Naoki Yamanaka will study the role of steroid hormone transporters in insect development and reproduction. An Assistant Professor of Entomology, Yamanaka will translate that knowledge into new ways to combat the spread of mosquitoes, which are among the deadliest animals on the planet. Steroid hormones mediate many biological processes, including growth and development in insects...

CEPCEB hosted its 5th Annual Postdoc Symposium on June 1, 2018. Steve Kay, USC Director of Convergent Bioscience and Provost Professor of Neurology, Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences, presented the keynote address “Grow Up! The Circadian Clock as the Master Regulator of Plant Environmental Responses”. The full day event featured research talks by graduate students...

In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers at the University of California, Riverside report how plants package and deliver the small RNAs, or sRNAs, they use to fight back against plant pathogens. The study focused on Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that causes a grey mold disease in almost all fruits, vegetables, and many...

Congratulations to Martin Luther King Jr. High School graduating senior, Yushan (Susan) Su, for bringing home the Third Life Science Award from Sigma Xi at the Intel ISEF in Pennsylvania. Susan won for her project, “High-Resolution Genetic Profiling of Rice Pinpoints Critical Sugar Transport Genes for Engineering of Flood Resistant Crops”. Susan has had a...

View the youtube Stream of CEPCEB Assistant Professor Carolyn Rasmussen’s lecture “Feeding the World: From Mendel to CRISPR”, where she discusses the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and its wide range of potential applications and challenges. Presented through the UC Riverside Lecture Series “Gene Editing: Are We Playing God?”

A $1 million gift from longtime campus supporter Rochelle Campbell and Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Campbell Presidential Chair holder Susan Wessler will provide financial support for undergraduate students engaged in summer research – an opportunity out of reach to many students due to financial barriers. You can read the complete article by J.D. Warren...

The University of California, Riverside Department of Botany & Plant Sciences swept multiple Graduate and Undergraduate Award categories at the most recent American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Western Section Conference on Saturday, February 3, 2018. Pablo Martinez (Carolyn Rasmussen lab) was awarded Best Graduate Student Talk for his work using a single-molecule approach to...

A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside, seeking to upend a long-held theory explaining how hormones freely enter and exit cells, has received a major boost in the form of a $1 million award from the W. M. Keck Foundation. The generous Keck award will allow Sachiko Haga-Yamanaka, Naoki Yamanaka, and Frances...

The Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California, Riverside awarded its inaugural Natasha V. Raikhel Award in Research Innovation and Science Leadership to Thomas Girke, Professor of Bioinformatics and Director of UCR’s High Performance Computing Center. Announced during the Center for Plant Cell Biology’s 15th Annual Symposium and Awards Ceremony on December...

IIGB Researchers have found a way to access and manipulate taste neurons in the pharynx (throat) of the common fruit fly that could help control the spread of mosquito-related illnesses, such as dengue, malaria, yellow fever, and Zika virus, and reduce the loss of crops due to agricultural pests. Here is the link to the...

The IIGB/CEPCEB geneticist has been named a foreign member of the Royal Society, whose past membership includes Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. Inclusion in the Royal Society is based on outstanding accomplishments over the lifetime of a career in science, engineering, and technology and requires the nomination of two current fellows. Approximately 700...

Naoki Yamanaka an assistant professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, has been named a Pew scholar in the biomedical sciences. Along with 21 other exceptional early-career researchers named as Pew scholars by The Pew Charitable Trusts, he will receive four years of flexible funding to pursue foundational research. Yamanaka is the first...

Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh, the director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology (IIGB) and the Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair in Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, has been elected to the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1652, the Leopoldina is one of the oldest academies...

In a paper published today in Scientific Reports, a team led by Adler Dillman, assistant professor of parasitology in UCR's College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, has shown how nematodes use smell to seek out uninfected insects, which they then enter and kill. The findings support the group's long-term goal of improving how gardeners and...