Genome Center

During his 20-year tenure as founding director of the UC Davis Genome Center, Richard Michelmore, a Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Plant Sciences, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Medical Microbiology and Immunology, recruited more than 20 faculty members, led the center to prominence as a hub of technology-driven biology, and made national headlines by implementing an innovative, community-scale saliva-based COVID test. Quite the legacy for someone who never wanted the job in the first place. 

Many mammals, from domestic cats and dogs to giant pandas, use scent to communicate with each other. A new study from the University of California, Davis, shows how domestic cats send signals to each other using odors derived from families of bacteria living in their anal glands. The work was published Nov. 8 in Scientific Reports.

Blake Meyers, a principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and a professor of plant sciences from the University of Missouri - Columbia, has been named the new director and Novozymes Chair in Genomics at the UC Davis Genome Center. Meyers, who studies plant RNA biology, bioinformatics and functional genomics, will step into the role on March 1, 2024.

Beds of eelgrass (Zostera marina) form an important habitat in coastal regions throughout the northern hemisphere, crucial to many fish and other species and storing vast amounts of carbon. A new study published July 20 in Nature Plants shows that eelgrass spread around the world much more recently than previously thought, just under a quarter-million years ago. The results have implications for how eelgrass could be affected by a changing climate.

In testing the genetic material of current populations in Africa and comparing against existing fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens populations there, researchers have uncovered a new model of human evolution — overturning previous beliefs that a single African population gave rise to all humans. The new research was published today, May 17, in the journal Nature.

Using a specially designed capsule, researchers can now voyage through the digestive system, collecting new data about digestion and microorganisms. The work by a team including researchers at the University of California, Davis, Stanford University and Envivo Bio Inc., is published May 10 in papers in Nature and Nature Metabolism.

Growing up, Majken Horton (pronounced MY-ken; B.S. ’22) always wanted to know how things worked. She’d study the property she lived on with her parents in Loomis, Calif., and spend summers exploring Alaska with them. Her parents, both UC Davis alumni and salmon biologists, encouraged her to investigate the tiny ecosystems she found and look them up in books to learn their ways.

Late last year, Justin Siegel, an associate professor at the UC Davis Genome Center, was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the highest professional distinction awarded to academic inventors. The NAI announced the 2022 class of fellows on Dec. 8. 

A complete sequence of the human genome has finally been published by an international consortium of scientists. The new reference genome fills in gaps left by earlier drafts, which will help researchers better understand genetic variation and how it can sometimes lead to disease.

A study led by the University of California, Davis, has found significant differences in gut bacteria between Black and white women, even after accounting for their insulin sensitivity status. The study, published in PLOS ONE, is the first to focus on premenopausal Black and white women and to show such differences.