News
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Baskin Engineering earns top awards at UC Bioengineering Symposium
By Richard Hughey, Computer Engineering, UCSCUCSC bioengineering researchers made a splash at UC Merced during this year’s systemwide symposium on bioengineering.Professor of Computer Engineering Roberto Manduchi received the first-place poster award for Ariadne’s Thread: A Wayfinding Tool for the Visually Impaired Based on Camera Cell Phones. The poster describes a system of using special color markers easily detectable…
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Haussler and Stuart part of breast cancer “Dream Team”
Team will pursue personalized treatment that targets individual cancers with tailored therapies A $16.5 million, three-year grant to develop new and more effective therapies to fight breast cancer was awarded today to a multi-institutional “Dream Team” of scientists and clinicians that includes biomolecular engineers Josh Stuart and David Haussler from UC Santa Cruz. Haussler is…
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What makes us human?
By Richard Hughey, Computer Engineering, UCSC Dr. Katherine Pollard, postdoctoral alumna of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering and the UCSC genome browser, wrote the May cover story of Scientific American, “What Makes Us Human?.” The article is based on her research with professor of biomolecular engineering David Haussler, director of the center and an HHMI investigator, and…
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Arthur P. Ramirez named dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office Arthur Penn Ramirez, a leader in materials science and cutting-edge applied and basic research, has been named dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ramirez, who has held management positions at Bell Labs and Los Alamos National Laboratory, joins the…
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Cancer Genomics Browser gives cancer researchers a powerful new tool
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office A Cancer Genomics Browser developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, provides a new way to visualize and analyze data from studies aimed at improving cancer treatment by unraveling the complex genetic roots of the disease. The browser consists of a suite of web-based tools…
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Stem cell symposium showcases new facilities and research
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information OfficeWhere do blood cells come from? How do neurons develop to create the complex wiring of the brain? Can we build a better microscope to study living cells?These are among the questions UCSC stem cell researchers are investigating with funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Their work could…
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New data suggest “jumping genes” play a significant role in gene regulatory networks
By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office David Haussler, CBSE director and distinguished professor of biomolecular engineering at UCSC’s Jack Baskin School of Engineering, said CBSE research teams are finding evidence that the early theories of Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, later modeled by Roy Britten and Eric Davidson, are correct. Haussler discussed these findings…
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UCSC student business plan competition
UC Santa Cruz challenges any student who has a good idea for a business to participate in the campus’s first ever Business Plan Competition. This competition is open to students of any major, year, and experience. By participating in this competition, students can generate exposure to potential employers, gain important experience, place an impressive point…
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The ontogeny of aerobic and diving capacity in the skeletal muscles of Weddell seals
Our objective was to determine the ontogenetic changes in the skeletal muscles of Weddell seals that transform a non-diving pup into an elite diving adult. Muscle biopsies were collected from pups, juveniles and adults and analyzed for changes in fiber type, mitochondrial density, myoglobin concentrations and aerobic, lipolytic and anaerobic enzyme activities. The fiber type…
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A Complete Neandertal Mitochondrial Genome Sequence Determined by High-Throughput Sequencing
A complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence was reconstructed from a 38,000 year-old Neandertal individual with 8341 mtDNA sequences identified among 4.8 Gb of DNA generated from ∼0.3 g of bone. Analysis of the assembled sequence unequivocally establishes that the Neandertal mtDNA falls outside the variation of extant human mtDNAs, and allows an estimate of the…
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Unproductive splicing of SR genes associated with highly conserved and ultraconserved DNA elements
The human and mouse genomes share a number of long, perfectly conserved nucleotide sequences, termed ultraconserved elements1. Whereas these regions can act as transcriptional enhancers when upstream of genes, those within genes are less well understood. In particular, the function of ultraconserved elements that overlap alternatively spliced exons of genes encoding RNA-binding proteins is unknown.…
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Single-molecule analysis of DNA-protein complexes using nanopores
We present a method for rapid measurement of DNA-protein interactions using voltage-driven threading of single DNA molecules through a protein nanopore. Electrical force applied to individual ssDNA-exonuclease I complexes pulls the two molecules apart, while ion current probes the dissociation rate of the complex. Nanopore force spectroscopy (NFS) reveals energy barriers affecting complex dissociation. This…