Biological Sciences Associate Professor Elizabeth Villa has been selected as a 2021 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. As one of 33 scientists chosen out of pool of more than 800, Villa will receive $9 million over a seven-year HHMI Investigator term.
Scientists have created the precision-guided sterile insect technique, a new CRISPR-based technology to control Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for spreading wide-ranging diseases including dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika.
Low and uneven turnout is a serious problem for local democracy. However, simply moving off-cycle, local elections to be held on the same day as statewide and national contests doubles voter turnout and leads to an electorate that is considerably more representative.
New visualizations of SARS-CoV-2 have allowed researchers to discover how the virus enters and infects healthy human cells. They found that glycan sugar molecules act as infection “gates” to our cell’s receptors.
UC San Diego researchers and their colleagues have discovered that spontaneous impulses of dopamine, the neurological messenger known as the brain’s “feel good” chemical, occur in the brain of mice. The study found that mice can willfully manipulate these random dopamine pulses for reward.
Is there a "CalExodus"? A UC San Diego survey finds no increase, over 2019, in residents who say they plan to leave. A companion report analyzing Google trends data suggests they aren’t secretly searching for move-related terms either.
Renee Bowen, the Pastor Faculty Fellow at the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Department of Economics, has been selected to serve in the Biden administration as the senior economist for Trade with the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).
Research reveals that phage viruses that undergo special evolutionary training increase their capacity to subdue bacteria. The results provide hope for the antibiotic resistance crisis, a rising threat as deadly bacteria continue to evolve to render many modern drugs ineffective.
A coordinated conservation effort that removed rats from Hawadax Island, formerly known as “Rat Island,” has become a new example of how ecosystems can fully recover to their natural state in little more than a decade. The results are described in a report led by a UC San Diego scientist.
New research published in two papers by UC San Diego scientists describes novel achievements designed to make the implementation of gene drives safer and more controllable. The new split drive and home-and-rescue systems address concerns about the release of gene drives in wild populations.