The California State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection presented the Francis H. Raymond Award for Outstanding Contributions to California Forestry to Dr. William Libby on October 7, 2009.
Dr. Libby is Professor Emeritus of Forest Genetics, having taught forestry at the College of Natural Resources in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management between 1962 and 1994. His pioneering work in the field of forest tree genetics is internationally recognized and respected. Dr. Libby has practiced forestry on several continents and is well known for his work with California’s coast redwood and Monterey pine trees.
Though he officially retired in 1994, Dr. Libby has continued to educate and enlighten across the borders of country and perspective. He currently sits on the Board of the Save the Redwoods League with a focus on promoting research on redwood forest disturbance effects and the impacts of climate change on California’s coast redwood and giant sequoia forests. Dr. Libby’s observations on state and national forest policy are reflective of his insight and intellectual curiosity. His dedication in service to the forests of California and elsewhere is inspirational.
“Dr. Libby’s contributions to decades of forestry students and fellow researchers cannot be
measured,” said George Gentry, executive officer for the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The award is named for Francis H. Raymond who was the Director of the California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protection from 1953 to 1970. Mr. Raymond was one of the primary
advocates for the passage of the Professional Foresters Law in 1973. Since 1987 it has been
awarded to a group or individual who has achieved excellence in forestry in California.
Continue reading "Professor Honored for Outstanding Contributions to California Forestry" »
A University of California, Berkeley, project to catalog nearly every living thing on the Polynesian island of Moorea is enlisting the help of the island's 5th graders and showing them that science is not for foreigners only.
While conducting research for his thesis and for the Moorea Biocode Project, ESPM graduate student Brad Balukjian has been teaching 5th graders at the Paopao Primary School about biodiversity and introducing them to the scientific study of the plants and animals they see every day.
The biocode project, run by UC Berkeley and French researchers and funded by a $5.2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, aims to build a comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life on the island by 2011.With samples taken from the mountaintops to the ocean depths, it would be the first complete inventory of a tropical ecosystem.
At an end-of-year science fair on June 25, Balukjian's students proudly presented their collections of Moorean insects and plants to parents and fellow students. Each student had also collected a specimen specifically for the Moorea Biocode Project database, so that its DNA profile could be entered along with the student collector's name.
"They are immortalized in the biocode database," Balukjian said.
Continue reading "Growing young scientists in Tahiti" »
As the popularity of take-home DNA kits to trace ancestry or calculate the risk for serious medical conditions grows, there is an increasingly critical need for federal oversight of "direct-to consumer" genetic testing, as well as of the use of DNA samples for research, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and several other academic institutions.
In the past year, scientists, sociologists and bioethicists, among others, have come to agree that the technology of these direct-to-consumer tests, which run between $100 and $1,000 apiece, is problematic and that the test results can be misleading and lead to problems including skewed ethnic data and questionable membership claims to Native American tribes.
But while organizations such as the American Society of Human Genetics have issued guidelines to curb the unintended consequences and misuses of DNA testing, federal agencies need to step in and help shape a "gold standard" in genetic ancestry testing, according to a policy paper published in the July 3 issue of the journal Science and coauthored by researchers from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of Texas, University of Wisconsin and New York University.
Continue reading "Tougher controls sought for DNA ancestry testing" »
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered a key mechanism responsible for a curious type of genetic inheritance that has been one of the great, unsolved mysteries in biology. The new findings, to be published today (Friday, Feb. 27) in Science, help explain the phenomenon of paramutation, in which certain alleles are heritably altered while their DNA sequences remain unchanged.
Paramutation violates the first law of genetics: that alleles are always inherited unchanged from the previous generation. The phenomenon was first described in 1956 for one of the factors responsible for corn-seed coloration. Since then, it has been observed in several plant species, and in 2006 an international group of researchers described an example of paramutation in mice, reinvigorating the idea that the phenomenon might represent a more fundamental aspect of biology.
The Berkeley researchers, led by Jay Hollick, associate adjunct professor of plant biology, returned to the corn plant to examine how paramutation works. They discovered that a plant-specific RNA polymerase Pol IV is responsible for the multi-generational memory of paramutation as well as normal plant development. This unusual RNA polymerase is responsible for the production of small RNA molecules from repetitive non-coding DNA.
Continue reading "UC Berkeley researchers explain key mechanism of inheritance that defies Mendel’s first law of genetics" »
University of California scientists have received a five-year, $4 million grant to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a southeast Asian island threatened by the loss of biodiversity in its tropical forests.
An international team of collaborators will conduct biodiversity surveys, screen microbes and plants for applications to human health and energy needs, recommend strategies to conserve endangered species, and develop and encourage local conservation. The project is organized into six associate programs -- five led by UC Davis scientists while one program, focusing on discovery of human health solutions is being led by Len Bjeldanes, professor of toxicology at CNR.
The grant is funded by the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program, a multi-agency program led by the National Institutes of Health with contributions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.
Damon Lisch, Ph.D., a research professional in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology was recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program.
The four-year, $1.4 million award supports research on the ways in which genomes recognize and inactivate “jumping genes,” or transposons.
"These molecular parasites can make up the majority of DNA in many species, including humans," Lisch explains. "If not controlled, transposons can be highly disruptive. Fortunately, they can be tamed through the activity of a recently discovered and ancient immune system, which can detect and silence these rogue genes. Interestingly, versions of this system are also used by a wide variety of species to regulate other genes, such as those involved in development and cancer, in such a way that they are only active in the proper times and places."
Researchers have for the first time identified environmental pollutants by looking at the genes of a small, freshwater crustacean. This new gene-based technique could lead to better and faster lab tests for pinpointing pollutants in contaminated ecosystems.
In a study published online on July 10 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, scientists measured changes in gene expression in the genome of Daphnia magna, the tiny transparent water flea commonly used for lab studies, to track down poisons in two polluted rivers in California. This is the first time gene expression has been used to identify an environmental pollutant - in this case, copper from nearby mines.
Continue reading "Genes could solve pollution mysteries" »
BERKELEY – The interaction between a virus and its host is often portrayed as an arms race, with each new viral attack parried by the host and each new defense by the host one-upped by the virus.
Researchers have for the first time documented this arms race within the genes of both the virus and its host.
In the May 23 issue of Science, the researchers confirm that a sophisticated microbial "immune system" spits out bits of RNA to silence viral genes, and they also report the viruses' counterstrategy - to shuffle their DNA until their genome sequences becomes scrambled enough to evade the RNA silencers.
Continue reading "Rapid escalation characterizes arms race between virus and host " »
BERKELEY – The pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death first got its grip in California's forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County before spreading out to eventually kill millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, according to a new study led by researchers. It provides, for the first time, evidence of how the epidemic unfolded in this state.
"In this paper, we actually reconstruct the Sudden Oak Death epidemic," said Matteo Garbelotto, UC Berkeley associate extension specialist and adjunct professor, and principal investigator of the study. "We point to where the disease was introduced in the wild and where it spread from those introduction points."
Continue reading "Sudden Oak Death pathogen is evolving, says new study that reconstructs the epidemic " »
In the middle of the South Pacific, about 12 miles west of Tahiti, is a tropical island that soon will emerge as a model ecosystem, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-French research team led by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
Moorea, home of the UC Berkeley Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station and France's Centre de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l'Environnement (CRIOBE), will be the site of an ambitious project to create a comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life on the island. Supported by a new $5.2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Moorea Biocode Project over the next three years will send researchers climbing up jagged peaks, trekking through lush forests and diving down to coral reefs to sample the French Polynesian island's animal and plant life.
Continue reading " $5.2 million grant from Moore Foundation funds ambitious project to barcode an entire ecosystem" »
A personal DNA sequence
is not yet practically useful.
But it could be, argues Prof. Steven Brenner, if we had the right resources.
Brenner calls for the establishment of "a public knowledgebase of human genetic variation and its effect, culled from databases, diagnostic laboratories, and the scientific literature."
Continue reading "The Secrets in Your Genome" »
Devastating over 1 million oak trees across Northern California in the past 10 years, Sudden Oak Death is a killer with no cure. But biologists including CNR's Matteo Garbelotto are looking to the trees' genetics for a solution.
Pink slime at the surface of water trickling through an old mine in California is proving to be a treasure for researchers in their quest to learn more about how bacterial communities exist in nature.
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| Microorganisms thriving in toxic conditions were recovered from a natural biofilm growing at the Richmond Mine in Iron Mountain, California." |
A letter published in
Nature shows that it is possible to follow what microorganisms are doing in their natural environment by identifying the range of proteins that they produce. The technique, utilized in a microbial community thriving in battery acid-like streams underground at Richmond Mine near Redding, Calif., combines recently developed ways to sequence microbial genes with methods to identify the range of proteins from specific microbial members.
Continue reading "Mine Runoff Continues To Provide Clues To Microbial Diversification" »
For 11 years, Jill Banfield has collected and studied the microbes that slime the floors of mines and convert iron to acid, a common source of stream pollution around the world.
Imagine her surprise, then, when research scientist Brett Baker discovered three new microbes living amidst the bacteria she thought she knew well. All three were so small - the size of large viruses - as to be virtually invisible under a microscope, and belonged to a totally new phylum of Archaea, microorganisms that have been around for billions of years.
Continue reading "Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms" »
Until he met the slimy green algae called Chlamydomonas, undergraduate Subhajit Poddar didn’t know he was interested in plant biology. “Once I began working with mutant strains of algae, I was totally hooked,” he says.
Poddar, fourth year in Plant and Microbial Biology, studies the green algae Chlamydomonas under the mentorship of Professor Krishna Niyogi. His research has focused on identifying and cloning genes responsible for two compounds involved in photosynthesis.
Using genetics as a novel tool to understand physiology, Niyogi and his team are isolating genes that are important in determining plant responses to stress and high light conditions. SPUR funds have helped Poddar purchase essential lab equipment necessary to maintain laboratory populations of Chlamydomonas.
Undergraduate research through SPUR is funded entirely by donations to the Berkeley Fund for Natural Resources -- and gifts are accepted online here.
A new study led by researchers from the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology identifies specific gene expression changes in a species of water flea in response to contaminants, lending new support for the role of toxicogenomics in environmental monitoring.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, focused on the water flea Daphnia magna, considered the lab rat of ecotoxicology because of its sensitivity to contaminants in its environment. The organism is commonly used by regulators to monitor freshwater toxicity, but the tests used typically look at levels of toxicity that will kill the water flea within 24 hours of exposure.
Continue reading "New study shows promise of genomics in monitoring environmental toxicology" »
Matthew Stuckey, fourth year in Environmental Economics and Policy and Conservation Resource Studies, is researching how the butterfly Colias behrii colonized the Sierra Nevada.
Through mentorship with Professor George Roderick and graduate student Sean Schoville, Stuckey has been working on cloning nuclear genes to assess genetic variation within and among populations of C. behrii.
Roderick’s team is using genetics to understand how organisms have colonized new areas. SPUR funds have helped provide chemicals and lab supplies necessary for molecular cloning – a technique essential for Stukey’s research.
The SPUR program also benefits the mentors who work closely with undergraduates on their research. For Schoville, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, having Stuckey's help has been a huge benefit. “These undergraduates are some of the brightest students,” he says. “Working with them gives me a great opportunity to see their minds grow and mature.”
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Lagomarsino, third year in Plant Biology, is using nuclear and chloroplast genes to develop a phylogeny, or map of ancestral relationships between species of the genus Heliconia, a tropical plant. Her mentor, Assistant Professor Chelsea Specht in the department of Plant and Microbial Biology, uses molecular and evolutionary biology to understand lineages of related plants.
SPUR funding has allowed Specht to provide Lagomarsino with necessary laboratory materials to expand her research.
The SPUR program offers students a unique opportunity to develop as scientists with a level of independence that has often been reserved for graduate students. Not only does this help make Berkeley students more competitive, it develops of the kind of creative thinking skills so essential to the success of any scientist. “You learn all the techniques” says Lagomarsino, “But then you are also given a certain amount of freedom, and your thoughts are valued.”
For Lagomarsino, research in plant and molecular biology has also given her academic career a clear direction. “Now, I know exactly what I want to do and what I want to study.”
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