June 25, 2012
DAVIS--Undergraduate research assistant Katherine Murphy in the Joanna Chiu lab has been awarded a UC President's Undergraduate Research Fellowshipfor the summer/fall of 2012.
The title of her awarded proposal is "Transgenic Yeast as an Organic Pesticide." For her project, she will be exploring the use of RNAi technology in combating the invasive pest, the spotted-wing drosphila, Drosophila suzukii.
A native of southeast Asia and first detected in California in 2008, the fruit fly is a serious economic pest that threatens such fruits as cherries, apples, blueberries, grapes, nectarines, pears, plums, pluots, peaches, raspberries, and strawberries.
Murphy, who will be a junior this coming fall quarter, has worked in the Chiu lab since the fall of 2011. She is a member of the UC Davis Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, organized in 2011 by three entomology faculty members: professor Jay Rosenheim and assistant professors Louie Yang and Joanna Chiu. The goal of the research scholars program: " 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. This will be useful for students whose career goals will take them to medical school, veterinary school, or graduate programs in any biological sub-discipline.”
The President's Undergraduate Fellowship Program (PUF) encourages UC Davis undergraduates of all disciplines to carry out an independent research or creative project under the guidance of a UC Davis faculty member. The program supports projects up to a maximum of $2000. A multidisciplinary committee of faculty, chaired by the PUF program coordinator, selects the recipients.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
June 25, 2012 (News embargo lifts at 12 noon, June 25, Pacific Daylight Time)
DAVIS--Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have discovered a class of natural compounds found within the body that may someday lead to pain relief for millions of diabetics and others suffering from chronic pain.
A team of nine entomology, cancer and nutrition researchers, in work published in the June 25th edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that this new class of drug molecules stabilized the natural molecules and "effectively blocked neuropathic pain"--or pain caused by nerve damage. The research, conducted on rodents, is expected to lead to an orally active drug candidate for human clinical trials.
“This discovery offers a promising new approach to controlling chronic pain in diabetics,” said lead author and project scientist Bora Inceoglu of the Bruce Hammock lab, based in the Department of Entomology. “We were initially looking at anti-inflammatory compounds which regulate a key branch of an inflammatory pathway. These compounds are highly selective and inhibit a key enzyme called soluble epoxide hydrolase. Inhibition of this enzyme successfully blocks pain sensations.”
“Our data inndicate that this drug candidate is more effective on neuropathic pain than the prescription drugs now on the market,” said Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The research is significant in that in the United States alone, diabetics total 25.8 million or 8.3 percent of the population, and millions more—estimated at 79 million—are pre-diabetic, according to the American Diabetes Association. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tallies the economic burden of diabetes at approximately $170 billion a year.
Professor Daniele Piomelli, director of drug discovery and development at UC Irvine and who holds the Louise Turner Arnold Chair in Neurosciences, said that the study holds promise. He was not involved with the UC Davis research.
“Current medicines do not control well chronic pain produced by damage to the nerves,” said Piomelli, professor of anatomy, neurobiology, and biological chemistry. “The study by Hammock and collaborators identifies a new class of chemical compounds that could change this situation. These compounds act by boosting natural signals, produced by the body, which curb both inflammation and pain. Exploiting the body's own 'medicines' is a great approach to creating safer medicines.”
Piomelli cautioned that the experiments “were conducted in animals and need therefore to be confirmed by clinical trials.”
UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine anesthesiologist and pain specialist Alonso Guedes, also not involved in the study, said that the research shows that “stabilization of a class of bioactive lipid greatly reduces pain derived from nerve lesions. This novel and emerging knowledge may help fulfill a critical medical need for millions of animals and people afflicted by such pain modalities.”
For the study, the UC Davis researchers used a Type I diabetes-induced pain model. “Although Type II diabetes, associated with obesity, hypertension and metabolic disorders, is more prevalent in humans, to study the analgesic effects we selected Type I diabetes since pain manifests in an accelerated manner,” said co-researcher and pharmacology doctoral candidate Karen Wagner. “In Type II diabetes patients, the occurrence of pain is delayed by many years of pre-diabetic or diabetic state, whereas our model affords a very rapid onset of pain.”
Team member Fawaz Haj of the Departments of Nutrition and Internal Medicine, a leading nutrition and diabetes expert and a collaborator with the Hammock lab on diabetes, said that “Intriguingly, in this study, acute treatments with soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors did not significantly affect the diabetic status of the animals, such as blood glucose levels and responses to insulin, indicating a selective effect on pain sensation. Neuropathic pain is a major co-morbidity of diabetes and an important debilitating factor that reduces the quality of life and this study accomplished a first in showing analgesic effects of soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors.”
The researchers worked on a physiological pathway that was largely unknown until recently. When the enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase, is inhibited, “what happens is that the biological effects of a group of lipid metabolites, that are degraded by this enzyme, accumulate to effective levels,” Hammock said.
“It turns out that a major function of these lipid metabolites is to selectively block pain sensation while sparing other types of sensations,” Hammock said.
Inceoglu described neuropathic pain as “a debilitating condition and very difficult to treat with available painkillers or analgesics. Most analgesics are ineffective while those that reduce neuropathic pain often come with a variety of side effects that negatively affect the quality of life.”
Nerve damage may be the result of trauma and chemotherapy agents or even diabetes itself. In diabetes, high levels of blood glucose damage the fine endings of sensory neurons that normally transmit pain-related information, the scientists explained. The aberrant signaling from the damaged neurons is interpreted as extreme sensitivity to touch and sometimes insensitivity to heat. “Even an innocuous touch, such as buttoning a shirt or the collar rubbing against the neck, or the vibration of being in a bumpy car ride can result in extreme pain,” Inceoglu said.
“Almost half of advanced diabetic patients suffer from this painful condition which worsens as diabetes progresses,” Inceoglu said.
Nerve and vascular damage can lead to gangrene and amputation. In advanced stages, the nerve damage leads to life-threatening heart and kidney diseases.
Physicians face a dilemma in selecting the right painkillers for the right conditions and with the least possible side effects, the UC Davis researchers said. Over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), for example, are completely ineffective for neuropathic conditions, Hammock said. Narcotics, like opium, can be addictive; withdrawal is difficult.
“Therefore, there is a great need to discover new approaches in combating pain,” Hammock said. “New medications will effectively increase the number of choices for patients and physicians in treating intractable pain. Our study shows that the novel approach is effective and may not lead to the known side effects of narcotics or anti-depressants.”
“It is still too early for these new compounds to reach the stores as analgesic drugs, since FDA approval takes a decade with very thorough evaluations,” Inceoglu said. “However, once the feasibility of this approach is demonstrated, hopefully a major hurdle in moving toward clinical application is overcome.”
The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, supports earlier studies at UC Davis and later at Medical College of Wisconsin that showed the natural epoxy-fatty acids are analgesic molecules.
"Although very effective in blocking pain, unlike narcotics, these molecules do not affect coordination skills of animals,” Inceoglu said.
The research team included Bora Inceoglu, Karen Wagner, Jun Yang, Nils Schebb, Sung Hee Hwang and Christophe Morisseau, all of the Department of Entomology; Bruce Hammock, Department of Entomology and UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center; Ahmed Bettaieb of the Department of Nutrition; and Fawaz Haj of the Departments of Nutrition and Internal Medicine.
"This is an interdisciplinary effort among neurobiologists, diabetes specialists, organic chemists and analytical chemists," said Hammock. "We could not have done this without sophisticated mass spectrometry equipment."
“The emerging mass spectrometric technique allowed us to analyze the tiny amounts of natural bioactive compounds, contributing to this pain discovery,” said Yang.
Hammock directs the campuswide Superfund Research Program, the National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Program and the NIEHS Combined Analytical Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the UC Davis Faculty Research Lecture Award in 2001 and the Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching in 2008.
Hammock's initial research involved regulating the development of insect larvae.
Related Links:
Link to Publication in PNAS
Bruce Hammock: Bench-to-Bedside Research
Contact:
Bora Inceoglu at abinceoglu@ucdavis.edu. Phone: (530) 752-6571.
Bruce Hammock at bdhammock@ucdavis.edu. Phone: (530) 752-7519.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
June 18, 2012
DAVIS-- Evolutionary ecologist Scott Carroll, a member of professor Sharon Lawler's lab in the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, was invited as a plenary speaker at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, held June 11-14 in Albuquerque, N.M.Evolutionary ecologist Scott Carroll of the Sharon Lawler lab gave a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)Carroll spoke on "Adaptation and Error: Plasticity, Evolution and the Fates of Populations” at the June 13th plenary session. He analyzed behavioral and evolutionary aspects of adaptation to contemporary environmental change in insects and other organisms.
Carroll, who directs the Institute for Contemporary Evolution, does research on patterns of ongoing evolution in wild and anthropogenic environments. “His studies on evolutionary changes in soapberry bugs in response to plant introductions are seminal contributions to our understanding of diversification,” according to the printed program.
The UC Davis evolutionary ecologist is the co-editor of the book, Conservation Biology: Evolution in Action (Oxford University Press, 2008) with Charles Fox, professor of insect genetics, behavior and evolutionary ecology, University of Kentucky.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
June 15, 2012
DAVIS-- UC Davis Department of Entomology graduate student Stacy Hishinuma recently received a grant from the California Garden Clubs, Inc. (CGCI) to further her research on thousand cankers disease, a newly discovered disease that kills black walnut trees.
Hishinuma is researching the walnut twig beetle, Pityopthorus juglandis, which in association with a newly described fungus, Geosmithia morbida, causes thousand cankers disease, (TCD).
Hishinuma, who is seeking her master’s degree in entomology, works with major professor and integrated pest management (IPM) specialist Mary Louise Flint and is co-advised by chemical ecologist and forest entomologist Steve Seybold of the Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Davis. Flint, with the statewide UC IPM Program, is the associate director for urban and community IPM, and is an Extension specialist in the UC Davis Department of Entomology. Seybold is an affiliate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
At a recent awards ceremony in the Doubletree Inn, Sacramento, Hishinuma delivered a presentation on her research and received the award from CGSI president Julie West.
Hishinuma was one of four scholarship winners honored at the awards ceremony. CGCI bestowed two awards of $2000 each and the National Garden Clubs, Inc., two awards of $3500 each.
CGCI recipients: Stacy Hishinuma (Robert Gordon Scholarship), graduate student in entomology, UC Davis, and Elizabeth Bowman (Maryanne Lucas Scholarship), graduate student in sustainability, Antioch College
NGCI recipients: Paul Steimer (June P. Wood Scholarship), landscape architecture student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; and Lena Butler (Ellame Fehrer Scholarship), environmental studies graduate student at Yale
Thousand cankers disease, first discovered in 2006 in Colorado, is widespread throughout the western states and has now been detected in the eastern states of Tennessee (June 2010), Virginia (May 2011) and Pennsylvania (August 2011). The beetle, believed to be native to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico, was never associated with walnut tree mortality until 2006. The fungus enters the tree when the beetle tunnels into the bark to prepare egg galleries.
Seybold’s research group has led the effort to characterize the disease in California. Scientists believe that TCD occurs only on walnut, predominantly native black walnut, Juglans californica and J. hindsii, although the disease has been recorded on 10 species of walnuts or their hybrids in California. Often the first symptoms of TCD are flagging and yellowing leaves and branch dieback, Seybold said. Affected branches show sap staining and pinhole-sized beetle holes. Beneath the surface are dark stains caused by the fungus.
Related Links:
Stacy Hishinuma Receives McBeth Memorial Scholarship: Entomology website (Dec. 10, 2010)
All About Thousand Cankers Disease: UC IPM website
Discovery of Thousand Cankers Disease: Entomology website (July 2, 2009)
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
May 30, 2012
DAVIS--The Bohart Museum of Entomologyat UC Davis promises to “light up your life” at its open house on Sunday, June 3, the last open house of the academic year.
The theme of the event, set from 1 to 4 p.m. in 1124 Academic Surge on California Drive, is “Bug Light, Bug Bright, First Bug I See Tonight!” The open house is free and open to the public.
Special attractions will include glowing scorpions (most scorpions glow under ultraviolet light) and a display of live California dogface butterflies, the state insect, from naturalist/photographer Greg Kareofelas of Davis, a volunteer at the Bohart Museum.
Kareofelas is rearing several dogface butterflies (Zerene eurydice) from eggs he collected at a site in rural Yolo County and, after photographing the life cycle, will release them back into the wild population where he collected them. The first adult emerged from its chrysalis on May 28, with three more to go. He’s hoping one will emerge during the open house. Kareofelas also will present a continuously running PowerPoint of the life cycle of the butterflies.
The high-flying butterfly is rarely seen in the wild. Its main host plant is False indigo (Amorpha californica), a riparian shrub that grows among poison oak and willows and along stream banks, often in steep and isolated canyons. The butterfly is rapidly losing its natural habitat due to rapid California urban development.
Several years ago Kareofelas and doctoral candidate Fran Keller teamed to create a California dogface butterfly poster, which is available for sale in the museum's gift shop
The California State Legislature designated the California dogface butterfly, found only in California, as its state insect in 1972. The male has markings on its wings resembling a silhouette of a dog's head. The female is usually solid yellow with a black spot on each upper wing:
It was first proposed as the state insect in 1929 by an entomology society in Southern California, but nothing came of it until 1972 when a fourth grade class in Fresno petitioned their state representative, said Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator.
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, houses a global collection of more than seven million insect specimens, the seventh largest insect collection in North America. It is also the home of the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum in 1946.
The Bohart Museum also features a year-around live “petting zoo” with such permanent residents as walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and a rose-haired tarantula. Visitors are invited to hold and photograph them.
In addition, the gift shop will be open to enable visitors to purchase such gifts as jewelry, T-shirts, sweatshirts, posters, insect-themed candy.
Bohart officials annually schedule weekend open houses throughout the academic year so that families and others who cannot attend on the weekdays can do so on the weekends. The Bohart’s regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday. It is closed on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information is available on the Bohart website or by contacting Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-0493. Due to limited space, group tours will not be booked during the weekend hours.
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What's That Glowing on Alcatraz Island?
 Glowing millipede from Alcatraz Island. (Photo by Alexander Nguyen of the UC Davis Entomology Club) Forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, who does fly research on Alcatraz, said that bait laced with a non-toxic fluorescent dye to estimate the rat population in February yielded the expected result: the glow of rat urine and feces. But something else was glowing nearby: millipedes. Had they consumed some of the rat bait? No. An experiment at the Bohart Museum of Entomology on the UC Davis campus showed that this species of millipedes (Xystocheir dissecta (Wood) glow under the black lights, just like scorpions. Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a professor of entomology at UC Davis, said 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. Visitors can see scorpions and millipedes glow at the Bohart Museum's open house from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 3 at 1124 Academic Surge, California Drive. Lynn Kimsey 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. |
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
