News

New UC Grant Enables Deeper, Broader Valley Fever Research

February 1, 2017
Researchers at UC Merced are playing key roles in the new UC Valley Fever Research Initiative, studying how the Valley fever fungus, Coccidioides immitis, causes disease in its mammalian hosts, and identifying the genes involved in this process. School of Natural Sciences professors Clarissa Nobile...

Blum Center Relaunching With Focus on Food

January 30, 2017
UC Merced is relaunching its branch of the Blum Center for Developing Economies with a focus on food security for the first two years of the faculty-led effort. Economics Professor Kurt Schnier, with the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, and Karina Diaz Rios, a nutrition specialist in...

Genetic Changes Made Native Americans Susceptible to Smallpox, Study Shows

January 18, 2017
A new study identifies genetic changes in Native Americans that came about when Europeans settled in the Pacific Northwest and might have played a major role in why so many natives died of infectious disease. In a new paper in Nature Communications, “A Time Transect of Exomes from a Native American...

Students Building Living Machines Out of Engineered Tissues

January 11, 2017
There are many labs at UC Merced where visitors can see students huddled over microscopes and petri dishes, using tweezers to extract and examine different items. But no one at UC Merced has ever seen the likes of what’s going on in Professor Kara McCloskey’s class. The graduate and undergraduate...

Researchers Enlist Hospital in Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance

December 9, 2016
There are 1.7 million multidrug-resistant, hospital-acquired infections that extend hospital stays, increase medical expenses and decrease quality of life. The United States alone reports at least 120,000 deaths annually from resistant infections that are improperly treated because of a scarcity of...

People in Eurasia are Genetic Hybrids with Evolutionary Advantages, Study Shows

November 16, 2016
It’s not just luck or practice that gets Sherpa mountaineers up the slopes of Mt. Everest each year. Functioning so well at extreme elevations is in the Sherpa and Tibetan DNA — literally. A new study by UC Merced Professor Emilia Huerta-Sánchez — published recently in the journal Molecular Biology...

Professor’s Findings Help Illuminate the Human Immune System

November 10, 2016
By Lorena Anderson, University Communications Professor Anna Beaudin is just starting up her lab at UC Merced, but a paper she recently published already has some big implications for understanding autoimmune disease, allergies and rejection of transplanted organs. A developmental biologist...

Researcher’s Work Could Help Stop Aggressive Breast Cancers

October 21, 2016
Adjunct Professor Gabriela Loots is studying why certain cancers prefer to metastasize to bone, using novel technology developed by fellow UC Merced Professor Michael Cleary. Her work, which takes place mainly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, earned her a three-year, $768,803 grant from...

Professor’s Findings Help Illuminate the Human Immune System

October 3, 2016
Professor Anna Beaudin is just starting up her lab at UC Merced, but a paper she recently published already has some big implications for understanding autoimmune disease, allergies and rejection of transplanted organs. A developmental biologist with the School of Natural Sciences and an affiliate...

Research Breakthrough Could Help Diagnose, Treat Biofilm Infections

September 28, 2016
Biofilms — colonies of microorganisms living inside a protective coating — are everywhere, from the plaque we scrub off our teeth each day to the slimy green masses that form on rocks in streams. They are on the inside and outside of our bodies, in our oceans, and on natural and manmade surfaces,...

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