March 19, 2013
KQED also posted a video on You Tube.
Kimsey, who advises the undergraduate Entomology Club, traveled to Alcatraz with club members in February of 2012 for a rat population count. Bait laced with fluorescent, non-toxic dye enabled the crew to search for rat feces.
Nguyen noticed that not only did the rat feces glow under the black lights but so did millipedes. He showed the glowing millipedes to Kimsey.
Had they consumed some of the rat bait? No. An experiment at the Bohart Museum of Entomology on the UC Davis campus showed that these millipedes (Xystocheir dissecta (Wood) glow under black lights, just like scorpions.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology, suspects that the millipedes on Alcatraz Island originated from soil transported over from the nearby Angel Island when “The Rock” was just that—rock with little or no soil.
The species is a relatively abundant species in the Bay Area. “This particular species of millipedes glowed all along, but “nobody was paying any attention to it,” she said.
The former maximum-security federal penitentiary once housed some of the country's most notorious inmates including Al “Scarface” Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Robert “The Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud or Arthur “Doc” Barker.
Related Link:
The Fly Man of Alcatraz
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 19, 2013
Her work is titled "Experimental and Natural Vertical Transmission of West Nile Virus by California Culex (Diptera: Culicidae) Mosquitoes.”
Nelms, who studied with major professor William Reisen, is now an entomologist with the Lake County Mosquito and Vector Control District.
Co-authors of the paper include Reisen; Ethan Fechter-Leggett; Brian Carroll; Paula Macedo; and Susanne Kluh.
In the abstract, Nelms says that the Culex mosquitoes, which transmit West Nile, are the primary summer vectors of the virus but they also may serve as overwintering reservoir hosts.
The Entomological Society of America wrote in a press release: “In California, Culex mosquitoes are considered to be the principal vectors of West Nile virus (WNV), which infects birds, humans, and other mammals during the summer. In addition, these mosquitoes may also serve as overwintering reservoir hosts as the virus is passed 'vertically' from female mosquito to egg, then larva, and then adult."
“To find out how often this happens, California researchers monitored WNV in mosquitoes in the field and in the lab, and observed how the virus is transmitted between generations and between insect stages.”
Nelms, a 2011 recipient of the William Hazeltine Memorial Research Fellowship Awards, will be back at UC Davis on May 8 to give her exit seminar, "Overwintering Biology of Culex Mosquitoes in California and Their Potential Role as Overwintering Reservoirs of West Nile Virus." Her seminar is from 12:05 to 1 p.m. in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Addition. Reisen is the host.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 19, 2013
Emmett Brady, founder of the Insect News Network, KDRT 95.7 FM, and host of the “Wednesday Science Doubleplay,” said he will dedicate the entire hour from from 5 to 6 p.m. to discussing Ullman’s unique and inspiring career.
"We will explore Ullman’s innovation in academics and education: from her pioneering efforts in the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program to her specialty: thrips."
The Art/Science Fusion Program, founded and directed by Ullman and her colleague, self-described "rock artist" Donna Billick, connects art to science, and science to art.
Brady said he will examine the emergence of cultural entomology as a key discipline of the 21st Century and “how careers in science are being re-defined as scientific technology continues to res-shape the modern world.”
For the first hour (4 to 5 p.m.) of the “Wednesday Science Doubleplay” show, Brady will explore “the world of insects, beyond the creepy and the crawly to the fun, the fascinating, the profound and even the sublime.”
Ullman, along with a team of eight other investigators from six institutions, recently received a five-year, $3.75 million grant from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, to develop and implement a national scientific and educational network to limit thrips-caused crop losses.
“Our project will build expertise through education and create tools and strategies that complement existing methods to limit crop losses due to thrips-transmitted tospoviruses,” Ullman said.
Related link:
Listen to Diane Ullman's Tedx Talk
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 13, 2013
The program, now officially approved by the Academic Senate, is coordinated by professor Jay Rosenheim and assistant professors Louie Yang and Joanna Chiu, all of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
The coordinators ask:
"Eager to have the kind of one-on-one training and mentorship that you'd normally find only in a small liberal arts college?"
"Want to develop the skills that will make your application to graduate school, med school or vet school really stand out from the crowd?"
The Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology can provide the opportunity to learn research skills in all areas of biology:
- behavior and ecology
- biodiversity
- agroecology
- population biology
- mathematical bology
- human health
- cell biology
- biochemistry
- molecular biology
The program, which includes more than 40 mentoring faculty, aims to provide UC Davis undergraduates with a closely-mentored research experience in biology. Because insects can be used as model systems to explore virtually any area of biology (population biology; behavior and ecology; biodiversity and evolutionary ecology; agroecology; genetics and molecular biology; biochemistry and physiology; cell biology), faculty in the program can provide research opportunities across the full sweep of biology. The program’s goal is to provide academically strong and highly motivated undergraduates with a multi-year research experience that cultivates skills that will prepare them for a career in biological research.
Applications are now being accepted from first and second-year students and first-year transfer students. The application deadline is April 10. More information is on the program’s website.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
(Editor's Note: The news embargo lifted at noon on March 11, and this research article was posted March 14 on the PNAS website. Here's the link.)
March 11, 2013
The research, in the lab of cardiologist and cell biologist Nipavan Chiamvimonvat of the School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, utilized a treatment involving a compound synthesized by Sing Lee and Sung Hee Hwang in the lab of UC Davis entomologist Bruce Hammock.
In research published this week in the Proceedings of National Academic of Sciences, the 11-scientist team from the Chiamvimonvat and Hammock labs determined the molecular mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitors in a heart attack.
“Our study provides evidence for a possible new therapeutic strategy to reduce cardiac fibrosis and improve cardiac function after a heart attack,” Chiamvimonvat said.
Every year some 935,000 U.S. residents have a heart attack, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease kills about 600,000 a year, accounting for one in every four deaths in the nation.
The research, “New Mechanistic Insights into the Beneficial Effects of Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Inhibitors in the Prevention of Cardiac Fibrosis,” is “really important in terms of understanding a unique pathway which may be targeted to reduce fibrosis and adverse cardiac remodeling,” Chiamvimonvat said.
“Cardiac fibrosis or the abnormal thickening of the heart tissues results from an increase in the proliferation of cardiac fibroblasts, cells in the connective tissues that produce collagen and other fibers,” she said. “After a heart attack, the loss of cardiac myocytes can culminate in cardiac fibrosis and abnormal cardiac remodeling leading to eventual heart failure.” Myocytes, or heart muscle cells, are critical in the normal function of the heart as a pump.
López said that tissue fibrosis “represents one of the largest problems in treating heart diseases for which there are few effective therapies currently. In the heart, adverse cardiac remodeling consists of enlargement of heart muscle cells (also termed cardiac myocyte hypertrophy), tissue fibrosis, and electrical perturbations and represents the prevailing response of the heart to abnormal stimuli, for example, after a heart attack or with long standing high blood pressure (hypertension).”
The Hammock/Chiamvimonvat collaborations earlier demonstrated the beneficial effects of several compounds that are potent inhibitors of the soluble epoxide hydrolase in different models of cardiac enlargement and heart failure. In this study, they treated murine (rodent) patients with the compound that resulted in “significant improvement in cardiac function after a heart attack.”
“There is significant decrease in cardiac myocyte hypertrophy associated with a decrease in the expression of fetal gene program,” they wrote in the abstract. Treatment also resulted in a significant decrease in cardiac fibrosis and a reduction in the migration of fibroblasts into the heart from bone marrow.” Fibroblasts are cells in the connective tissues that produce collagen and other fibers.
“Treatment with the inhibitor not only prevents the development of pathologic cardiac myocyte hypertrophy, the compound may also result in an improvement in diastolic dysfunction by decreasing cardiac fibroblast proliferation and cardiac fibrosis,” said López. Diastolic dysfunction, a future direction of the research but not covered in the research paper, refers to the abnormal relaxation of the heart after each beat, a condition commonly seen with excessive cardiac fibrosis while cardiac myocyte hypertrophy refers to the enlargement of the heart muscle cells.
“This study is the result of a long-term and exciting collaboration between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the UC Davis School of Medicine which has been very productive,” said Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology who has a joint appointment with the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Research Center. He has collaborated with Chiamvimonvat since 2005. “Not only did we do things we could never have done on our own but the interaction with Dr. Chiamvimonvat, Dr. Lopez and their team has made the project both educational and fun. Moreover, I think the translational value of the study could really be very significant."
The project drew major support from the National Institutes of Health, Veterans’ Administration, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Med-into-Grad Training Program to UC Davis, American Heart Association, Western States Affiliate Predoctoral Fellowship Award, Fellow-to-Faculty Award from Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation, and the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Award from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Partial support came from a National Institute of Environmental Health (NIEHS) grant, the NIEHS Superfund Basic Research Program, the NIEHS Center for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention, a Technology Translational Grant from UC Davis Health System, and from the American Asthma Society. Hammock is a George and Judy Marcus Senior Fellow of the American Asthma Society.
Chiamvimonvat and Hammock have filed patents with the University of California for sEH inhibitors and cardiac hypertrophy therapy and organ fibrosis. “We have been working for the last 17 months with UC Davis to get options to the technologies from our laboratories and move them toward the clinic,” Hammock said. “I think we are close to an agreement with UC Davis to do this, but it is daunting to think of raising the funding for this effort in this economic climate.”
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894