Another week, another roundup of UC Davis research news.
Tracking bacteria in the salad bowl
A series of outbreaks of E. coli illness linked to leafy greens grown on California's central coast prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ask UC Davis to lead a five-year effort to better understand how the bacteria circulate between soil, water, crops and animals in the nation's salad bowl.
“These data will be used by the industry to inform future targeted research and refinements, if needed, to existing guidance on best practices for growers to reduce food safety risks,” said Linda J. Harris, co-principal investigator with the Western Center for Food Safety and professor emerita in the UC Davis Food Science and Technology department.
(UC Davis research recently showed how Salmonella bacteria can trick their way inside lettuce leaves.)
Capturing a hawk in flight
Right after we announced the new Center for Animal Flight and Innovation, Christina Harvey's had a paper out with colleagues at the University of Oxford that shows the concept at work. Using Oxford's flight hall, they filmed a Harris's hawk gliding between two soft poles, then used 3D modeling and the UC Davis windtunnel to show how the bird shifts aerodynamic stability as it negotiates an obstacle.
Bloom cycle not a bloomin' waste
In more plant news: Photorespiration has long puzzled plant scientists as it seems to consume energy without doing anything very useful. Plant scientist Arnold Bloom has now proposed a new biochemical pathway in plants, the Bloom cycle, which plants could use to make proteins and other useful molecules. This could open up new ways to engineer crops with new properties.
“Plants would not have evolved over billions of years and have kept a wasteful process,” Bloom pointed out.
Evolution at a snail's pace
Speaking of evolution, mollusks are a large and varied group of animals and they have been around for about 540 million years. A new analysis by Geerat Vermeij and Tracy Thompson at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences shows that almost half of the new evolutionary innovations in mollusks, such as helical shells and toothed tongues, appeared in the first 96 million years: after that, the pace of innovation slows down and becomes more predictable. There could be general lessons for how evolution proceeds in other animals and plants as they interact with their environment.
Augmin-ting cell biology
And more plant news: You have more in common with an eggplant than you might think. The cell walls that give plants their shape and structure, from the height of a tree to the curve of a banana, are shaped by the action of a protein complex called augmin, which adjusts the microtubule skeleton inside cells and influences the growth of the cell wall.
But augmin was originally discovered in animal cells, which don't have a cell wall, but which do have a microtubule skeleton. In animal cells, augmin is important for cells to divide properly and is connected to cancer and infertility.
UC Davis plant biologist Bo Liu originally discovered augmin in plants in 2011, and now he and molecular biologist Jawdat Al-Bassam have worked out the complete structure of the complex.
“It could help answer some fundamental questions not just about plants, but also humans,” Al-Bassam said.
For some, spring forward is a headache
Most of us in the U.S. will be putting our clocks forward an hour on Sunday morning as we switch to summer time. If you're like me, you might enjoy the longer lighter evenings but you aren't looking forward to getting up an hour earlier.
A new study by UC Davis neurologist Sasikanth Gorantla and colleagues shows that .
“We hope this research encourages greater awareness of the potential health effects of daylight-saving time clock change. It is important to note that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends year-round standard time because it better supports circadian alignment and overall health, including brain health,” Gorantla said.