April 15, 2013
Shelomi, who studies with major professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology, received the award at the PBESA meeting on April 9 at South Lake Tahoe.
Shelomi will be one of six John Henry Comstock Award recipients, one from each ESA branch, to be honored at the ESA annual meeting, Nov. 10-13 in Austin, Texas. Each winner receives an all-expenses paid trip to the annual meeting, a $100 cash prize, and a certificate.
Kimsey described Shelomi, an insect physiologist, as “an incredibly outstanding doctoral candidate in entomology.” Shelomi graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 2009 and then joined the UC Davis graduate student program.
Matan is seeking a doctorate in entomology with a designated emphasis in organism-environment interactions. He maintains a perfect 4.0 grade point average. His current research deals with the anatomy, microbiology, and enzymology of the Phasmatodea (walking sticks) digestive system; with side interests including delusional infestations and forensic entomology. In his research on the digestive system, he is looking for bacteria or fungi that can break down cellulose in leaves, or the toxic compounds in Eucalyptus for walking sticks that feed on them.
Kimsey said that Shelomi excels in academics, research, publications, student activities, professional activities, presentations, writing, outreach, and leadership activities. Shelomi won a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Student Fellowship in 2012. He won the NSF East Asian and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellowship twice. Through the latter, he has done research at the National Institute of Agrobiological Science (Tsukuba, Japan) and Academia Sinica (Taipei, Taiwan).
Shelomi has served on multiple ESA Debate and Linnaean Games teams, captaining both at one point or another. He was on the Linnaean Games team that won first place at the Pacific Branch meeting in 2012. He and his debate team won the championship at the national ESA meeting in 2011. Shelomi is an active member of the PBESA’s Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology Section. He has presented talks at every ESA meeting, branch and national, since 2011, and has volunteered at the national branch meetings.
He is also known for a humorous paper on Pokémon phylogenetics in the Annals of Improbable Research. He organized and ran a workshop at the International Science in Society Conference in Berkeley last November, and will be speaking this August at the International Congress of Orthopterology in Kunming, China.
Active in the Entomology Graduate Student Association, Shelomi served as treasurer from 2010 to 2011 and participates annually on the UC Davis Department of Entomology Picnic Day Committee.
Shelomi and Kimsey are coordinating a UC Davis freshman seminar this spring on Evolution vs. Creationism. He has also served as a teaching assistant for forensic entomology, and guest-lectured for several introductory biology and entomology classes.
In addition, Shelomi works with the UC Davis Entomology Club, presenting informative talks at local high schools. In the spring of 2012 he served as a columnist for the California Aggie student newspaper, writing on graduate student life, and also contributed opinion (op-ed) pieces.
Shelomi and his work are featured on a video on the PhD TV website.
“Matan is also a top writer, specializing in entomology and biology questions, on the question-and-answer website Quora,” Kimsey said. In 2012, he won a Shorty Award, the social-media equivalent of an Oscar, for his answer to an insect question. Today, he has nearly 500 followers. The Huffington Post recently spotlighted one response. Another was printed in the "Best of Quora 2010-2012" book.
“Frankly,” Kimsey said, “I don’t know when he sleeps.”
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
April 15, 2013
The UC Davis team is comprised of Matan Shelomi, doctoral student who studies with major professor Lynn Kimsey; Mohammad-Amir Aghaee, doctoral student who studies with major professor Larry Godfrey; Margaret Rei Scampavia, doctoral student who studies with major professors Edwin Lewis and Neal Williams; and Alexander Nguyen, an undergraduate (entomology major) student who volunteers at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Shelomi and Aghaee are veteran competitors in the Linnaean Games, while Scampavia and Nguyen are new to the team. Advisor is entomology specialist Larry Godfrey of the Department of Entomology faculty.
At the PBESA Linnaean Games, four teams competed. First UC Riverside defeated the University of Arizona. Two of their Linnaean Games questions dealt with UC Davis. One was “What is the research subject of John Henry Comstock winner Matan Shelomi?” The answer: phasmid digestive system. The other question: “In the most recent American Entomologist journal, there is an article on the entomology of fly fishing. Who is the author? Answer: Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
The UC Davis team won its first game, competing against Washington State University, and then lost to UC Riverside.
Some questions the UC Davis team were asked:
- “In the 2012 movie Hunger Games, heroine Katniss Eberdeen got out of a jam using certain insects, referred to as what?” (Tracker Jackers)
- "How many episodes of the X-files featured insects/arthropods?” (Nine)
- "What common spider's venom is being used to treat muscular dystrophy?” (Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula)
- "What is the family name of the robber flies?” (Asillidae)
- "Entomologist C.W. Woodworth, in addition to helping found the Agricultural Experiment Station (now UC Davis), proposing and drafting the California Insecticide Law, and proposing the use of Drosophila for genetics research, also invented and build a type of what scientific instrument?” (Telescope)
- "Termites are now grouped together with what insects?” (Cockroaches)
- "What is the Nevada state insect?” (Vivid Dancer Damselfly Argia vivida)
The University of Georgia won the 2012 Linnaean Games by defeating the University of Wisconsin at the ESA meeting held in Knoxville, Tenn.
The UC Davis team has won either first or second place in the PBESA Linnaean Games since 2010. They won the regional championship in 2012 and 2011, and second in 2010.
In last year’s finals, held in Knoxville, Tenn., UC Davis lost to the University of Wisconsin, which went on compete in the finals. The University of Georgia took home the trophy.
The Linnaean Games are named for Swedish-born Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) a renowned taxonomist, ecologist and botanist.
Links:
Rules of Linnaean Games
Watch video of 2012 Championship Linnaean Games, Knoxville, Tenn.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
April 8, 2013
(Editor's Note: Thomas Scott on National Public Radio (NPR))
“Dengue takes an enormous toll on human health worldwide, with as many as 4 billion people at risk,” said Scott, professor of entomology at UC Davis and chair of the mosquito-borne disease modelling group in the Research and Policy for Infectious Disease Dynamics (RAPIDD) program of the Science and Technology Directory, Department of Homeland Security, Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health.
“The results of our study and infrastructure that created the dengue maps fill a critical gap in the battle against dengue,” said Scott, a worldwide expert on the epidemiology and prevention of dengue who maintains field research programs in Iquitos, Peru, and Khamphaeng Phet, Thailand. “Prior to this, without rigorously derived dengue estimates that can be continuously updated, it was not possible to know with confidence where and when to direct interventions for greatest potential impact or to objectively assess the effectiveness of regional and global control efforts. That kind of knowledge was among the most important missing information for developing enhanced dengue prevention programs.”
“Although we knew that dengue is a growing problem, our results more precisely identify trends in different regions of the world, identify regions that merit greater attention, estimate the number of clinically apparent versus inapparent infections,” Scott said, “and we hope will the basis for increased discussion and research on the best ways to reverse this expanding public health threat.”
WHO earlier reported that some 500,000 people with severe dengue are hospitalized each year, and less than 2.5 percent of those affected die if they receive properly clinical management.
“There are currently no licensed vaccines or specific therapeutics, and substantial vector control efforts have not stopped its rapid emergence and global spread,” the researchers wrote.
Dengue has now begun to appear along the southern border of the United States, including Texas. Florida has also reported cases of dengue.
The researchers assembled known records of dengue occurrence worldwide and used a formal modelling framework to map the global distribution of dengue risk. They then paired the resulting risk map with detailed longitudinal information from dengue cohort studies and population surfaces to infer the public health burden of dengue in 2010.
Professor Simon Hay of the University of Oxford led the research, as part of the International Research Consortium on Dengue Risk Assessment, Management and Surveillance.
Of the 96 million clinically apparent dengue infections, Asia bears 70 percent of the burden, the research paper revealed. India alone accounts for around one-third of all infections. In a press release issued today by Nature: “The results indicate that with 16 million infections, Africa’s burden is almost equivalent to that of the Americas and is significantly larger than previously appreciated. The authors suggest that the hidden African dengue burden could be a result of the disease being masked by symptomatically similar illnesses, under-reporting and highly variable treatment-seeking behaviour.”
The International Research Consortium on Dengue Risk Assessment, Management and Surveillance is a multinational team of researchers funded by the European Commission to develop new and innovative tools to be applied to the control of dengue in a global context.
The study also received funding from the Wellcome Trust; Li Ka Shing Foundation; and the Science and Technology Directory, Department of Homeland Security, and Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health.
The publication of the findings coincides with the first regional meeting of the World Health Summit in Singapore, where health care policy makers, experts, and practitioners are meeting to exchange ideas and find solutions for today’s health challenges in Asia.
(Editor's Note: Thomas Scott is featured today (April 8) on NPR, and also will be interviewed today by Brazilian BANDNEWS FM, and in the United States by REDE, and CNN.)
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
April 10, 2013
His seminar is from 12:05 to 1 p.m. Professor Greg Lanzaro of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine will introduce him. Plans are to video the seminar for later posting on UCTV.
"Anopheles gambiae is the most important malaria vector in the world,” he says. “Remarkable adaptive flexibility has enabled this mosquito to track humans across the diverse ecoclimates of sub-Saharan Africa where it thrives in both highly mesic and xeric conditions. These rapid, recent ecological adaptations have driven incipient speciation into two ecotypes, which differentially exploit permanent and temporary larval habitats. Within each nascent species, abundant chromosomal inversion polymorphisms facilitate adaptation to local conditions along latitudinal environmental gradients."
“To elucidate the genetic basis of ecological adaptation in Anopheles gambiae, we performed a series of genome-wide divergence scans, which revealed candidate regions subject to recent natural selection. Dissection of one of these genomic regions established a link between naturally occurring allelic variation and an adaptive phenotype. In the context of evolutionary genomics, these studies shed light on the maintenance of inversion polymorphisms and also provide insight into the genomic architecture of reproductive isolation. From a public health standpoint, this work demonstrates how divergent ecological selection can impact the vectorial capacity of Anopheles gambiae -- with consequences for malaria epidemiology and control.”
White began working on mosquitoes when he was an undergraduate at Oberlin College in Ohio. “At the time, West Nile virus (WNV) was sweeping through the midwest and during the summers I participated in a project to identify the Culex vectors of WNV and to determine environmental factors affecting their abundance,” he said. “After leaving Oberlin, I spent the next seven years in Nora Besansky's lab at Notre Dame where I focused on the population genomics of the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae."
White joined the UC Riverside Department of Entomology faculty in 2011. His research focuses on quantitative and functional genomics of Anopheline malaria vectors.
More information is on his website at http://www.mosquitogenomics.org.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
(Editor's Note: News embargo lifted at 12 noon, April 1, Pacific Daylight Time. The research paper was posted on the PNAS website April 3.)
April 1, 2013
In groundbreaking research, the team of 16 scientists led by Dr. Guodong Zhang of the Bruce Hammock laboratory, Department of Entomology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, discovered cytochrome P450 epoxygenase metabolites of omega-3 fatty acid DHA or epoxy docosapentaenoic acids (EDPs) block blood supply to the tumor and thus inhibit tumor growth and metastasis.
The natural EDPs were further stabilized by a drug called a soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor which is already under development to control pain and hypertension. The research was published April 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Many human studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids reduce the risks of cancers, but the mechanism is poorly understood,” said Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher. “Our study provides a novel mechanism by which these omega-3 lipids inhibit cancer.”
“We demonstrated that EDPs have very potent anti-cancer and anti-metastatic effects,” Zhang said. “Current anti-cancer drugs that block angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels to fuel tumor progression) can cause serious side effects such as hypertension. By blocking angiogenesis by a new mechanism and by widening blood vessels, EDPs could block tumor growth with reduced side effects in cancer patients.”
Co-author Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology with a joint appointment at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the research shows lots of promise. “Basically what Dr. Zhang and his collaborators found is that the epoxides of the omega 3 fatty acid DHA are strongly anti-angiogenic and block tumor growth and metastasis. He used the soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors to stabilize these epoxides in mice. In contrast, the epoxides of the omega 6 fatty acid ARA (arachidonate) are mildly angiogenic and encourage tumor and wound healing.”
“Thus the effects of the soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors have opposite effects depending on whether the background lipid mediators are omega 3 or omega 6,” Hammock said. “Assuming that humans are mice (the study involved mice), the prediction is that with some cancer drugs--particularly the ones like sorafenib and regorafenib that are potent epoxide hydrolase inhibitors as well as anti-angiogenic agents--these could be more effective with a high omega 3 and low omega 6 background.”
Said co-author and chemist Sung Hee Hwang: “This is exciting work as a chemist to be involved in; not only was there a strong team of chemists, biochemists and analytical chemists working with Guodong, but we got the chance to collaborate with the bioengineers from the Katherine Ferrara laboratory who did the imaging as well as with some top cancer researchers from UC Davis and Harvard.”
“This is an exciting step towards our full appreciation of the impact of bioactive products from the DHA metabolome,” said Charles Serhan of Harvard Medical School, an expert on omega-3 autacoids and inflammation who is the Simon Gelman Professor of Anesthesia, Periopterative and Pain Medicine, Harvard Medical School. “This (UC Davis) contribution places metabolic conversion of omega-3 DHA to epoxy DHA products pivotal in vascular mechanisms key in cancer and vascular biology. It will be exciting to watch these important findings translated to humans for new evidence based treatments for angiogenesis, tumor growth and cancer metastasis.”
Cardiologist Jonathan Lindner of the Oregon Health & Science University lauded the research.
“The study by Zhang and colleagues has uncovered a previously unrecognized anti-cancer effect of omega-3 fatty acids which are an important lipid component of diets that have been developed to prevent heart disease and cancer,” Lindner said. “The authors have demonstrated that metabolites of these lipids can act to suppress the growth of new blood vessels that are necessary to feed tumor growth. By shutting off the tumor’s blood supply, these compounds can act to dramatically slow tumor growth and prevent metastasis. The results from this suggest that new drug strategies for fighting cancer could emerge from knowledge of how the body uses nutrition to promote health.”
“Now UC Davis researchers report that the epoxides of docosahexaenoic acid do exactly the opposite by inhibiting angiogenesis, and thus decrease tumor growth and metastasis,” Fleming said. “Thus, it may now be possible to potentate the beneficial effects of sEH inhibition by supplementing therapy with dietary omega-3 fatty acids.”
Lois Smith, professor of ophthalmology at the Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, commented: “Fish oil (enriched in ω3 polyunsaturated fatty acids; ω3-PUFAs) has been shown to reduce the occurrence of diseases associated with abnormal vessel development such as age-related macular degeneration and retinopathy of prematurity. In this study, Zhang et al. demonstrate that epoxydocosapentaenoic acids (EDPs), the metabolites of ω3-PUFA by cytochrome P450 enzymes inhibits vessel development in tumors and suppresses tumor growth and metastasis by reducing VEGF-C production. This discovery provides a novel mechanism of ω3-PUFAs action on vessels and tumors and may lead to new therapies.”
Zhang, who focuses his research on lipid mediators on angiogenesis, tumor growth and metastasis, received his doctorate in food science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cancer, characterized by uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells, can be caused by external factors such as tobacco, infectious organisms, chemicals and radiation, and by internal factors such as inherited mutations, hormones, immune conditions and mutations that occur from metabolism, according to the National Cancer Institute. Death occurs when the cancer is not controlled. Some 1.6 million new cases of cancer are expected to be diagnosed this year. Cancer, the second most common cause of death in the United States, is exceeded only by heart disease.
Other co-authors of the paper in addition to Hammock were Jun Yang, Jun-Yan Liu, King Sing Stephen Lee, Arzu Ulu, and Sung Hee Hwang, all of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center; Lisa Mahakian, Xiaowen Hu, Katherine Ferrara, Sarah Tam, and Elizabeth Ingham, UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering; Hiromi Wettersten of the UC Davis Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine; Robert Weiss, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Division of Nephrology and U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center, Sacramento; and Dipak Panigrahy and Mark Kieran of the Vascular Biology Program, Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
The research project received funding support from the National Institute on Environmental Health Sciences Superfund (Bruce Hammock); UC Davis Research Investments in the Sciences and Engineering (RISE) Program (Katherine Ferrara); NIH research grant (Dipak Panigrahy); Stop and Shop Pediatric Brain Tumor Fund and the C. J. Buckley Pediatric Brain Tumor Fund (Mark Kieran); and the Medical Service of the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs (Robert Weiss). Hammock is a George and Judy Marcus Senior Fellow of the American Asthma Society.
Link to PNAS Paper
National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS) website
Contact:
Guodong Zhang at gdzhang@ucdavis.edu
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
