- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It promises to be a day of innovation, knowledge-sharing and collaboration, announced Kay Monroe of Zagaya, the event host.
Among the UC Davis researchers participating will be Gregory Lanzaro, professor, and Yoosook Lee, assistant researcher in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology (PMI) in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Shirley Luckhart, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis School of Medicine. Lanzaro and Luckhart are graduate student advisors in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Lanzaro's Soundbite presentation,"Malaria in the Americas: A New Research Initiative for the UC Davis Vector Genetics Lab," will key in on the challenges of malaria control in Brazil. Lee's Soundbite presentation will be on a new diagnostic tool for malaria mosquito research. Luckhart is scheduled for both a Soundbite and poster.
Two of the UC Davis presenters, Laura Norris and Bradley Main, are National Institutes of Health T32 postdoctoral fellows. They will cover the topic of malaria vector evolution in the face of insecticide pressure from bed net campaign.
The schedule of events will be presented the day of the symposium.
The list of the other UC Davis presenters, as announced by Monroe:
Nazzy Pakpour, Soundbite; and Elizabeth Glennon, Kristen Lokken, Jason Maloney, Jose Pietri, Rashaun Potts and Lattha Souvannaseng, Bo Wang, poster.
Keynote speakers are:
- Tim Wells, chief scientific officer, Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva, Switzerland, who will share the latest efforts to develop new drugs aimed at wiping out malaria.
Title: The Pipeline of Medicines to Support Malaria Control and Elimination
View abstract
Joseph DeRisi, professor and vice chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC San Francisco, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, who will talk about work in his lab. - Title: "A View from the Trenches – Anti-malarial Drug Development"
View abstract - Regina Rabinovich, ExxonMobil Malaria Scholar in Residence at the Harvard School of Public Health, who will examine the future of malaria eradication efforts, past the 2015 UN Millennium Development goals.
Title: "Beyond the Millennium Development Goals Horizon – What Will Help Drive Success Post-2015?"
View abstract
This year Zagaya has added to the symposium, "The Malaria Artwork Showcase," designed to display artistic representations of malaria, from the molecular to the global scale. The Lanzaro lab will be among those participating in the showcase.
Officials at Zagaya (which means "spear") say this is a critical time for malaria research professionals to come together, as it's one year away from the 2015 UN Millennium Development goal of halting and reversing the growth of malaria incidence. The symposium provides the forum for researchers, implementers, advocates and students to "inspire and catalyze change for the greater good."
Registration is open and ongoing until the day of the event. General registration is $50, and students, $25. A portion of the registration fee--$10--will go toward purchasing bed nets via the United Nation's Nothing but Nets program, a global, grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria.
"Every 45 seconds a child in Africa dies from malaria, a disease spread by a single mosquito bite," according to the From Nothing But Nets website. "There are more than 200 million cases of malaria each year, and nearly 1 million of those infected die from the disease — most of them children under the age of five." Ten dollars can fund a life-saving, insecticide-treated bed net to protect a family in Africa. The nets are considered one of the most cost-effective tools to prevent the spread of malaria. Bed nets have been shown to reduce malaria transmissions by 90 percent in areas with high coverage rates.
For question about the symposium, email Monroe. Anyone interested in volunteering at the symposium should email volunteer coordinator, Gladys De Leon.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
He will speak on "Honey Bees in Seed Crop Pollination" at 6 p.m. Mussen serves as the Extension apiculturist for the entire state, but is also involved in bee activities nationally and globally.
Seed Central is organizing the April 9-10 conference with the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. This is the Veg Research and Development Forum, an annual meeting of the research managers of vegetable seed companies with breeding activities for the North American market. Its purpose: to enable discussion among research managers of long-term, pre-competitive research topics and research-related policy issues of importance to the North American vegetable seed industry. Attendance includes invited participation with university scientists, technology providers to the seed industry and members of the downstream agriculture and food industries.
Seed Central, established in 2010, is an initiative of the Seed Biotechnology Center at UC Davis and SeedQuest and involves a growing number of companies and organizations in the global seed and food industry. It aims to facilitate communication and research collaboration between seed industry members and university scientists.
UC Davis is a world leader in seed, plant and agricultural sciences. Some 100 seed and seed-related companies are located near UC Davis and benefit greatly from its proximity, but the influence of UC Davis extends throughout the USA and far beyond, according to the Seed Central website.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
His seminar is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall.
“Insects and other arthropods are infected with maternally transmitted endosymbionts,” Jaenike says in his abstract. “ Some of these symbionts spread and persist by manipulating host reproduction in various ways. However, many have no such effects, and the means by which they are retained within species is unknown. We recently found that Drosophila neotestacea carries endosymbiotic Spiroplasma bacteria, which render female flies resistant to the sterilizing effects of nematode parasitism."
"The prevalence of Spiroplasma infection in D. neotestacea increased rapidly in eastern North America in recent decades, and it is now spreading rapidly from east to west across North American. Coincident with the increase in Spiroplasma infection has been a dramatic decline in the prevalence of nematode parasitism, due, we believe, to the much lower reproductive output of nematodes that parasitize Spiroplasma-infected flies. We microinjected Spiroplasma into several other Drosophila species; the infections quickly stabilized with high levels of maternal transmission. In one species, D. putrida, Spiroplasma rendered flies resistant to the sterilizing effects of nematode parasitism. Finally, we microinjected various strains Spiroplasma obtained from other Drosophila species into D. neotestacea and found that only the strain native to D. neotestacea confers any resistance to nematode parasites.
Jaenike, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAA), focuses his research on host-parasite interactions, heritable endosymbionts, and ecology of Drosophila.
He received his bachelor of arts degree in biology from Amherst College in 1971 and his doctorate in biology from Princeton University in 1975. His faculty positions include State University of New York (SUNY), 1979-1983; University of Rochester, 1983-1999; University of Arizona, 1999-2001; and University of Rochester, 2001-present.
A few of his publications:
Early career
Jaenike, J. 1978. On optimal oviposition behavior in phytophagous insects. Theoretical Population Biology 14:350-356.
Jaenike, J. 1978. An hypothesis to account for the maintenance of sex within populations. Evolutionary Theory 3:191-194.
Mid-career
Jaenike, J. 1986. Genetic complexity of host selection behavior in Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. USA 83:2148-2151.
Jaenike, J. 1990. Host specialization in phytophagous insects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 21:243-273.
Jaenike, J. 1992. Mycophagous Drosophila and their nematode parasites. American Naturalist 139: 893-906.
Later in career
Dyer, K. A. and J. Jaenike. 2004. Evolutionarily stable infection by a male-killing endosymbiont in Drosophila innubila: molecular evidence from the host and parasite genomes. Genetics 168: 1443-1455.
Jaenike, J., K. A. Dyer, C. Cornish, and M. S. Minhas. 2006. Asymmetrical reinforcement and Wolbachia infection in Drosophila. PLoS Biology 4: 1852-1862.
Jaenike, J., R. L. Unckless, S. N. Cockburn, L. M. Boelio, and S. J. Perlman. 2010. Adaptation via symbiosis: recent spread of a defensive symbiont in Drosophila. Science 329: 212-215.
Plans call for video-recording the seminar for later posting on UCTV.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
NEWS BRIEF: April 8, 2014
UC Riverside went on to win the championship, defeating Washington State University, Pullman, Wash. Both the winning team and the runner-up team will represent the Pacific Branch at the ESA meeting, Nov. 16-19 in Portland, Ore. The winning ream receives $500 to offset travel expenses. President of the ESA is integrated pest management specialist Frank Zalom, professor of entomology at UC Davis.
At the 2013 PBESA meeting, UC Riverside took first, and UC Davis, second.
The 2014 UC Davis team members, advised by Extension specialist Larry Godfrey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who participated in the semi-finals were:
- Matan Shelomi, doctoral student who studies with major professor Lynn Kimsey
- Mohammad-Amir Aghaee, doctoral student who studies with major professor Larry Godfrey
- Rei Scampavia, doctoral candidate in the Edwin Lewis and Neal Williams lab
- Alexander Nguyen, an undergraduate student majoring in entomology who is an undergraduate researcher in the Bruce Hammock lab
- Alternate: Danny Klittich, doctoral student who studies with Michael Parrella (Klittich is also president of the Entomologiy Graduate Student Association (EGSA)
In the preliminary competition, Klittich served as a team member with Shelomi, Aghaee, and Nguyen.
The Linnaean Games is a lively question-and-answer, college bowl-style competition on entomology-based facts with four-member teams. Each must be in a degree program (bachelor's, master's or doctorate) or have completed a degree within one year of the contest.
Each team scores points by correctly answering a question posed by the moderator. There are two types of questions: toss-ups and bonuses, with each question worth 10 points.
One of the questions in the preliminary games: "Edward Knipling developed a new insect control technique. What was the insect he worked?"
Answer: "Primarily the screwworm fly with the sterile insect technique (SIT)."
Among the other questions asked of the various teams:
Question: What three hexapod orders comprise the "entognatha?"
Answer: Protura, Collembola and Diplura.
Question: Who is the current ESA President?
Answer: Frank Zalom
Question: What is the Arizona state Insect?
Answer: The two-tailed swallowtail butterfly, Papilio multicaudata
Question: Who wrote the poem "To A Louse," which opens with this stanza:
"Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place."
Answer: Robert Burns.
UC Riverside correctly answered the Arizona state insect question in the UCR-WSU championship match. UCR also answered the entognatha question, although UC Davis knew the answer, too.
The Zalom question was asked during another two teams' match.
The Burns question was a bonus for UC Davis, but the team did not know the answer.
Related Links:
Results of 2013 PBESA Linnaean Games
2013 ESA Competition
2013 ESA Videos
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"The average grocery store must dispose of more than 600 pounds of meats and produce every day when the products pass their sell-by date," Lewis says. "Where does it go? Currently, most waste food from groceries ends up in landfills. This costs grocery stores significantly, and wastes food and energy."
"A start-up company in this area, California Safe Soils LLC, is developing a novel solution to this problem by turning this wasted food into an agricultural product for soil nutrition. Nutrient management is a serious challenge to agriculture in California. Coupled with the need for providing the necessary nutrients to grow crops is the increasing concern of nitrate contamination of ground and surface water that comes from agricultural uses. A new product, called Harvest to Harvest, is in the testing phase as a soil amendment that aids in nutrient management."
"In this seminar, I'll describe the manufacturing of the material, the business plan of the company and the role of agricultural and ecological research in the research and development of this new product."
Of his research, Lewis says on his website: "My research program is wide-ranging in the scope of the questions asked and in the taxa that are studied. There is, however, a common thread to the work that takes place in my laboratory; we seek to understand why and how organisms find, recognize, assess and exploit resources. We ask questions about how insects and nematodes make decisions about resource utilization and what the fitness outcomes of the decisions are. To answer these kinds of questions, we engage in studies of behavior, population ecology, community ecology and evolutionary biology with several groups of insects, nematodes and bacteria. There are also intentional links to more practical pursuits including biological control of crop pests, predicting the impact of crop management on pest and beneficial organisms and restoration ecology. I see no difference between what is traditionally called 'basic' and 'applied' research, thus the links of nearly all of the work in the laboratory to agricultural or environmental concerns is explicit."
Lewis, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 2004, received his doctorate in entomology from Auburn University, Auburn, Ala.; his master's degree in entomology from the University of Missouri, Columbia; and his bachelor's degree in natural resources from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
He served as a post-doctoral research associate for the UC Davis Department of Entomology, Rutgers University, from 1991 to 1994; assistant research professor at Rutgers from 1994 to 1995. He joined the Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, in 1995 as a research associate and then served as an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology, Virginia Tech, from 1998 to 2004 before joining the UC Davis faculty.
A past president of the former UC Davis Department of Nematology, Lewis is active in the Entomological Society of America, Ecological Society of America, Society of Invertebrate Pathology and the Society of Nematologists. His professional service includes editor-in-chief of Biological Control; North American editor of Biopesticides International; and trustee of the Society of Invertebrate Pathology.
Lewis' seminar is the second in a series of spring-quarter seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs and are coordinated by assistant professor Brian Johnson. The seminars are video-recorded for later viewing on UCTV.
