Autism results from abnormal cell communication. Testing a new theory, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have used a newly discovered function of an old drug to restore cell communications in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the devastating disorder.
The 2014 edition of the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools guidebook, released today, highly ranks the University of California, San Diego’s professional schools in engineering and medicine, as well as its academic Ph.D. programs in the social sciences and humanities.
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.
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