University of California, Merced - Lorena Anderson /media-contact/lorena-anderson Media Contact Senior Writer and Public Information Representative Office: (209) 228-4406 Mobile: (209) 201-6255 landerson4@ucmerced.edu en Professor Dives with Crocs, Displays Megalodon Expertise During Shark Week /news/2025/professor-dives-crocs-displays-megalodon-expertise-during-shark-week <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2025-07-17T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">July 17, 2025</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/croc-hero.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="Professor Sora Kim swam with a Nile crocodile for this year&#039;s Shark Week special, which focuses of sharks versus prehistoric reptiles. Photo courtesy of Kruger National Park, South Africa." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Professor Sora Kim swam with a Nile crocodile for this year&#039;s Shark Week special, which focuses of sharks versus prehistoric reptiles. Photo courtesy of Kruger National Park, South Africa.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p><span>Shark Week starts Sunday and </span><a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/content/sora-kim"><span>Professor Sora Kim</span></a><span> will be featured again this year in a special airing at 9 p.m. Monday, titled “Jaws vs. Mega Croc,” and the filming allowed her to swim with a Nile crocodile.</span></p> <p><span>“I flew to Florida and learned about crocodiles – their evolution, strength, physiology and behavior. More interactions are being recorded between sharks and crocodiles these days, so I also needed to learn about these situations,” she said.</span></p> <p><span>At the crocodile and wildlife rescue and rehab Everglades Outpost, Kim swam in a large tank with a smaller plastic tank containing a crocodile inside. The plastic was thick and of an ultra-high grade in terms of both strength and clarity. A mesh cover prevented the crocodile from jumping into the larger tank, and a medic stood by just in case.</span></p> <p><span>“It was really incredible and a new experience for me,” she said. “I wasn’t scared, given all the safety precautions. It was breathtaking to see the crocodile in the water, especially when we were nose to nose at the bottom.” </span></p> <p><span><img alt="Professor Sora Kim" src="https://news.ucmerced.edu/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1306/f/documents/sora-sw-25.jpg" style="margin: 8px; float: right; width: 350px;" title="Professor Sora Kim" />Her research into megalodon, the biggest shark species that ever lived, has made Kim a featured scientist on the Discovery television series for the past several years. The 鶹 paleoecologist has been researching megalodon and the reasons behind its extinction, using stable isotopes in fossil teeth found in nearly every ocean on the planet. The isotopes have told her and other scientists about megalodon’s diet, its environment and its physiology.</span></p> <p><span>Mega croc might seem like something invented for a “Jurassic Park” movie but such giant reptiles once existed. Fossil evidence indicates that Deinosuchus could reach lengths of over 35 feet and weigh more than 5 tons. </span></p> <p><span>This "terrible crocodile" was a top predator in the wetlands of North America during the late Cretaceous Period, the last period of the Mesozoic Era, which lasted from approximately 145 million to 66 million years ago. Fossil evidence, including bite marks on dinosaur bones, confirms Deinosuchus’ ability to prey on enormous dinosaurs, according to the National Park Service. </span></p> <p><span>Deinosuchus likely lived in both freshwater and saltwater environments, contributing to its wide distribution along the coasts of North America. </span></p> <p><span>Besides Deinosuchus, other prehistoric crocodiles, such as Sarcosuchus from Africa, also reached enormous sizes, with some estimated to be about 40 feet long, according to A-Z Animals. Most giant crocodiles, including Deinosuchus, became extinct alongside the dinosaurs, but some species survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. </span></p> <p><span>Previous Shark Week specials focused on megalodon and great white sharks. Last year, Kim got to dive with white sharks. This year’s show centers on a face-off between a modern-day great white and a Nile crocodile, a freshwater species mainly found in 26 African countries.</span></p> <p><span>Nile crocodiles can grow to be as long as 20 feet and are the second-largest reptilian predators, behind the saltwater crocodile. They are very aggressive and feed on other reptiles, fish, birds, and mammals such as zebras. The Nile crocodile is one of the most dangerous species of crocodile and is responsible for hundreds of human deaths every year, according to scientific reports.</span></p> <p><span>The <a href="https://www.discovery.com/shark-week/shark-week-2025-kicks-off-july-20">Shark Week schedule</a> can be found online. Shark Week can also be seen on HBO Max.</span></p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:01:15 +0000 Anonymous 30186 at NIH Grant Enables Outstanding Investigator to Advance Knowledge of Microbial Infections /news/2025/nih-grant-enables-outstanding-investigator-advance-knowledge-microbial-infections <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2025-06-30T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">June 30, 2025</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/nobile-hero_0.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="Professor Clarissa Nobile investigates the mechanisms of biofilm infections that affect human health. " /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Professor Clarissa Nobile investigates the mechanisms of biofilm infections that affect human health. </div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>The National Institutes of Health are backing Professor <a href="https://mcb.ucmerced.edu/content/clarissa-j-nobile"> Clarissa Nobile </a> ’s mission to understand the mechanisms by which microbes form biofilms, specifically those that can be hazardous to human health.</p> <p>Biofilms are communities of microorganisms encased in protective matrices and are implicated in a wide range of infections, particularly chronic and recurrent ones. Such infections can occur naturally within tissues, for example: yeast infections, urinary tract infections, wound infections, ear infections, endocarditis and lung infections associated with cystic fibrosis.</p> <p>But often, biofilm infections are associated with medical devices, including catheters, pacemakers, heart valves and artificial joints.</p> <p>Nobile’s work could lead to new prevention, diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to combat biofilm infections.</p> <p>In 2017, Nobile, an affiliate of the <a href="https://hsri.ucmerced.edu/"> Health Sciences Research Institute</a>, received her first Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA). Known as the Outstanding Investigator Award, it was the first of its kind awarded to a 鶹 faculty member and another mark of distinction for Nobile, who became the university’s first Pew scholar in 2015.</p> <p>The initial MIRA provided $1.89 million over five years. This spring, the award was competitively renewed for an additional five years and $2.5 million.</p> <p>“Our research has two arms in terms of biofilms and microbial communities. There is the single-species arm and the poly-microbial arm,” Nobile said. “For the single-species arm, we study biofilms and how one species can interact with its own cells and create this complex architecture that is the biofilm.</p> <p>“Usually, we don't think of microbes as doing that; we think of microbes as just doing their own thing. But in times of stress and for other reasons, they can work together and form these communities that are important because they give the microbes recalcitrance to environmental stresses and make them more resistant to antibiotics or antifungals.”</p> <p>Several infections are caused by a single species, such as <em> Candida albicans </em> yeast infections, which Nobile’s lab has been investigating for more than a decade. One of <a href="https://sites.ucmerced.edu/nobilelab/">her lab</a>'s goals is to understand how these biofilms form and are maintained, as well as how they evolve.</p> <p>“We still don't have a very good way to treat certain infections because they are often recurrent and it's because we haven't gotten rid of the source of the infection – the biofilm – we've only treated the symptoms,” Nobile said. “Part of what we're doing now is looking for more effective strategies, including new therapeutics, to specifically target the source of the infection.”</p> <p>Even more complications arise when an infection involves multiple microbial species. Often, when someone contracts an infection in the hospital, such as one associated with a catheter, it involves more than one species and can be significantly more challenging to treat.</p> <p>“Multiple species can form biofilms together and we know very little about how that happens,” she said. “Microbes from across kingdoms or even from two different kingdoms, such as bacteria and fungi, can come together and make these complex communities and become more drug-resistant than they would be individually.”</p> <p>She and her lab are working to understand how genes are regulated within the context of these single- and multiple-species biofilm structures, to identify new drug targets and determine how to prevent biofilms from forming in the first place.</p> <p>Many of the microbes Nobile’s lab studies occur naturally in the human body and typically don't make a person sick, as they are kept under control by the immune system.</p> <p>However, it is a delicate balance that can be disrupted by illness or treatments for other conditions. Antibiotics may eliminate a strep throat infection, but by killing off the bacteria that keep other microbes in check, the patient can now develop a yeast infection, for example.</p> <p>When biofilm infections form on medical devices, such as prosthetic joints or heart valves, the only real treatment is to have them removed surgically, Nobile explained. That's why it's essential to develop prevention and treatment strategies.</p> <p>“Forming biofilms is a microbe’s defense system. They want to survive. And our defense mechanism is our immune system. It's constantly battling to keep us safe. But we evolve much slower than microbes because they can reproduce so much faster,” she said. “We have discovered some ways to prevent biofilms from forming in the lab, but whether we can apply that to a person is the next step.”</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:00:12 +0000 Anonymous 30146 at Hurricanes Create Powerful Changes Deep in the Ocean, Study Reveals /news/2025/hurricanes-create-powerful-changes-deep-ocean-study-reveals <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2025-06-06T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">June 6, 2025</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/uc_merced_beman-hero.png" width="870" height="450" alt="Hurricane Bud left some surprising changes in its wake, 鶹 researchers found." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Hurricane Bud, shown here over Baja in 2018, extended across Mexico and left some surprising changes in its wake, 鶹 researchers found. Image courtesy of NOAA.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>With careful planning and a little luck, researchers found a surprising upside to hurricanes after a Category 4 storm disrupted their expedition off the coast of Mexico.</p> <p>The team was able to sample the ocean right after the storm passed and found that the storms churn the ocean so powerfully and deeply — up to thousands of meters — that nutrient-rich, cold water is brought to the surface.</p> <p>The resulting phytoplankton blooms — visible in satellite imagery taken from space — are a feast for bacteria, zooplankton, small fish, and filter-feeding animals such as shellfish and baleen whales.</p> <p>“When we got there, you could actually see and smell the difference in the ocean,” said Professor <a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/content/j-michael-beman"> Michael Beman</a>. “It was green from all the chlorophyll being produced. There were totally different organisms there, and they were going nuts in the wake of the storm.”</p> <p>But all that mixing also stirs up low-oxygen zones deep in the water, bringing them much nearer the surface than usual, threatening organisms that need higher oxygen concentrations to survive.</p> <p><img alt="Professor Michael Beman, far left, and his collaborators on the research expedition that encountered Hurricane Bud. " src="https://news.ucmerced.edu/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1306/f/documents/beman-group-shot.png" style="margin: 8px; float: right; width: 470px;" title="Professor Michael Beman, far left, and his collaborators on the research expedition that encountered Hurricane Bud. Image courtesy of Michael Beman." />Beman, a marine biologist, <a href="https://bemanlab.org/"> studies microbial ecology and biogeochemistry</a>. One of his focuses is oceanic oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), large and globally significant areas with little to no oxygen. They are persistent layers in the water column that have low oxygen concentration due to biological, chemical and physical processes. OMZs occur naturally, in contrast to similar “dead zones” that pollution can produce.</p> <p>OMZs are typically found at mid-depths and can significantly impact marine ecosystems as they are inhospitable to many organisms. Warming ocean waters are contributing to the expansion of OMZs.</p> <p>In 2018, Beman and his lab went on a research expedition from Mazatlán, Mexico, to San Diego, to study OMZs with collaborators from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and several other institutions.</p> <p>They knew turbulent weather was likely and closely watched as the second named storm of the year, Hurricane Bud, spun into their planned sampling region.</p> <p>“We were very careful, and we had plans A, B, C and D in place,” he said. “The forecasting was extremely accurate, and we knew the storm rapidly intensified.”</p> <p>Instead of going ashore, they traveled between research sites and behind islands while they waited for the storm to pass.</p> <p>“There was some skill involved, but definitely some luck, too, and we ended up adding a sampling location right where the storm was at maximum power,” Beman said, “basically within a few kilometers of the former eye.”</p> <p>Those samples are rarely, if ever, taken just after a hurricane has churned the water so powerfully. The data indicated the hurricane had dramatically changed oxygen concentrations.</p> <p>“I've never seen measurements like that in those areas of the ocean, ever,” Beman said.</p> <p>Since the trip, the researchers have been examining different aspects of the results, and <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado8335">a new paper in Science Advances</a>, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, details their findings.</p> <p>Beman collaborated on the expedition with Scripps geosciences Professor Lihini Aluwihare and two of her students, Margot White and Irina Koester.</p> <p>“Margot noticed the subsurface changes from the hurricane when she was preparing her thesis chapters, especially the fact that the oxygen minimum zone had rapidly shoaled,” he said. “Irina searched her unique organic matter data to look for changes driven by the hurricane, which turned out to be very clear and dramatic.</p> <p>“We've met many, many times to analyze the data and figure out what effects the hurricane had and why.”</p> <p>The samples also included DNA and RNA, so the researchers could detect the signatures of the organisms that responded to the phytoplankton bloom. Beman said they saw many turtles, which was unusual because they were so far offshore.</p> <p>“We were doing this at a time of year when there’s not a lot going on biologically in these areas of the ocean,” he said, “so these hurricane-generated blooms are like oases for ocean organisms. We detected a bacteria bloom, but I wouldn’t be surprised if larger organisms made use of the hurricanes. They might sense the storms coming and then migrate to areas the storm had just passed over.”</p> <p>Their samples and data are so unique that Beman plans to keep working on them and hopes to collaborate with other scientists interested in the effects of hurricanes and hurricane forecasting.</p> <p>“We are just scratching the surface of what these storms do, and it was a rough few days at sea,” he said. “I hope we continue to learn as much as we can about what actually happens during and after hurricanes.”</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Fri, 06 Jun 2025 19:04:55 +0000 Anonymous 30101 at Study Indicates Human-caused Dust Events are Linked to Fallow Farmland /news/2025/study-indicates-human-caused-dust-events-are-linked-fallow-farmland <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2025-06-02T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">June 2, 2025</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/tractor-hero.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="The Central Valley is a major contributor to a growing dust problem, in large part because of agriculture, researchers say." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">The Central Valley is a major contributor to a growing dust problem, in large part because of agriculture, researchers say.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>An average of more than 1 million acres of idled farmland a year is a significant contributor to a growing dust problem in California that has implications for millions of residents’ health and the state’s climate.</p> <p>A new study published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02306-0"> Nature Communications Earth and Environment </a> by 鶹 professors <a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/content/adeyemi-adebiyi"> Adeyemi Adebiyi </a> and <a href="https://engineering.ucmerced.edu/content/john-abatzoglou"> John Abatzoglou </a> finds that the Central Valley accounts for about 77% of fallowed land in California and is associated with about 88% of major anthropogenic, or human-caused, dust events.</p> <p>“Idled farmland and dust are particularly concentrated in Kern, Fresno and Kings counties, where annual crops such as wheat, corn, and cotton are fallowed as part of agricultural practices or a combination of water and economic decisions,” said Abatzoglou, a climatologist in the Department of Management of Complex Systems in the <a href="https://engineering.ucmerced.edu/"> School of Engineering</a>. “When fields are unplanted, wind erosion can create dust.”</p> <p>Dust can be laced with chemicals and pathogens that cause severe respiratory illnesses or death. For example, Valley fever, caused by a fungus, relies on dust to spread. Particulate matter has also been linked to various forms of dementia, cardiovascular problems, COPD, asthma, and perhaps surprisingly, longer and more painful menstrual cycles. Vulnerable groups disproportionately bear these health impacts.</p> <p>In addition to health problems, a significant reduction in visibility during dust storms has resulted in fatal traffic accidents. Dust storms can also reduce agricultural productivity due to the loss of fertile topsoil and abrasion of crops by airborne particles, which is particularly critical given the state’s role as the leading agricultural producer in the United States.</p> <p>“California, particularly the Central Valley, has not been considered an important dust source,” said Adebiyi, who studies dust and its impacts as a member of the <a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/"> Department of Life and Environmental Sciences </a> in the <a href="https://naturalsciences.ucmerced.edu/"> School of Natural Sciences </a> and as an affiliate of the <a href="https://hsri.ucmerced.edu/"> Health Sciences Research Institute</a>. “However, we're beginning to see, with recent events, that the Central Valley is a major contributor, and much of its dust comes from agricultural sources.”</p> <p>Although researchers don't fully understand dust's effects on climate, they do know that when dust settles on the Sierra Nevada snowpack, it darkens the snow and encourages melting earlier in the year than usual. That impacts critical water resources for people around the state.</p> <p>Fallowed acreage varies year to year, but the researchers found that the geographic coverage of these unfarmed lands expanded between 2008 and 2022, and that growth could be linked to an increase in dust activities.</p> <p>Although it is common to rotate crops and idle lands regularly, the expansion of unplanted lands is partly due to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires farmers to limit the water they use yearly.</p> <p>“The goal of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is clearly to balance groundwater, which is important for California’s future,” Adebiyi said. “However, there are unintended consequences to nearby communities, such as potential dust that comes from farmland fallowed due to SGMA, and what is crucial are those mitigation efforts that can reduce wind erosion.”</p> <p>The researchers suggested farmers consider cover crops or ground cover that increases soil health and reduces dust.</p> <p>Widespread dust events are generally driven by weather, such as strong winds or storms, but dust becomes more likely when soil is dry and disturbed, the latter being human-caused, Abatzoglou said. Human activity, including construction and farming, heavily drives localized dust.</p> <p>Continued research, such as this study and another recent one that resulted in a report from a coalition called <a href="https://ucdust.ucsd.edu/"> UC Dust</a>, will help researchers better understand dust's impacts on a wide range of concerns and challenges.</p> <p>“A better understanding of what likely dominates anthropogenic dust from agricultural sources may help us better represent the overall impacts of dust in other parts of the country and the world,” Adebiyi said.</p> <p>One of the biggest unknowns in simulating climate and health impacts of dust in the future is how anthropogenic dust may change.</p> <p>“Because our study points to fallowed or idled farmlands as a dominant contributor, that may change how we estimate overall dust impact,” he said.</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 02 Jun 2025 16:00:27 +0000 Anonymous 30081 at Link Between Dementia and Air Pollution Drives Research Collaboration /news/2025/link-between-dementia-and-air-pollution-drives-research-collaboration <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2025-04-17T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">April 17, 2025</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/xuan-zhang-hero.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="Students Zeyi Moo, back left, and Yaying Wang, right, work with Professor Xuan Zhang, center, on her Alzheimer&#039;s-related research. Photo courtesy of Kate Marsh." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Students Zeyi Moo, back left, and Yaying Wang, right, work with Professor Xuan Zhang, center, on her Alzheimer&#039;s-related research. Photo courtesy of Kate Marsh.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>California’s Central Valley, famous for producing much of the food Americans eat, is also infamous for its inferior air quality and its high rates of poverty, housing insecurity and at-risk workers.</p> <p>Increasing epidemiological evidence has shown a correlation between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the incidence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD).</p> <p>Areas with severe PM2.5 pollution — including the Central Valley — are often inhabited by low-income residents who are disproportionately affected by these environmental hazards.</p> <p>A $2.2 million RO1 grant from the National Institutes of Health is funding a collaboration between 鶹 geosciences Professor <a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/content/xuan-zhang"> Xuan Zhang </a> and researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Georgia Institute of Technology. Over the next few years, the researchers aim to unravel the complex group of particulates that make up PM2.5 and study the specific pollutants associated with dementia and their underlying mechanisms.</p> <p>“This is especially important for understanding the causes of ADRD and, importantly, environmental toxicant risk factors that are potentially modifiable,” Zhang said.</p> <p>The Central Valley is a perfect place for this research. Heavy truck traffic on Interstate 5 and Highway 99 contributes significantly to PM2.5 emissions, as do wildfires, industrial operations in and around cities, agricultural practices such as burning agricultural waste, energy production, residential wood-burning stoves and fireplaces, and diesel emissions. The Valley's surrounding mountain ranges and sometimes-stagnant air also trap pollutants.</p> <p>PM2.5, a significant component of air pollution, consists of tiny particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller – small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.</p> <p>Zhang explained that some PM2.5 originates from natural processes such as wildfires, but most of it stems from human sources such as vehicles, industry and agriculture.</p> <p>The researchers plan to study whether and which pollutants could induce and speed cognitive decline. They aim to determine the impact of contaminants on a specific and common type of dementia called Lewy body dementia (LBD), which affects 1.4 million people and their families in the U.S.</p> <p>LBD is a progressive disorder characterized by abnormal protein deposits called Lewy bodies in the brain. These deposits interfere with brain function, leading to cognitive, motor and behavioral symptoms, as well as mood disorders such as depression.</p> <p>Lewy bodies are made up of a protein called alpha-synuclein (αS), and about 30% of Alzheimer’s disease patients with αS pathology generally display a more rapid rate of cognitive decline than subjects with Alzheimer’s alone.</p> <p>Previous studies show that αS may enter through the nose or gut but spreads throughout the body to the brain.</p> <p>“While epidemiological studies demonstrating an association of ADRD with pollutants is relatively abundant, there is a clear unmet need for more mechanistic research,” Zhang said. “This knowledge is critical to fully understanding the causes of LBD and translating that knowledge into novel prevention and treatment strategies.”</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Thu, 17 Apr 2025 17:57:44 +0000 Anonymous 29891 at Study: Climate Change Extends Drought Recovery by at Least Three Months /news/2024/study-climate-change-extends-drought-recovery-least-three-months <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2024-10-17T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">October 17, 2024</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/geese.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="Alt" /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Drought recovery isn&#039;t only important for human water users. For example, migrating birds depend on being able to locate the same sources of water year after year to survive on their long journeys.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>A group of researchers at 鶹 has found that climate change means it takes about three months longer for California to recover from drought, and probably longer.</p> <p>“Climate change has fundamentally changed the odds of getting out of drought. It has weighted the dice,” said <a href="https://www.climatologylab.org/team.html"> Emily Williams</a>, a postdoctoral scholar with the <a href="https://snri.ucmerced.edu/"> Sierra Nevada Research Institute</a>. “This is happening because of warming in summer months, and a good portion of it is because of human-caused climate change.”</p> <p>As Californians know, water is a precious resource and needs to be carefully managed to make sure there is enough to meet all needs, from those of the agriculture industry to everyday water users.</p> <p>Williams worked with engineering Professor <a href="https://snri.ucmerced.edu/content/john-abatzoglou"> John Abatzoglou</a>, SNRI project scientist <a href="https://snri.ucmerced.edu/content/katherine-hegewisch"> Katherine C. Hegewisch </a> and UCLA geography Professor Park Williams to estimate the odds of recovery in the recent past and historical record, and compare those to what recovery would have looked like in a world without climate change.</p> <p>Drought is a great concern for Californians, and until late 2022, the state had been in a drought for many years.</p> <p>“The question that was on a lot of people's minds and also in the news was some variation of ‘When is this going to end?’” Williams said. “And because I research climate change, I wondered whether it is getting harder to get out of drought, and if so, how much of it is caused by climate change.”</p> <p>Decision makers have a lot of tools at their disposal, but the team was concerned they could be inadequate if they only use historical data, as there is nothing in the historical record that is analogous to today.</p> <p>“It was a tricky problem to work on because we were working with probabilities,” Williams explained. “With statistics, you have to have a large sample size which is fine because these tools had been looking at the past 100 years. But we wanted to look at what happened in the previous 10 to 20 years as compared to the past 100 years.”</p> <p>They added experimental data and climate model output to solve the problem of small sample sizes rather than looking at just observational data. When all the lines of evidence provided the same answers, the researchers knew they could be confident in their results, detailed in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01640-z"> new paper </a> in the journal Nature Communications: Earth and Environment.</p> <p>The researchers caution that the new model does not include some other factors in drought recovery, including changes in the snowpack in California.</p> <p>Studies have demonstrated that increased temperatures from climate change have reduced springtime snowpack because of the shift in rain versus snow and early melt, which leads to less water available in warmer months, the researchers wrote, leading them to conclude their analysis offers conservative estimates of drought recovery time.</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:01:47 +0000 Anonymous 28721 at Researchers Find Unexpected Cellular Residence for Protein Vital in Neurodevelopment /news/2024/researchers-find-unexpected-cellular-residence-protein-vital-neurodevelopment <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2024-04-25T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">April 25, 2024</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/ge-hero.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="Xuecai Ge, center, and her students" /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Professor Xuecai Ge, center, and her students study how cells talk to each other.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>In Professor <a href="https://mcb.ucmerced.edu/content/xuecai-ge"> Xuecai Ge </a> ’s lab, where 鶹 researchers study how cells talk to each other to develop and differentiate, a recent surprise discovery is lending insight as to how erroneous cell signals lead to disease and birth defects.</p> <p>Ge and her colleagues zeroed in on a slice of the communication system, the primary cilia, and found a protein called Numb, which they didn’t expect to be there.</p> <p>Numb facilitates development of the spinal cord and cerebellum during embryonic neurodevelopment.</p> <p>“Numb was extensively studied about 20 years ago, and we expect that where Numb is located in the cell has been well characterized,” Ge said. “However, its association with the cilium has never been reported before, and this surprised us.”</p> <p>Ge and <a href="http://gelab.ucmerced.edu/">her lab</a> — which includes postdoctoral researcher Xiaoliang Liu and graduate students Jingyi Zhang, Eva Cai and Oscar Torres Gutierrez — worked with fellow researchers Fred Charron at McGill University and Jennifer Kong at the University of Washington. Together, they confirmed that knocking out Numb results in signaling errors in the cilium and impairs neurodevelopment. They detailed their findings in a paper published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47244-1"> Nature Communications</a>.</p> <p>The primary cilium, a hair-like organelle, is found in nearly every cell of the body. The roles of cilia have been mysterious, but recent studies show they act like a cell’s antennae, detecting cues in the environment and converting them into intracellular signaling pathways — functional sets of proteins that coordinate in space and time to influence cell behavior, Ge explained. Mutations that disrupt ciliary function lead to a wide spectrum of human diseases.</p> <p>With advanced microscopy and quantitative proteomic methods, the researchers looked in-depth at a pathway called Hedgehog signaling — the first pathway found to rely on the cilium.</p> <p>“We wanted to understand how cilium mediates Hedgehog signaling, so we mapped all the ciliary protein over the course of Hedgehog signaling transduction,” Ge said. “Our findings unveiled a cohort of new ciliary proteins, including Numb. Numb is crucial to activate Hedgehog signaling. The cerebellum and spinal cord rely on Hedgehog signaling for their development, so knocking out the protein causes a major disruption.”</p> <p>Ge is a member of the <a href="https://mcb.ucmerced.edu/"> Department of Molecular and Cell Biology</a>. She is also affiliated with the <a href="https://hsri.ucmerced.edu/"> Health Sciences Research Institute</a>, the <a href="https://ccbm.ucmerced.edu/"> CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines </a> and the <a href="https://cin.ucmerced.edu/"> Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience</a>. She and her lab seek to understand the molecular underpinnings of neural development and developmental disorders. The large-scale study of proteins in this project also unveiled the potential ciliary localization for several other proteins known to play roles in neurodevelopment, which opens new avenues for exploring the mechanisms of action underlying these proteins.</p> <p>This study marks the start of a new project initiated by Ge’s lab. She said there are many possible next steps.</p> <p>“There are a few exciting directions to pursue after this,” Ge said. “First, it will be intriguing to study functions of other ciliary candidates from our proteomic (large-scale study of proteins) results. We might reveal more surprises like Numb. Second, it will be interesting to apply our cilium proteomic approach to mouse models in vivo. We are particularly interested in the cilia of neural progenitor cells in the developing brain.”</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Thu, 25 Apr 2024 17:22:01 +0000 Anonymous 27821 at New Center Offers Opportunities to Observe and Learn about Natural Resources /news/2024/new-center-offers-opportunities-observe-and-learn-about-natural-resources <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2024-04-01T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">April 1, 2024</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/field-education-center-hero.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="A rendering of the new Field Education Center shows how it will provide shelter." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">A rendering of the new Field Education Center shows how it will provide shelter.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>Even though the <a href="https://mvpgr.ucmerced.edu/"> Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve </a> (MVPGR) is adjacent to campus, it's an area that can be daunting to access.</p> <p>Last year, more than 2,000 people visited the campus to learn about this unique habitat and the animals and plants that are protected there. Guided visitors included schoolchildren on tours and researchers. Once there, for much of the year, the weather can be windy, rainy or blisteringly hot and there are no facilities where people can take shelter, use the restroom or wash their hands.</p> <p>“Researchers are used to working in a variety of field conditions, but the lack of facilities could be a real barrier for students and other visitors,” said paleoecology <a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/content/jessica-blois"> Professor Jessica Blois </a> , faculty director of 鶹’s natural reserves.</p> <p>This year, that's going to change. Reserve leaders, including Blois, Associate Director Jessica Malisch and Reserve Director Joy Baccei, have been gathering funds from donors and grants to build the new Field Education and Research Center near the site of the old barn on the strip of property between campus and the primary conservation lands — more than 6,000 acres northeast of campus. They will also resurface the road that leads from the reserve gate on Ranchers Road out to the new building.</p> <p>The Field Education and Research Center has been strategically sited adjacent to the MVPGR so the focus can be on the vernal pool and grassland physical environments. The MVPGR is an environmentally sensitive area with limited access and is subject to regulatory requirements. However, there are natural resource areas not on the MVPGR that are accessible and allow for the observation of vernal pools and grasslands environments.</p> <p>The MVPGR has been a site for research since before it was an officially recognized UC reserve. It features ancient soils, endangered species and the vernal pools, which are a disappearing feature of California land.</p> <p>The goal is to have the center ready to use in the fall, Malisch said. Much of the structure’s construction will be done offsite and driven the 3/4 of a mile out to its new home, where the pieces will be put together, not unlike a classic barn-raising event. As early as April, work will begin on the road, which will be resurfaced with a recycled, permeable covering that will have turnouts so vehicles can pass each other, areas for school buses to turn around and a small parking zone for people with disabilities.</p> <p>“I am really excited about how this project will increase access for the Merced community to learn about the importance of vernal pools as a seasonal wetland, unique species and the special history of the natural reserve land,” Malisch said.</p> <p>People will be able to learn more about the grand vision for the Education and Research Center when the MVPGR’s 10<sup>th</sup> anniversary is celebrated with a science symposium, tours, a student poster presentation, a reception and more, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. April 12.</p> <p>What is known so far is that the structure will be off the electric grid. It will be an open-air pavilion that provides shelter and allows people to enjoy the views and see vernal pools while also protecting the pools from visitor traffic. The highly sustainable building will have solar panels to provide light, a rainwater capture system and three bathrooms with composting toilets. Drinking and wash water will come from a well already at the site.</p> <p>The Wildlife Conservation Board recently awarded campus $920,000 from Proposition 68, which contained a provision to support infrastructure projects for the UC Natural Reserve System.</p> <p>“We had this project in mind, but it required a 25% match. The 鶹 Foundation Board of Trustees generously designated their Impact Funds for the Reserve two years in a row, and Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz made additional funds available to us,” Blois said.</p> <p>About 55% of the reserve’s use is educational, mainly students from 鶹 taking field trips as part of their courses. Students from area state and community colleges and K-12 schools also visit the reserve for hands-on educational and field research experiences, Baccei said.</p> <p>The new Field Education and Research Center will allow for expanded educational programming and community outreach, she said.</p> <p>“I look forward to providing transformational educational experiences to both students and the community alike to inspire our next generation of environmental leaders and also inspire social and environmental change,” Baccei said.</p> <p>To attend the anniversary event, <a href="https://ucmerced.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8B8GrhflFZhqKy2"> please RSVP online</a>.</p> <p> </p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 01 Apr 2024 23:05:42 +0000 Anonymous 27661 at Education Access to Natural Reserve to Expand with New Field Education Center /news/2024/education-access-natural-reserve-expand-new-field-education-center <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2024-03-11T00:00:00-07:00" class="date-display-single">March 11, 2024</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/field-education-center-hero.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="A rendering of the new Field Education Center shows how it will provide shelter." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">A rendering of the new Field Education Center shows how it will provide shelter.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p>Even though the <a href="https://mvpgr.ucmerced.edu/"> Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve </a> (MVPGR) is adjacent to campus, it's an area that can be daunting to access.</p> <p>Last year, more than 2,000 people visited the reserve or campus lands adjacent to the reserve to learn about this unique habitat and the animals and plants that are protected there. Guided visitors included schoolchildren on tours and researchers. However, visiting requires finding parking on campus and walking out to the land, which is not easy for people with disabilities or those carrying a lot of equipment. Once there, for much of the year, the weather can be windy, rainy or blisteringly hot and there are no facilities where people can take shelter, use the restroom or wash their hands.</p> <p>“Researchers are used to working in a variety of field conditions, but the lack of facilities could be a real barrier for students and other visitors,” said paleoecology <a href="https://les.ucmerced.edu/content/jessica-blois"> Professor Jessica Blois</a>, faculty director of 鶹’s natural reserves.</p> <p>This year, that's going to change. Reserve leaders, including Blois, Associate Director Jessica Malisch and Reserve Director Joy Baccei, have been gathering funds from donors and grants to build the new Field Education Center near the site of the old barn on the strip of property between campus and the primary conservation lands — more than 6,000 acres northeast of campus. They will also resurface the road that leads from the reserve gate on Ranchers Road out to the new building.</p> <p>The goal is to have the center ready to use in the fall, Malisch said. Much of the structure’s construction will be done offsite and driven the 3/4 of a mile out to its new home, where the pieces will be put together, not unlike a classic barn-raising event. As early as April, work will begin on the road, which will be resurfaced with a recycled, permeable covering that will have turnouts so vehicles can pass each other, areas for school buses to turn around and a small parking zone for people with disabilities.</p> <p>“I am really excited about how this project will increase access for the Merced community to learn about the importance of vernal pools as a seasonal wetland, unique species and the special history of the natural reserve land,” Malisch said.</p> <p>People will be able to learn more about the grand vision for the Education Center when the MVPGR’s 10 <sup>th</sup> anniversary is celebrated with a science symposium, tours, a student poster presentation, a reception and more, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. April 12.</p> <p>What is known so far is that the structure will be off the grid, so there will be no Internet and limited electricity. It will be an open-air pavilion that provides shelter and allows people to enjoy the views and see vernal pools while also protecting the pools from visitor traffic. The highly sustainable building will have solar panels to provide light, a rainwater capture system and three bathrooms with composting toilets.</p> <p>The Wildlife Conservation Board recently awarded the reserve leaders $920,000 from Proposition 68, which contained a provision to support infrastructure projects for the UC Natural Reserve System.</p> <p>“We had this project in mind, but it required a 25% match. The 鶹 Foundation Board of Trustees generously designated their Impact Funds for the Reserve two years in a row, and Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz made additional funds available to us,” Blois said.</p> <p>The MVPGR has been a site for research since before it was an officially recognized UC reserve. It features ancient soils, endangered species and the vernal pools, which are a disappearing feature of California land.</p> <p>About 55% of the reserve’s use is educational, mainly students from 鶹 taking field trips as part of their courses. But other students from area state and community colleges and K-12 schools also visit the reserve for hands-on educational and field research experiences, Baccei said.</p> <p>The new Field Education Center will allow for expanded educational programming and community outreach, she said.</p> <p>“I look forward to providing transformational educational experiences to both students and the community alike to inspire our next generation of environmental leaders and also inspire social and environmental change,” Baccei said.</p> <p>To attend the anniversary event, <a href="https://ucmerced.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8B8GrhflFZhqKy2"> please RSVP online</a>.</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Mon, 11 Mar 2024 17:32:49 +0000 Anonymous 27541 at Sukenik Named Sloan Research Fellow for Pioneering Research in Protein Chemistry /news/2024/sukenik-named-sloan-research-fellow-pioneering-research-protein-chemistry <div class="field field-name-field-news-byline-text field-type-text field-label-hidden">By Lorena Anderson, 鶹</div><div class="field field-name-field-news-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><span property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2024-02-20T00:00:00-08:00" class="date-display-single">February 20, 2024</span></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" src="/sites/g/files/ufvvjh1421/f/news/image/sukenik-hero_0.jpg" width="870" height="450" alt="Professor Shahar Sukenik studies intrinsically disordered proteins." /></div><div class="field field-name-field-news-hero-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden">Professor Shahar Sukenik studies intrinsically disordered proteins.</div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><p><a href="https://chemistry.ucmerced.edu/content/shahar-sukenik">Professor Shahar Sukenik </a> has been a faculty member for only 5 1/2 years, but he has already built an impressive resume, becoming a leader in his research field, an innovator and an exceptional communicator.</p> <p>Those qualities helped him become 鶹’s first recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Sloan Research Fellowship.</p> <p><a href="https://chemistry.ucmerced.edu/">Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry </a> Chair <a href="https://chemistry.ucmerced.edu/content/ryan-baxter"> Professor Ryan Baxter </a> touted Sukenik’s work with intrinsically disordered proteins and his commitment to excellence when he nominated Sukenik for the prestigious and highly competitive award.</p> <p>The Sloan Foundation announced today that Sukenik is one of 126 early-career researchers from the United States and Canada selected to receive this year’s fellowships.</p> <p>Sukenik credits his collaborators and others — especially the graduate students in <a href="https://www.sukeniklab.com/">his lab</a> — with much of his success.</p> <p>“I think this award is primarily a testament to the high quality of work that the lab's graduate students have performed. Karina Guadalupe, Eduardo Flores, David Moses and Feng Yu have, together, built the research program this fellowship was awarded for from scratch,” Sukenik said. “The lab has expanded since then, and David and Feng recently graduated and are conducting research at top research institutions here in California. But it is the hard work of these individuals that set things in motion, so I mainly want to thank them for their trust, hard work, enthusiasm and perseverance.”</p> <p>An extensive network of friends, mentors and collaborators helped Sukenik gain confidence and believe in and pursue his ideas, he said.</p> <p>Sukenik is affiliated with the <a href="https://hsri.ucmerced.edu/"> Health Sciences Research Institute </a> and the <a href="https://ccbm.ucmerced.edu/"> Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines</a>. His research deals with the interplay between proteins and their physical-chemical environment.</p> <p>Specifically, he is looking at how intrinsically disordered proteins — a family of proteins that make up over 30% of the proteins in the human body — are affected by changes in their surroundings, Baxter explained.</p> <p>Despite never having worked with disordered proteins during his training, Sukenik quickly established himself in the disordered protein research community, Baxter said in his nomination. Sukenik developed novel methods that allow unique insight into how these proteins function inside the cell and is pioneering the use of disordered proteins as sensors and actuators of their physical-chemical environment.</p> <p>While the $75,000, two-year award will help Sukenik’s lab continue the work it has been doing, his proposal to the Sloan Foundation laid out some new directions that are not yet funded.</p> <p>“Our overarching goal is to understand how small molecules that are abundant in the cell can affect the behavior of proteins — both ’standard,’ well-folded proteins as well as disordered proteins,” he explained. “We aim to show that the behavior of many of these molecular machines is ultimately determined by the chemical interactions between them and their surrounding environment. It is especially important in the context of a living cell — where proteins must function and in a chemical environment that is in constant flux due to routine cellular events or pathology.”</p> <p>Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships honor exceptional researchers whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders, the Sloan Foundation said.</p> <p>Open to scholars in seven fields — chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics — the Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded in close coordination with the scientific community. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists and winners are selected by independent panels of senior scholars based on a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in their field. More than 1,000 researchers are nominated each year, according to the Foundation. Many of the past recipients have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes, National Medals of Science and other prestigious awards.</p> <p>Fellows from the 2024 cohort are drawn from a diverse range of 53 institutions across the U.S. and Canada, including large public university systems, Ivy League institutions and small liberal arts colleges.</p> <p>"Sloan Research Fellowships are extraordinarily competitive awards involving the nominations of the most inventive and impactful early-career scientists across the U.S. and Canada,” said Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “We look forward to seeing how Fellows take leading roles shaping the research agenda within their respective fields.”</p> </div><div class="field field-name-field-news-media-contact-tax field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div id="taxonomy-term-1741" class="taxonomy-term vocabulary-media-contact"> <div class="content"> <div class="taxonomy-term-description"><div class="media-contacts-head"> <p><a href="http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/for-journalists">Media Contact</a></p> </div> <div><img alt="" src="/sites/news.ucmerced.edu/files/images/staff_headshots/ucmerced-lorena-anderson.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 175px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;" /></div> <p>Senior Writer and Public Information Representative</p> <p>Office: (209) 228-4406</p> <p>Mobile: (209) 201-6255</p> <p><a href="mailto:landerson4@ucmerced.edu">landerson4@ucmerced.edu</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:11:04 +0000 Anonymous 27411 at