Department News
Andrew McCammon Among Three UCSD Professors elected to the National Academy of Sciences
May 13, 2011The National Academy of Sciences today elected three professors at the University of California, San Diego to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowed on U.S. scientists and engineers.
Andrew McCammon, the Joseph E. Mayer Chair of Theoretical Chemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and pharmacology, and faculty in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Graduate Program, has invented theoretical methods for accurately predicting and interpreting how molecules interact with one another, methods that play a growing role in the design of new drugs and other materials.
Tiny Talk on a Barnacle's Back
May 10, 2011Even the merest of microbes must be able to talk, to be able to interact with its environment and with others to not just survive, but to thrive. This cellular chatter comes in the form of signaling molecules and exchanged metabolites (molecules involved in the process of metabolism or living) that can have effects far larger than the organism itself. Humans, for example, rely upon thousands of products derived from microbially produced molecules, everything from antibiotics and food supplements to ingredients used in toothpaste and paint.
Remarkably, most of what’s known about how microbes communicate with each other is the result of indirect observation and measurements. There has been no general or informative technique for observing the manifold metabolic exchange and signaling interactions between microbes, their hosts and environments. Until now. In a paper published in the May 5 online issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers at UC San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography report using a new form of imaging mass spectrometry to dramatically visualize multiplex microbial interactions.
Two coauthors are from the Bioinformatics & Sytems Biology Program: Prof. Pieter C. Dorrestein and Prof. Nuno Bandeira.
Nearly 30 Percent of New CIRM Awards go to UC San Diego Stem Cell Researchers
May 4, 2011UC San Diego scientists garnered 8 of the total 27 of Basic Biology III awards announced today by the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created by California voters to pursue the promise of stem cells in science and medicine. “Basic science has been our strength at UC San Diego because we have dedicated time and energy to developing our expertise in stem cells,” said Larry Goldstein, PhD, director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program. “Through our excellence in scientific research fundamentals, UCSD stem cell researchers are creating the basis for future advances in this exciting field.”
Dr. Andrew McCammon elected to National Academy of Sciences
May 3, 2011The National Academy of Sciences today elected three professors at the University of California, San Diego to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowed on U.S. scientists and engineers. Herbert Levine, J. Andrew McCammon and David T. Sandwell were among the 72 new members and 18 foreign associates elected to the academy today "in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research."
NSF Graduate Research Fellowships awarded to Kate Hoff and Jeremy Davis-Turak
April 6, 2011The National Science Foundation has awarded Graduate Research Fellowships to Ph.D. students Kate Hoff and Jeremy Davis-Turak in the Graduate Bioinformatics Program.
Professors Leor Weinberger & Gene Yeo receive $50K Sloan Research Fellowships
February 15, 2011The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded research fellowships to seven young faculty members at the University of California, San Diego, the largest group from a single institution to be recognized this year. Recipients include Bioinformatics & Systems Biology faculty members Leor Weinberger and Gene Yeo.
CIRM Awards Three Awards to UCSD Researchers in Support of Innovative Technologies
January 28, 2011The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded three grants totaling nearly $5.8 million to researchers at the University of California, San Diego for development of innovative technologies designed to advance translational stem cell research. The grants are part of $32 million in Tools and Technology Awards II awarded to 19 projects at 10 California institutions that were announced by CIRM today. The grants were awarded to Lawrence Goldstein, Karl Willert, and Shu Chien.
Professors Phil Bourne and Bernard Palsson elected as AAAS Fellows
January 11, 2011Eight professors at the University of California, San Diego have been named new Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. Philip E. Bourne, Xiang-Dong Fu, Kun-Liang Guan, Yishi Jin, Peter J. Novick, Bernhard Palsson and Kang Zhang were among 503 AAAS members selected by colleagues in their disciplines to be honored this year for “efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.”
UC San Diego Receives Two Major Biomedical Informatics Grants
October 22, 2010Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Medicine, have received two federal grants totaling more than $25 million to develop new ways to gather, analyze, use and share vast, ever-increasing amounts of biomedical information.
UC San Diego Receives $15.4 Million to Establish New Center for Systems Biology
September 21, 2010The National Institute of General Medical Sciences has awarded $15.4 million to the University of California, San Diego, to establish a center for the study of systems biology, a relatively new branch of science that maps interactions between regulatory molecules in order to understand how complex biological systems work.
The UC San Diego Center for Systems Biology will focus on interactions involved in cells’ responses to stress, said director Alexander Hoffmann, professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the Division of Physical Sciences.
Researchers at the new center will analyze interactions among all of the genes and proteins within a cell in response to potentially harmful changes in the environment, then test the functions of specific genetic “circuits” involved in the response by recreating them in isolation using synthesized genes.