IIGB distinguished professor of plant cell and molecular biology, Xuemei Chen, will give the 64th annual Faculty Research Lecture June 3 from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Genomics Auditorium, Room 1102A.The lecture, “Small RNAs – Small but Powerful,” is presented by the UC Riverside Academic Senate. Small RNAs were the “dark matter” in...
IIGB professor of genetics Hailing Jin was elected as a 2015 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Fellow in recognition of her contribution to innovation, education and scientific leadership in the Section on Biological Sciences. Fellows are nominated by the steering committees in the Association’s 24 sections, comprised of three Fellows who are...
A team of researchers led by an IIGB associate professor of plant pathology Wenbo Ma has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an attempt to save the United States citrus industry from a disease that has already devastated the industry worldwide. Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening...
After a 30+ year career in plant cell biology and to celebrate Natasha Raikhel’s extensive contribution to the scientific community during the past three decades, IIGB and the Botany & Plant Sciences department hosted a one-day Retirement Symposium in her honor on March 21, 2016 in the Genomics Auditorium. The day included talks from several...
Susan R. Wessler, an IIGB/CEPCEB distinguished professor of genetics, has been named the Neil A. and Rochelle A. Campbell Presidential Chair for Innovation in Science Education in the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS). Wessler, a passionate advocate for spreading the excitement of doing genomics research to undergraduate students, is the first scholar named...
Jessica Toth, a graduate student in IIGB/CEPCEB Associate Professor Sean Cutler’s lab, was one of 11 UCR graduate students and 2000 national awardees among 16,500 applicants who received a three-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The GRFP provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to...
Susan R. Wessler, an IIGB/CEPCEB/CDVR distinguished professor of genetics has teamed up with John Matsui at UC Berkeley, Joel Rothman at UC Santa Barbara and Paul Koch at UC Santa Cruz to develop an interconnected “Faculty Learning Community” to allow faculty at four campuses to share proven, successful methods that improve undergraduate biology instruction. Titled...
IIGB scientists led by associate professor Sean Cutler have successfully engineered drought-threatened crops to respond to an agrochemical as if it were abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone that inhibits plant growth and reduces water consumption to assist survival during droughts. The researchers worked with Arabidopsis, a model plant used widely in plant biology labs...
Hailing Jin, an IIGB professor of plant pathology and microbiology, and colleagues report in a paper published in Nature Communications that the structure of small RNA (an essential nucleic acid for all known forms of life and made from DNA) plays an important role in small RNA sorting. Without this sorting, RNA gene silencing, caused...
Susan R. Wessler, an IIGB distinguished professor of genetics and a world-renowned expert in transposable elements, has been awarded the McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies for her exceptional contributions to and leadership in the study of plant transposable elements for the last three decades. Given in recognition of career scientific accomplishments, the...
IIGB researchers have now revealed a new molecular mechanism for resistance and susceptibility to a common fungus that causes wilt in susceptible tomato plants. Study results appeared Oct. 16, 2014 in PLOS Pathogens. Katherine Borkovich, an IIGB professor of plant pathology and the chair of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, and colleagues started...
The Fall 2014 HHMI Bulletin profiles IIGB/CEPCEB researcher Xuemei Chen and her seminal work on noncoding RNAs and stem cells. Dr. Chen has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator since 2012. To read about her work studying how MicroRNAs are made, their role, how they do their work and how...
IIGB associate professor Jason Stajich is the principal investigator of a four-year project involving 11 collaborating institutions that have been funded a total of $2.5 million by the National Science Foundation. The project focuses on studying zygomycetes – ancient lineages of fungi that include plant symbionts, animal and human pathogens and decomposers of a wide...
IIGB geneticist Julia Bailey-Serres was one of five UCR researchers and 3,200 individuals who published the greatest number of highly-cited papers in one of 21 broad fields, according to the 2014 list developed by Thomson Reuters. To generate the list, the company analyzed citation data over 11 years (2002-2012) to identify researchers whose published work...
Jason Stajich, an IIGB/CEPCEB associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology, has been awarded the 2014 Alexopoulos Prize by the Mycological Society of America, a scientific society dedicated to the study of fungi of all kinds including mushrooms, molds, truffles, yeasts, lichens, plant pathogens, and medically important fungi. The award is peer-nominated and each year...
The University of California, Riverside has received a five-year grant totaling $2.4 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to fund a project aimed at addressing the challenges to STEM success faced by some students — particularly, students from underrepresented minority groups at UC Riverside. The principal investigator of the grant is Susan Wessler...
IIGB professor of cell biology Zhenbiao Yang led a research project that demonstrated the existence of an extracellular auxin sensing system in plants and uncovered the decades-long mystery of how this system works to control plant developmental processes. Study results appear in the Feb. 28, 2014 issue of Science. Auxin is understood to be the...
Irma Ortiz, whose parents immigrated to the US from Mexico, is the first in her family to graduate from college. Today, Irma is a Ph.D. graduate student in IIGB geneticist Linda Walling’s lab, where she and her lab-mates identify and deploy gene-based strategies for insect resistance in plants. Ortiz grew up in Panorama City, Calif...
IIGB researchers are members of an international team — the Amborella Genome Sequencing Project — that has sequenced the genome of the Amborella plant. The genome sequence sheds new light on the origin of flowering plants, including all major food crop species. Susan Wessler, a distinguished professor of genetics, led the IIGB team of members...
Trying to understand the biology of the malaria parasite Pasmodium, IIGB researchers led by associate professor Karine Le Roch have discovered low levels of DNA methylation in Plasmodium’s genome that may be critical to the survival of the parasite. A paper about the findings of Le Roch and her team, titled “Genome-wide Mapping of the...
