What can green algae do for science if they weren’t, well, green? That’s the question biologists at UC San Diego sought to answer when they engineered a green alga used commonly in laboratories, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, into a rainbow of different colors by producing six different colored fluorescent proteins in the algae cells.
Perfectly qualified to teach herbology at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Steve Briggs instead settles for distinguished professor at UC San Diego. Briggs researches plant cell biology and focuses particularly on plant immune systems. Aside from being a main source of food, livestock feed, clothes and building material, plants also “give us medicine and natural beauty,” he says. As chief scientist of the 2013 San Diego Festival of Science & Engineering, Briggs brings a level of excitement and enthusiasm to the event that rivals his passion for botany.
On March 10, clocks across the United States will be moved forward one hour, shifting an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. It’s a time when many of us feel fatigued and listless. And it’s not just because of that lost hour of sleep.
San Diego is a powerhouse for cancer research, home to the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center – the region’s only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer center – and two NCI-designated centers for basic research: the Salk Institute Cancer Center and the Cancer Center at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. These singular enterprises have now formed a novel collaboration to leverage their distinct and combined resources and talents.
Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Google have developed a novel approach that allows the massive infrastructure powering cloud computing to run more efficiently. The new approach can make these warehouse-scale computers run as much as 15 to 20 percent more efficiently. This novel model has already been applied at Google. Researchers presented their findings at the IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture conference Feb. 23 to 27 in China.
Building on earlier pioneering work by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, an international consortium of university researchers has produced the most comprehensive virtual reconstruction of human metabolism to date. Scientists could use the model, known as Recon 2, to identify causes of and new treatments for diseases like cancer, diabetes and even psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
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