Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute at UC San Diego Health have discovered that a chemical compound that activates ATF6, a gene associated with an inherited vision impairment, also converts patient-derived stem cells into blood vessels.
Armed with skill, special tools and light, University of California San Diego Associate Professor Neal Devaraj and a group of his chemistry graduate students activated cellular gene expression with unique precision. By modifying messenger RNA (mRNA)—a group of molecules that carries genetic information from DNA to ribosomes where specifications of gene expression occur—the chemists were able to precisely trigger gene expressions at a specific time and place using laser light. This novel technique will ease future studies of individual protein functions in cells or tissues at different stages of biological development.
The first datasets from the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States—a project headed by a team of scientists at UC San Diego—were released to researchers around the world today by the National Institutes of Health.
Aswini Krishnan, a fourth-year bioengineering major at the University of California San Diego, has been awarded a Churchill Scholarship, one of the most prestigious and competitive awards available to American students pursuing science, mathematics and engineering fields. The award provides one year of funding to pursue a master’s degree at Winston Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. Krishnan is the fourth UC San Diego student to receive the award since the program’s inception in 1963.
Yinan Wang was in his second year of postdoctoral research at the University of California San Diego when he and his wife, Rebecca, tragically died in a car accident while vising Sequoia National Park in August of 2017. To celebrate his life and scientific ambitions, his family has made a gift of $500,000 to the UC San Diego Division of Physical Sciences to create an endowed junior faculty fellowship that will benefit promising researchers in chemistry and biochemistry.
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego are using underwater microphones to interpret and characterize the calls of blue whales swimming through Southern California’s oceans, revealing new insights into the behavior of these endangered marine mammals.
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