The final round of the UC Davis Grad Slam had a flurry of PowerPoint slides, a giant deck of cards and a stuffed monkey, but in the end the top prize went to someone talking about genetic “ghosts.”

Three graduate students in the College of Biological Sciences are among this year’s finalists for the UC Davis Grad Slam competition.

From the Davis Enterprise; Story by Caleb Hampton

The UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center is set to launch two new initiatives next year to improve breast health and early cancer detection in underserved women in rural communities, UC Davis Health announced Thursday. The new tools for early cancer detention will include a “mammovan” and free genetic testing.

Graduate Studies is pleased to announce the inaugural cohort of the Faculty Academy of Graduate Student Well-Being, a program designed to train faculty to teach graduate student seminars on mental health and well-being. Congratulations to the 19 faculty members listed below who will represent the first cohort of the academy. 

Program is designed to increase Hispanic representation in higher education leadership positions

(SACRAMENTO) —

Of the major food crops, only rice (Oryza sativa) is currently able to survive flooding. Thanks to new research, that could soon change -- good news for a world in which rains are increasing in both frequency and intensity.

IGG students Robert Stolz and Maika Malig, published groundbreaking work describing the first modeling of so-called R-loop structures, the most abundant non-B DNA structures in mammalian genomes. Using a “first-principle” mathematical approach backed by experimental validation, the group from the Chedin and Benham labs at UC Davis elucidated the relative contributions of DNA sequence and DNA topology to R-loop formation.

When a healthy cell turns cancerous a cascade of events enables the cancer to spread throughout the body. But its origin lies within a single progenitor cell.

“What goes wrong with that particular cell?” asked Assistant Professor Chang-il Hwang, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. “Something happens at the molecular level. One DNA molecule, or one protein molecule changes.”

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• NSF GRFP Awardee 2018
• UC Davis T32 Training Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology Awardee
• Involved in Outreach and Communication with Science Says and UCD Bioscope

Marwa Zafarullah is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Integrative Genetics and Genomics (IGG) graduate program. She earned her bachelor’s in agricultural sciences at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan and her master’s in IGG at UC Davis. She is currently working toward the development of a biomarker for the early diagnosis and progression of the nNeurological disorder called Fragile X -Associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS). 

Click here to learn more about Marwa!