfills, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average American throws away roughly 81 pounds of clothing material per year. 

The Center for Neuroscience recently announced two new funds, the Karen Sigvardt, Ph.D. Neuroscience Award and the Karen Sigvardt, Ph.D. Neuroscience Fellowship.

The award and fellowship were established in October 2021 and endowed through a generous gift from Audrey Webb, in loving memory of her late partner Karen Sigvardt, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Neurology in the School of Medicine and a valued core member of the Center for Neuroscience and the greater neuroscience community at UC Davis.

When it comes to education in the biological sciences, applied learning like undergraduate research is integral to the assimilation of knowledge. Through experiences in the laboratory, students acquire new skills and reinforce learnings from the lecture hall, taking techniques from the page to the pipette and laying the foundation on which they’ll build the rest of their careers.

For some students, undergraduate research experiences may seem out of reach, but philanthropy can help provide the resources they need to participate in such important educational endeavors.

In the 2022 QS World University Rankings by Subject released on April 6, UC Davis ranked 43rd in the world and tied for 19th in the nation in the broad category of the life sciences and medicine. Demonstrating its strength across the disciplines, UC Davis was also ranked globally and nationally in each of the other broad categories: natural sciences, engineering and technology, arts and humanities, and social sciences and management.