Each year, approximately 8,000 Americans are bitten by venomous snakes. On average, 800 or so bites occur annually in California, home to an abundance of snake species, but only one family is native and venomous: rattlesnakes. In San Diego County, the number of rattlesnake bites is increasing as well as the toxicity of the attack.
An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, suggest that inactivation of two specific genes related to the immune system may have conferred selected ancestors of modern humans with improved protection from some pathogenic bacterial strains, such as Escherichia coli K1 and Group B Streptococci, the leading causes of sepsis and meningitis in human fetuses, newborns and infants.
The artist wasn’t sure it could be done. When Do Ho Suh first proposed “Fallen Star” to UC San Diego’s Stuart Collection, he “never thought it would be realized.” A cottage built from scratch and permanently joined to an existing campus building – several stories up in the air? Right, mm-hm.
Five scientists from the University of California, San Diego and its School of Medicine have been awarded almost $12 million in new grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to conduct stem cell-based research into regenerating spinal cord injuries, repairing gene mutations that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and finding new drugs to treat heart failure and Alzheimer’s disease.
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are molecules produced in the skin to fend off infection-causing microbes. Vitamin D has been credited with a role in their production and in the body’s overall immune response, but scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say a hormone previously associated only with maintaining calcium homeostasis and bone health is also critical, boosting AMP expression when dietary vitamin D levels are inadequate.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, will host its ninth annual Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute for Geoscientists (CSIG’12) August 6-10. Since 2004, CSIG has been funded each year by a grant from the Earth Science Division (EAR) of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Keep up with all the latest from UC San Diego. Subscribe to the newsletter today.
