- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Hammock lab and the Guodong Zhang lab at the University of Massachusetts published exciting research today (April 30) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that involves hope for patients with obesity-enhanced colon cancer.
Their research showed that inhibiting an enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase--discovered in the Hammock lab--may reduce the risk of obesity-enhanced colon cancer and may offer a therapeutic target to block and treat colonic inflammation.
Co-first authors Weicang Wang and Jianan Zhang of the Zhang lab, and Jun Yang of the Hammock lab/UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, noted that 30 percent of Americans are obese, and these individuals have a 30 to 60 percent higher risk of developing colon cancer. It is the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Colon inflammation is an early symptom of cancer.
“But to date, the mechanisms by which obesity increases cancer risks are not well understood, and there are few effective strategies to prevent obesity-enhanced colon cancer," said Zhang, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Hammock lab and now an assistant professor of food science at UMass where he focuses his research on prevention of colonic inflammation (inflammatory bowel disease) and colon cancer. "Our study showed that soluble epoxide hydrolase and its metabolites are over-expressed in colon of obese mice. In addition, we found that pharmacological inhibition or genetic deletion of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) abolishes obesity-induced inflammation and activation of pro-tumorigenic pathways in colon. These results showed that sEH is an essential enzyme involved in obesity-enhanced colonic inflammation and potentially colon cancer, and pharmacological inhibitors of sEH could be novel agents for prevention of these diseases.”
In the study, the 18-member team investigated the roles of sEH in obesity-induced colonic inflammation, which included using two different sEH inhibitors and a knockout mouse genetically modified not to produce sEH. Results proved similar in all cases.
They further conducted another study in both lean and obese mice with experimentally induced colon inflammation and used molecular analyses to follow a pathway called Wnt. About 90 percent of sporadic colorectal cancers have activating mutations within the Wnt pathway. The team found that obesity increases activation of Wnt signaling in the colon, but it can be abolished by the two different inhibitors and the knockout.
“The sEH inhibitor blocked obesity-induced colon inflammation,” said Hammock. “This worked even for mice on high fat diets.”
“Colon inflammation is highly associated with a variety of diseases and the inflammation often progresses to colon cancer,” Hammock said. “Weicang Wang, Guodong Zhang and co-workers have done a meticulous job investigating the biologically active fats including fatty acid diols that are associated with the inflammation. By blocking the production of these diols they were able to block the inflammation.”
“The study was an exciting discovery from lipidomics technique,” said co-first author Jun Yang. “The consistent results from pharmacologic inhibition and genetic knockout (KO) as well as the signaling pathway mechanistic studies all support sEH as a potential treatment for obesity-induced colon inflammation."
Co-author Jun-Yan Liu is already collecting human samples to extend the study, and Hammock pointed out that they hope that the soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor will be in human clinical trials this year.
This work, titled “Lipidomic Profiling Reveals Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase as a Therapeutic Target of Obesity-Induced Colonic Inflammation,” drew grant support from the USDA's National Institute for Food and Agriculture; National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH/NIEHS); NIEHS Superfund Research Program, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The five UC Davis researchers—Bruce Hammock, Jun Yang, Jia Sun, and Sung Hee Hwang and Debin Wan—are all with the Hammock lab/UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The UMass researchers, in addition to those listed above: Yuxin Wang, Wiepeng Qi, Haixia Yang, and Professor Yeonhwa Park, Department of Food Science, Katherine Sanidad, Food Science and Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program, and Professor Daeyoung Kim of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Hammock, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors, directs two major UC Davis programs; the Superfund Program financed by the National Institute of Environmental Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH-NIEHS); and the NIH Biotechnology Training Program. He began his career reseaching insect pests but switched to human health issues.
To date, the Hammock laboratory has published almost 900 peer-reviewed papers on the sEH enzyme, discovered while Hammock and Sarjeet Gill (now of UC Riverside) were researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides at UC Berkeley. The work, begun in 1969, led to the discovery that many regulatory molecules are controlled as much by degradation as by biosynthesis, Hammock said. These epoxy fatty acid chemical mediators control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, and pain and inflammation.
For many years Gill and Hammock were alone in studying this enzyme but today its importance is well recognized in mammalian biology, with more than 17,000 peer-reviewed papers in the area. Hammock credits the NIEHS for supporting research in this area since the 1970s.
A Davis-based company, EicOsis, has received a large grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to move inhibitors to the clinic to treat diabetic neuropathic pain. “We are developing a non-opiate analgesic to treat the chronic pain often associated with diabetes and hope to be in human trials over the next 12 months,” said William Schmidt, vice president of clinical development at EicOsis.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The occasion: The traditional fly-tying demonstrations by the Fly Fishers of Davis in Briggs Hall, University of California, Davis, during the campuswide Picnic Day celebration.
The group promotes the art of fly fishing and engages in community education and conservation. Another aim is to protect the state's natural resources.
Or, as the Fly Fishers point out on their website: "A 501(c)(4) non-profit organization with 100 plus members that is dedicated to teaching people about fly fishing, swapping yarns about fishing, sponsoring fly fishing outings, conservation and generally enjoying the fine art of fly fishing."
The club usually meets at 7:30 p.m. on the last Tuesday of each month at Frances Harper Junior High School, 4000 Covell Blvd. That's subject to change when they hold their dinners, fundraisers, picnics and other functions.
What happens at the meetings? As the Fly Fishers point out:
- A raffle of fly fishing items.
- A guest speaker who usually narrates a PowerPoint presentation covering some aspect of fly fishing.
- Occasional silent auctions and equipment swaps.
- A library of videos that members can sign out for a one month period.
- A table full of fly fishing club newsletters and magazines for browsing.
- Updates on where to fish, club activities, outings and trout conservation projects.
- Lots of BS (Back-Slapping) yarn-spinning, good fellowship (and womanship too).
And you know how some anglers are prone to telling whoppers about the one that got away? A fish so big that it boggles the imagination--and exceeds the length of outstretched arms? Not to worry. The Fly Fishers' rule (tongue in cheek): "Absolutely NO stretching of the truth is tolerated...EVER."
So, on Saturday, April 18, during the 104th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, we watched Fly Fisher member Dave Driscoll of Vacaville, a retired Solano County deputy district attorney, show Steven Mao, 7, of Davis, how to tie a fly.
Little Steven was so absorbed that he never noticed the photographer or heard the shutter lick.
When Driscoll finished the demonstration, he handed the fly--in a safe plastic container--to Steven to take home. That's what the Fly Fishers do. And why the Picnic Day Committee is so grateful for their time, talents, and generosity.
Steven's smile said it all.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And attendees did. They asked questions, expressed concerns, and offered comments.
Members of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Students' Association, headed by president Brendon Boudinot, fielded scores of questions from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"Bug Doctor" Boudinot, a doctoral candidate who studies ants in the Phil Ward lab and who co-chaired the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Picnic Day Committee, remembers that a little girl asked him "Do bugs get ear infections?"
That was Lilliana Phillips, 5, of Carmichael, who stood in line with her father, William Phillips, a UC Davis alumnus (bachelor's degree in environmental toxicology and master's degree in pharmacology toxicology.
"Good question," Boudinot told her as the crowd smiled.
"I had to think about that one for a while," Boudinot later related. "My best answer is that perhaps mantises, grasshoppers, and cicadas do, as they all have 'ears' (tympana), albeit in different places on their bodies!"
Other questions zeroed in on evolution, insect control, mosquito hawks and butterflies.
"I had a long conversation with an undergraduate about the evolutionary descent of insects and their arthropod kin," Boudinot said. "We discussed the origin of the Arthropoda, the reason why Paleozoic insects were so large, and a number of other topics."
Another undergraduate, a math and economics major, asked Boudinot about the use of differential calculus in his research.
"A number of people asked about insect control, and some even asked plant control questions," Boudinot said. "One woman and her family asked me about 'mosquito hawks.' I informed her that these large flies are not predatory, and have grub-like larvae which feed on decaying material, among other aspects of their natural history."
Another student quizzed him about his knowledge of the color blue in the insect world. "We talked about structural colors. I was unaware that there is a genus of butterfly, Nessaea (Nymphalidae), which has true blue pigmentation--an extreme rarity in the natural world!" (According to Wikipedia, unlike virtually all other butterflies with blue coloration, the blue colors in this genus are due to pigmentation rather than iridescence--for example, Morpho species.)
One young boy asked if mosquitoes will ever go extinct. "I told him that mosquitoes will certainly not go extinct in our lifetime. However, there are many many species of mosquitoes which do not bite people, and if he wanted to learn more about them, he could ask the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District folks (in the nearby booth).
"The final, long conversation I had was with an engineer who was fascinated by insect anatomy and physiology. The conversation started with the mechanism for insect breathing, led through heart and gut anatomy." Boudinot then headed to Briggs 158 to use the chalkboard to explain how the insect cuticle has a machine function.
The next "Bug Doctor" in the rotation was Zachary Griebenow, a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the Phil Ward lab.
The little girl who asked the "Do bugs have ear infections?" also asked him for his take.
"I said that I doubted it," Griebenow related, "as the auditory organs insects have are chordotonal: essentially, they consist of a scolopidiform sensillum attached to cuticle at both ends. Therefore, as there is no fluid involved, the idea of an infection attacking such a structure seemed unlikely to me."
"Another individual asked me to explain the distinction between arachnids and insects, which I did as one might expect (differences in tagmosis, appendages, etc.)"
Lastly, Griebenow was asked whether insects "answered to the same God as we do." He responded that he did not have the authority or knowledge to answer the question.
UC Davis entomology graduate students, including Boudinot, are accustomed to answering entomological questions. Boudinot served as a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Linnaean Games Team that won the Entomological Society of America's national championship twice: in 2015 and 2016. The ESA Linnaean Games are a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competition on entomological facts played between university-sponsored student teams. The teams score points by correctly answering random questions.
Some of the questions the UC Davis team, captained by Ralph Washington Jr., successfully answered in the 2016 competition:
- Question: “You have just moved into an apartment that has been vacant for weeks but whose prior owners had several cats and dogs. A very few days after you move in you are bitten by a huge number of cat fleas that seem to have appeared out of nowhere. What characteristic behavior of cat fleas biology is probably responsible for this?” Answer: “Cat flea pupae eclose in response to the presence of a host.”
- Question: Insects inhabiting a very thin water film such as splash zones marginal to streams are called what?
Answer: Madicoles - Question: The insect order Notoptera unites what two former insect orders?
Answer: Notoptera unites Mantophasmatodea and Grylloblattodea - Question: What are the two obvious clinical symptoms that someone is suffering from onchocerciasis?
Answer: Blindness and hanging tissue around lymph nodes, often times the scrotum. - Question: What is the common name for the zygentoman pest that thrives in high humidity and high temperatures and is often found in boiler rooms?
Answer: The firebrat, Thermobia domestica. - Question: Projection neurons travel across what two major regions of the insect brain?
Answer: The protocerebrum and the deutocerebrum
Click on the YouTube video to see the champion round of the 2016 Linnaean Games.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you can't chew gum and walk at the same time, think about the multi-tasking honey bee.
Have you ever seen a worker bee engaging in three tasks simultaneously: flying, adjusting her pollen load, and cleaning her tongue?
We recently spotted a honey bee packing what seemed like a bowling ball-size load as she headed toward the mustard in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. She took the opportunity to clean her tongue or proboscis. There's a reason they're called worker bees!
This time of year, Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, is also engaging in multi-tasking as she plans the second annual California Honey Festival in partnership with Woodland city officials. It's set for Saturday, May 5 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in downtown historical Woodland. It's a free, family event that promises to be both educational and entertaining.
"The California Honey Festival's mission is to promote honey, honey bees and their products, and beekeeping through this unique educational platform, to the broader public," Harris says on her website. "Through lectures and demonstrations, the festival will help develop an interest in beekeeping by the younger generation. Attendees will learn about the myriad of issues that confront honey bees including pesticide use, diseases and even the weather! In addition, attendees can learn how to creatively plant their gardens to help feed all of our pollinators. It is important for the community to appreciate and understand the importance of bees as the lead pollinator of many of our crops adding to the food diversity we have come to enjoy."
The California Honey Festival benefits "select bee and pollinator non-profits doing the hard work of research and education to ensure bee health worldwide," Harris says.
At the inaugural festival last year, Harris was expecting a crowd of 3000. Surprise! Surprise! More than 20,000 attended. With all the buzz about the bees and the crucial need to protect them, the attendees turned into "bee-lievers." And there's more in store this year.
Among the speakers are Gene Brandi, past president of the American Beekeeping Federation; Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; John Mola, UC Davis graduate student and the winner of the 2018 UC Davis Bee Symposium graduate student poster competition; Kate Frey of Hopland, noted garden designer, consultant, columnist and co-author of The Bee Friendly Garden; and Billy Synk, director of pollination programs with Project Apis m., and formerly with the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis will present its insect petting zoo (think Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects, tarantulas and praying mantids) and educational displays.
Wait, there's more. And more. and more. Check out the California Honey Festival's schedule of events.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Who wouldn't, when you get an opportunity to pet a rose-haired tarantula named Snuggles, guide walking sticks "strolling" on your arm, or cradle a Madagascar hissing cockroach? Or marvel at the display of Platypsyllus castoris, an ectoparasite of beavers?
That's what awaited the 2000 visitors at the Bohart Museum of Entomology during the 104th annual UC Davis Picnic Day last Saturday, April 18.
Although the theme of the campuswide Picnic Day spanned "Where the Sun Shines," Bohart Museum officials focused on "Where the Sun Doesn't Shine." They highlighted nocturnal insects, cave-dwelling insects, and parasites, including a beetle, Platypsyllus castoris, found on the south end of a beaver.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart and professor of entomology at UC Davis, kept busy answering questions about the beaver display--a pelt, and a graphic of the beetle.
As Bohart Museum associate and undergraduate entomology student Wade Spencer said: "These beetles look like they are to fleas what halibut are to other fishes. Instead of the lateral compression fleas exhibit, Platyspyllus castoris are dorso-ventrally flattened, which only adds to their alien appearance. Their unique feeding and lodging preferences have given us so many good laughs, we wanted to make them the star of this year's picnic day event at the Bohart."
Entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly and moth collection at the Bohart, kept busy encouraging visitors to get acquainted with Snuggles. They held him, petted him and photographed him. Little Teddy Owens, 2 of Davis, held by his mother, Dina, high-fived Snuggles.
Another display featured scorpions: graduate student Charlotte Herbert shone a black light on them to illustrate how they glow in the dark. All scorpions fluoresce in ultraviolet light.
Visitors also learned about bees in a display featuring sweat bees, leaf-cutting bees, mason bees, bumble bees, honey bees, sunflower bees, and carpenter bees, as well as Andrena and Melissodes anthophora.
The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, praying mantids and tarantulas. The museum's gift shop, open year around, offers T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum is open to the public from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. It is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu.
