When the Ironic Bonds Team and the Gibbs Team won the 12-team competition in the UC Davis Eric Conn Biochemistry Quizzes, it's not “game over.” It's the beginning of a three-game global series. 

“We are planning a global event on Wednesday, March 10, with our UC Davis players challenging UK's Cardiff University,” announced organizer-moderator Walter Leal, UC Davis distinguished professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. UC Davis Chancellor Gary May will deliver the welcome address. 

The three-game virtual event, to begin at 11 a.m., Pacific Time on Zoom, will first pit UC Davis vs. UC Davis, and  then Cardiff vs. Cardiff to determine the players in the championship game. The public is invited to view the event by registering here: https://tinyurl.com/dmnftsuj  

“I am absolutely delighted to provide this opportunity for our students to learn biochemistry, have fun, work as teams, and build international ties,” Leal said. “Yes, remote learning is challenging, but it also creates new opportunities.” 

Students comprising the Ironic Bonds Team are Catherine Rodriguez, Jiaying Liu, Kelly Brandt, Aly Lodigiani, and Efrain Vasquez Santos. The Gibbs Team: Brandon Matsumoto, Tina Luu, Yasi Parsa, Esha Urs, and Kathryn Vallejo.  

The format of the game will be three questions per team, alternating one question for each team. “In the event of a tie,” Leal said, “each team will be asked one question at a time until we break the deadlock.” 

While the teams work on the questions, Dr. Dean Blumberg, an epidemiologist and chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, UC Davis Children's Hospital, will answer questions about vaccines and vaccinations. 

The Eric Conn Biochemistry Quizzes, memorializing a noted plant biochemist known for his research and teaching, drew fundamental biochemistry questions. (See event on YouTube at https://youtu.be/Y9T9ayRXyYE)

“This time,” Leal revealed, “we will focus on a theme of protein structures, emphasizing two proteins of public interest--specifically, hemoglobin, the carrier of oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. As I said in class, this protein makes FedEx envious. It carries oxygen from the lungs to the muscles and other cells, drops the load at the destinations, and picks up carbon dioxide and protons to take back to the lungs. It is a multitasking protein. It is never idle unless a person gets COVID-19.” 

The SARS-CoV-2, the virus-causing COVID-19, needs a human cell to replicate, and they get access to the cell with a protein named spike, Leal explained. “When spike binds to a human receptor called ACE2, the virus gains access to the cell, replicates, the cell is destroyed, and the mucus formed in the lungs make it difficult for oxygen to reach hemoglobin.” 

The UC Davis students have been studying the structures of hemoglobin and spike, Leal related. “Let's check their knowledge.” 

And, in a fun exchange, the UC Davis players will exchange university hoodies with Cardiff.

The Eric Conn Biochemistry Quizzes drew more than 300 attendees, who heard such questions and answers as:

• "Why do hairdressers use thioglycolic acid for permanent hair treatment?”
  Answer: To break disulfide bridges.
• "What was Eric Conn's favorite amino acid?”
  Answer: Tyrosine.
• "Why is the spike protein called a glycoprotein?"
  Answer: Because it is decorated with sugar.
• "When you get ivy poisoning, where do you expect that the active ingredient (urushiol) will accumulate?"
  Answer: In the cell membrane.
• "Who was the scientist at the Genome Center that came out with the idea of using papain protease to reduce saliva viscosity?"
  Answer: Lutz Froenicke

 (See recap on https://bit.ly/3stHa6c)

Answer me this: “What is the name of the proteins (water channels) that facilitates water transport into and out of cells? And who discovered this family of proteins?”

The 60 undergraduate students competing in the first-ever Eric Conn Biochemistry Quizzes at the University of California, Davis, answered: “Aquaporins and Peter Agre.”

“They got it right,” said organizer-moderator Walter Leal, UC Davis distinguished professor of molecular and cellular biology and a former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. "Peter Agre," he added, "was an American physician and molecular biologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for this discovery.”

The students, divided into 12 teams of five each, answered a bevy of biochemistry questions in a two-hour virtual event memorializing legendary plant biochemist Eric Conn (1923-2017), a UC Davis emeritus professor and fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. 

More than 300 attendees ZOOMed in to watch the competition, hearing questions and answers such as:

• "Why do hairdressers use thioglycolic acid for permanent hair treatment?”
  Answer: To break disulfide bridges.
• "What was Eric Conn's favorite amino acid?”
  Answer: Tyrosine.
• "Why is the spike protein called a glycoprotein?"
  Answer: Because it is decorated with sugar.
• "When you get ivy poisoning, where do you expect that the active ingredient (urushiol) will accumulate?"
  Answer: In the cell membrane.
• "Who was the scientist at the Genome Center that came out with the idea of using papain protease to reduce saliva viscosity?"
  Answer: Lutz Froenicke

 “I thought the quizzes would help students get out of the ZOOM routine," Leal said, "but I did not envision that there would be so much interest. The response was overwhelming, and students showed a genuine interest in the activity. They recorded videos for self-introduction, studied for the quizzes, and--more importantly--made new friends.” 

The event drew so much widespread interest that Leal expanded the teams from eight to 12. The first eight teams to register played online, while the other four competed “off tube” or off-camera. 

College of Biological Sciences (CBS) faculty asked the questions, with CBS emeriti professors Clark Lagarias and Charles Gasser serving as judges. Each team had a minute to answer a question. In the meantime, "we showed interviews about Eric Conn, favorite spots on the UC Davis campus, and videos about COVID-19 and other health issues,” Leal said. 

Two teams emerged victorious as the champions: Ironic Bonds and the Gibbs Team. Tonie Leech, Jiaying Liu, Catherine Rodriguez, Lauren Hartwell, and Kelly Brandt comprised the Ironic Bonds, while Natalie Six, Brandon Matsumoto, Tina Luu, Yasi Parsa, and Esha Urs formed the Gibbs Team. 

Leal said the 60 students, five on each of the 12 teams, “were randomly selected for a team. Perhaps they would never have had a chance to work together on a project, particularly now in this remote learning era.”  

The other online teams sported such names as the Green Team (named for the late Mel Green, UC Davis genetics pioneer), Amigo Acids, Proline Pros, Drop the Base, Krebs Cyclists, and Attack on Titration. Of the four off-tube teams (Teams A, B, C and D), Team A and Team B won. Team A members: Efrain Vasquez Santos, Daniel Colón, Eva Pak, Stephanie Matsumoto and Julia Ekmekchyan. Team B members: Brycen Carter, Beatrice Ark-Majiyagbe, Ritika Pudota, Katie Kim and Samantha Levy) won.

Participating students joined in from as far away as India, Japan, and China and as close as Davis. Other students hailed from Cupertino, Los Angeles, Redwood City, Santa Monica, Palmdale, Irvine, Redding, Sacramento, Fairfield, Cupertino, San Jose, San Diego, San Ramon, Elk Grove, San Lorenzo, Lincoln, El Centro, Santa Rosa, Oakland, Roseville, Tracy, and Martinez in California, and Long Island in New York, among the many other municipalities. 

One student, Aaditi Gaikwad, a junior in genetics and genomics, zoomed in from India at 5:30 a.m. "At first when I decided to participate in the Eric Conn Biochemistry Quiz, I was very nervous and had second thoughts, but I decided to give it a try and step out of my comfort zone and I am glad that I did," Gaikwad said. "I am attending classes from India due to the pandemic and the timezone difference is a huge challenge for me. For the Eric Conn Quiz, I had to be up and ready before 5.30 a.m., which I didn't mind at all because I was so excited for it. The quiz was the most spectacular start to my day! I also really enjoyed working with my team. Overall, the Eric Conn Biochemistry Quiz was an awesome experience and I take this opportunity to thank you Dr. Leal for facilitating it."

Other comments included:

• “It was wonderful....a nice way for students to showcase their knowledge to their families and friends and a wonderful tribute to a great UCD scientist.  Kudos to Professor Leal for putting it together.” 
• "Dr. Leal is impressive in organizing these events and the COVID symposiums.”
• "Very entertaining would watch again!
• "This was a great event and I am happy I got to be a part of it."
• "This was great! You (Leal) should definitely make this an annual thing!”
• "This was a super fun event and I wish we could have the opportunity to have something like this again. It was a really good review of the material we learned.”
• "I wanted to play!"

The viewers heaped praise on the students:

• "Well done to all the students! Your studying paid off and it was entertaining to see you guys compete!”
• "I am very proud of the students and hold both students and faculty in highest regard, very respectful and smart."
• "Very good job! It was a lot of fun seeing everyone play.”
• "Great job y'all, you're braver than I am and I was impressed by how many questions you were able to answer correctly!”
• "Congratulations to all that played today.  You are inspiring young individuals and we know you will leave a mark on your chosen fields of study.”
• "Very impressed with the caliber of students involved. Great game!”

Conn, a member of the UC Davis faculty for 43 years, was the third recipient of the UC Davis Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.  Described as an excellent teacher and researcher, Conn received the Academic Senate's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1974 and the Academic Senate's highest honor, the Faculty Research Lecturer Award, in 1977. He won the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement in 1989. See https://youtu.be/TdwJkcjQvbw.  

Access YouTube
Watch the Eric Conn Biochemistry Quizzes on YouTube at https://youtu.be/Y9T9ayRXyYE.

If you're meandering around the UC Riverside campus and see a cockroach, it might have a connection to UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock. 

This is a story of what might have been that never was and never will be and it all has to do with Hammock's cockroaches. 

Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, remembers the scenario well.  

While on the UC Riverside faculty, he worked on two cultures of very large roaches. One was the wingless Madagascar hissing cockroach, Gromphadorhina portentosa, and the other, the South American cave cockroach, Blaberus giganteus with "lovely translucent wings." 

When he published a paper on his research, the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture discovered that these 20-year-old cultures had never been registered. 

“So, I registered, certified and chugged on with the research,” recalled Hammock.  “Then one day both cultures vanished. I was frantic.” 

The next day the chair of the department walked into his lab, gave him $10, and told him: “This is your share.” 

The chair had sold the roaches that “no one was using” to a Hollywood movie company. “This  was the main project in my lab so I went to Hollywood and tried to get the insects back,” Hammock lamented. “No way.” 

Hammock's prized roaches, perhaps destined for greatness in the scientific world of cockroach literature, instead starred as evil roaches in the 1975-released movie, “Bug,” an American horror film based on Thomas Page's novel, ”The Hephaestus Plague (1973).” 

The film, according to Internet Movie Database (IMDB), became a science fiction classic, even though the directors used the two very different species interchangeably in the film. 

The plot: A massive earthquake releases mutant cockroaches that create fire by rubbing together their cerci, a pair of small sensory appendages at the end of their abdomen that function somewhat like antennae. However, these mutant roaches die because they cannot survive in the low air pressure on the Earth's surface. Nonetheless, Professor James Parmiter (actor Bradford Dillman, 1930-2018), manages to keep one alive in a pressure chamber and breeds it with a modern cockroach, creating a breed of intelligent, flying, super-cockroaches. Chaos erupts in the small farming community.

Chaos also erupted on the movie set—and not just because some of the actors hated roaches.

“In a twist of fate,” Hammock said, “the movie company had rented the zoology building during the summer at UC Riverside for filming evil cockroaches from the center of the planet that got in people's hair and set them on fire.” In the process, the flames ignited a minor fire in the building. 

An image of zoo building and a Hammock-reared roach appear on the IMDB poster.  “After they finished shooting, I heard that they released the roaches on campus,” Hammock said.  

“I would never find them,” he lamented. "But my son (Tom Hammock) who now is in the film industry loved the story."

Madagascar hissing cockroaches, nicknamed "hissers," measure two to three inches long and are big in the pet trade. They are a popular attraction in the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology's live “petting zoo.” 

Hammock's roach-rearing days at UC Riverside included giving a hissing roach to his mother because “she wanted a pet so I gave her one.” 

“She had for several years as a pet.  But she brought it back because she could not get her lady friends to babysit when she traveled.  It terrified our cat but finally settled into an uneasy relationship.” 

Viewers' description of Bug ranged from “the best of killer bug films” and “a scream fest” to “something that really freaked me out.”  One reviewer, noting what happened to Professor Parmiter's wife, wrote “Bug, you light up my wife.” 

Looking back, Hammock noted that "The science was actually a serious effort to work out the biosynthetic pathway of the hormone that regulates insect development, and then disrupt it for insect control. Sadly, I only published the first step before Hollywood turned the roaches into science fiction film history."

Lady beetles, aka ladybugs, gobble up aphids like kids gobble up popcorn and we all cheer loudly. 

Take that, you aphids! That'll teach you to suck the lifeblood out of my plants!

"Aphids are small, soft-bodied insects with long slender mouthparts that they use to pierce stems, leaves, and other tender plant parts and suck out fluids," according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management website on how to manage aphids. "Almost every plant has one or more aphid species that occasionally feed on it."

Aphids are major agricultural and garden pests. What's it like to be an aphid? How much stress can they handle?

Enter postdoctoral scholar Jessica Kansman of the Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University. She's the next speaker in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's winter seminar series. She'll speak on "To Be an Aphid in a Cruel World: How Abiotic and Biotic Stressors Influence Plant-Insect Interactions" from 4:10 to 5 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 24. To register and attend the Zoom seminar, access this Google form link.

"Whether it is combating the ever-changing host-plant conditions, or keeping careful watch for hungry predators and parasites--aphids have a stressful experience," Kansman says in her abstract. "My research has focused on figuring out just how much stress aphids can handle. Specifically, how plant water stress influences aphids and their natural enemies, and whether predator odors are as stressful for aphids as the predators themselves."

On her website, she says: "I am broadly interested in plant-insect interactions, abiotic/biotic stress interactions, insect ecology, and multi-trophic interactions. I am passionate about science communication, science policy, and inspiring a love of insects in children, in the college classroom, and with just about anyone I come across."

Kansman holds a bachelor's degree in entomology (2015) from Michigan State University, East Lansing, and a doctorate in plant, insect and microbial sciences (2020) from the University of Missouri, studying with Deborah Finke. As a doctoral student, she received a $116,859 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture "to study the effect of drought on aphid performance and behavior, indirect effects of drought on natural enemies, and how these effects cascade up to influence insect communities."  The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) of USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded the grant.

Kansman has given such presentations as "Plants vs. Insects: A Tale of Spines, Spit and Assassins." In one YouTube video on "Decoding Science," she describes aphids as "devastating agricultural pests. They feed by piercing a needlelike mouthpart into the plant tissue and they use it as a straw to suck up the sap of the plant." Aphids stunt growth and transmit viruses.  

Cooperative Extension specialist Ian Grettenberg is the seminar host and coordinates the seminars. For technical issues, he may be reached at imgrettenberger@udavis.edu.

For a list of Department of Entomology and Nematology seminars, click here.