Division of Biological Sciences

Division of Biological Sciences

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Spotlight

Bees, Biology and Chemistry: Bringing Graduate Level Research to High School Classrooms

Paula Ezcurra, a senior at Helix Charter High School in La Mesa, is sitting in the hot noonday sun staring intently at a potted plant in full bloom. She is waiting for a honeybee or other flying insect to arrive. Will it set down and suck up the sweet nectar or will it just hover and depart again looking for a different flower?

More than a dozen of her classmates are involved in the same activity. They are trying to find out if pollinators prefer introduced plants like the Indian Hawthorn over native plants like the Monkey Flower.

Megan Eckles, an ecology doctoral student in UC San Diego’s Division of Biological Sciences, is the leader of this small research project. She is a fellow in UCSD’s Socrates program, which provides fellowships to UCSD graduate students to work with local teachers to teach students about scientific discovery and motivate them to pursue scientific careers.

Supporting Promising Young Faculty: The 2010 Hellman Faculty Fellows Announced

Assistant Professors Amy Kiger and Elsa Cleland are among 30 faculty members who have been named 2010-2011 Hellman Faculty Fellows at the University of California, San Diego.

The program, which supports faculty members in their scholarly work as they strive for tenure with the university, was established at UC San Diego in 1995 with a generous gift of $2.5 million from Chris and Warren Hellman. Its purpose is to provide financial support and encouragement to young faculty who show capacity for great distinction in their research and creative activities.

News

Watch a video of moving amoeba cells

UC San Diego Biologists Unravel Mechanisms of How Immune Cells Move

Human white blood cells navigate to and destroy bacteria by following a chemical that bacteria secrete. But less well understood are the biochemical processes within these immune cells that allow them to speed their way to bacteria and the sites of wounds and infections, often causing inflammation.

Now a team of biologists from the University of California, San Diego, led by Richard Firtel, a professor of biology at UCSD, has uncovered a major piece of the puzzle. In the May 18 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, the UCSD scientists report that they discovered a previously unknown complex of proteins that guides amoebae and mammalian immune cells toward their prey.

Photo of mouse eating food pellets

High-Altitude Metabolism Lets Mice Stay Slim and Healthy on a High-Fat Diet

Mice that are missing a protein involved in the response to low oxygen stay lean and healthy, even on a high-fat diet, a new study has found.

“They process fat differently,” said Randall Johnson, professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, who directed the research, which is published in the April 15 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism. While their normal littermates gain weight, develop fatty livers and become resistant to insulin on a high fat diet, just like overweight humans do, the mutant mice suffered none of these ill effects.