Professor John Harada, Department of Plant Biology, was recently recognized by Japan’s Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) with an honorary doctorate of science. The honor comes after over a decade of fruitful collaboration between the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences and NAIST.
Last year, Associate Professor Siobhan Brady and her colleagues published “a core set of genes that are critical in nitrogen metabolism” in Nature. For her research, Brady was recognized with the 2018-2019 College of Biological Sciences Faculty Research Award.
In December 2018, Distinguished Professor Venkatesan Sundaresan and his colleagues published in Nature a method that allowed them to produce clonal seeds directly from plants, bypassing the sexual reproduction process. Replicating this process in the lab could prove vital to providing the world’s farmers with high-yielding, disease-resistant or climate-resistant food crops.
For nearly two decades, Professor Julin Maloof has shined a light on biological knowledge for UC Davis students, introducing computational methods to the life sciences curriculum. For his dedication to his students, Maloof received the 2018-2019 Faculty Teaching Award.
Of the major food crops, only rice is currently able to survive flooding. Thanks to new research, that could soon change -- good news for a world in which rains are increasing in both frequency and intensity.
In a new publication in The Plant Cell — “Chloroplast Outer Membrane β-Barrel Proteins Use Components of the General Import Apparatus” — authors Philip Day, Steven Theg, and Kentaro Inoue, all at University of California, Davis, determined how β-barrel proteins are sorted to the correct location in plant chloroplast envelopes, which have two membranes.
Plant Biology Graduate Group student Leonardo Jo thought his anxiety was normal, an expected part of the graduate school experience. His peers grappled with similar issues: imposter syndrome, researcher pressures and financial insecurity, to name a few. And they all seemed to suffer in silence at the cost of their own mental health.
In a study appearing in Nature Communications, researchers identified the function of a key protein that regulates plant immunity. The fundamental research could eventually lead to agricultural practices capable of endowing crops with broad-spectrum resistance against pathogens.
During his career, Savithramma Dinesh-Kumar has published more than 100 research papers and reviews and has received many accolades. For his excellence in molecular plant pathology research, Dinesh-Kumar recently received the Noel T. Keen Award from The American Phytopathological Society.
After six years serving as the Executive Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the College of Biological Sciences, Professor John Harada stepped down from the post at the end of June. He'll continue his research on seeds and the gene networks governing their development.
