Research Stories

A new study by the University of California, Davis, shows how cells work together to avoid a sudden drop in blood sugar. Understanding these feedback loops could improve the lives of people with diabetes and help them avoid dangerous hypoglycemia.

The work was published Sept. 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

When a woman becomes pregnant, the outcome of that pregnancy depends on many things — including a crucial event that happened while she was still growing inside her own mother’s womb. It depends on the quality of the egg cells that were already forming inside her fetal ovaries. The DNA-containing chromosomes in those cells must be cut, spliced and sorted perfectly. In males, the same process produces sperm in the testes but occurs only after puberty.

In a new study published in Science Advances on September 10, a team of UC Davis researchers tracked the movement of fluorescent particles inside the cells of microscopic worms, providing unprecedented insights into cellular crowding in a multicellular animal. They found that the cytoplasm inside the worms was significantly more crowded and compartmentalized than in single-celled yeast or mammalian tissue culture cells, which are more commonly used to gauge internal cellular dynamics.

The mind of a fruit fly encompasses 125,000 nerve cells, squeezed into the space of a poppy seed. At first glance, the fly brain looks nothing like a human brain. But many of the underlying neural circuits are surprisingly similar.

Fumika Hamada, a professor of neurobiology, physiology, and behavior, is using fruit flies to study a critical but oft-overlooked brain function: the regulation of our body temperature in a consistent daily rhythm.

Human eyes are complex and irreparable, yet they are structurally like those of the freshwater apple snail, which can completely regenerate its eyes. Alice Accorsi, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Davis, studies how these snails regrow their eyes — with the goal of eventually helping to restore vision in people with eye injuries.

Each year, more money is spent in the U.S. on musculoskeletal pain than on heart disease and diabetes combined. Exercise physiologist Keith Baar, a professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and Physiology and Membrane Biology, is working to change that.

What makes the human brain distinctive? A new study published July 21 in Cell identifies two genes linked to human brain features and provides a road map to discover many more. The research could lead to insights into the functioning and evolution of the human brain, as well as the roots of language disorders and autism.

As jewelflowers spread into California from the desert Southwest over the past couple of million years, they settled in places that felt like home, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis. The work, published July 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the ability of plants and animals to adapt to changing climates might be more limited than it appears.

What you don’t know about ibuprofen, one of the world’s most popular painkillers, could well fill a book — and that book has just been published, authored by Professor Aldrin Gomes and 36 of his current and former students at the University of California, Davis.

“Ibuprofen is an affordable and widely used medication that has transformed pain management for millions worldwide,” said Gomes, who teaches in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior. “However, its story serves as a powerful reminder of the delicate balance between benefit and risk.”

Where do you go when you’re a fish and you need a skincare treatment? Coral reefs contain natural “beauty salons,” lively social hubs of activity where fish “clients” swim up and wait to be serviced by smaller fish cleaners. The little cleaners dart under and around their much bigger clients — even entering their mouths — cleaning their scales of bacteria and parasites like a team of car washers servicing a Buick. Sometimes cleaners even rub against their clients, providing a soothing massage.