Egghead Content

Deep-Water Sediments Reveal Patterns of Extraterrestrial Influence on Earth’s Ancient Climate

Andy Fell — October 31, 2025 - 10:42am

Roughly 34 million years ago, the Earth started transitioning from a greenhouse to an icehouse state — defined by long-term cooling trends that resulted in ice sheets in the planet’s polar regions. During this time, continental carbon reservoirs expanded as carbon dioxide decreased in the atmosphere.

But that trend has reversed. Fossil fuel consumption, among other sources of pollution, have resulted in increasing atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, leading to ice sheet melt and unprecedented shifts in our environments.

Population Decline of Franklin’s Bumble Bee Wasn’t Due to Pathogens, Museum Genomic Research Shows

Andy Fell — October 20, 2025 - 3:38pm

Franklin’s bumble bee (Bombus franklini) once inhabited a remote area spanning northern California and southern Oregon. But the bee’s numbers declined sharply after 1998 and it hasn’t been seen at all since 2006. A new study of the DNA of museum specimens, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests this decline was most likely due to population bottlenecks and environmental issues such as fire and drought rather than infectious diseases.

Where's Our CRISPR? New Treatments Promise Hope for Rare Diseases, But Wait May be Long

Andy Fell — October 14, 2025 - 2:25pm

As the parent of a child with a rare genetic disease, Celena Lozano saw the hope that reports of a breakthrough treatment bring. As a graduate student in neuroscience at UC Davis, she knows that the road to effective treatments, let alone 'cures' for most such diseases, will be long and frustrating. Clear and nuanced communication about what research and clinical studies actually mean for patients is needed, she writes in an article for STAT.

A Stretchy Protein Senses Forces in Cells

Andy Fell — October 10, 2025 - 11:20am

How does skin hold you in? How do heart cells beat together? Researchers at the University of California, Davis, Department of Biomedical Engineering, are exploring how structures called desmosomes, which stick cells together, function and react to mechanical stress.

New work from Professor Sanjeevi Sivasankar’s lab, published Oct. 10 in Nature Communications, shows how a desmosome protein can respond to mechanical stress and potentially send signals within the cell.

Computational Model Uses Language Theory to Predict DNA Shapes That Underlie Gene Expression and Disease

Andy Fell — October 03, 2025 - 11:19am

Your DNA contains the genetic blueprint necessary to not just build your body but to build the proteins and molecules that ensure your body’s functionality. DNA encodes RNA, RNA encodes proteins and voila, your body functions.

UC Malaria Initiative Expands Acivities to Equatorial Guinea

Andy Fell — October 01, 2025 - 3:01pm

The University of California Malaria Initiative, which includes researchers at UC Davis, will partner in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea’s Vision 2030 strategy to eliminate malaria from the Central African country. The plan, which also includes Oxford University, Tsinghua University and a MCD Global Health, was announced Sept. 24 during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Hayabusa-2 Sample Return Mission Suggests Protracted Wetter Asteroids

Andy Fell — September 16, 2025 - 4:36pm

New results from the Hayabusa-2 space probe show that asteroids formed at the very beginnings of our Solar System retained substantial amounts of water for hundreds of millions of years, potentially delivering water to Earth and other planets for much longer than previously thought. The work by a large international team, including Professor Qing-Zhu Yin at the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was published Sept. 10 in Nature.

How Did Animals Eat Before Mouths?

Andy Fell — September 12, 2025 - 11:09am

More than half a billion years ago, during the Ediacaran Period, animal life looked nothing like today. Strange cup- and disk-shaped creatures sat and crawled along an ocean floor covered in thick microbial mats made of bacteria and algae. The only clues these organisms left to their lifestyles exist in the fossil record.

Worms Reveal Just How Cramped Cells Really Are

Andy Fell — September 10, 2025 - 11:26am

In a new study published in Science Advances Sept. 10, a team of UC Davis researchers tracked the movement of fluorescent particles inside the cells of microscopic worms, providing unprecedented insights into cellular crowding in a multicellular animal. They found that the cytoplasm inside the worms was significantly more crowded and compartmentalized than in single-celled yeast or mammalian tissue culture cells, which are more commonly used to gauge internal cellular dynamics.

Sunglasses for Plants, and Sustainable Agriculture

Andy Fell — September 08, 2025 - 1:42pm

A multilayer film that reflects heat while letting through light needed for photosynthesis could make greenhouse agriculture more energy- and water-efficient. Such a film has been developed by engineers at the University of California, Davis, and is described in a recent paper in Advanced Energy & Sustainability Research.