Recent publications

What makes the human brain distinctive? A new study published July 21 in Cell identifies two genes linked to human brain features and provides a road map to discover many more. The research could lead to insights into the functioning and evolution of the human brain, as well as the roots of language disorders and autism.

Nathanial Chase Stevens, PhD, and our team here at West Coast Metabolomics Center UCDavis published in nature communications: "Resolving multi-image spatial lipidomic responses to inhaled toxicants by machine learning"

The Proteomics Core's GC Symposium video "Omics Family Therapy"  made a comeback after it's loss at the symposium this year and won the US HUPO (Human Proteome organization) Video contest at US HUPO'S most recent conference in Philadelphia last month 

Megan Dennis, an associate professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at UC Davis Health, has been awarded the 2024 Chancellor’s Fellowship. This prestigious honor, given to early-career faculty members, includes a $25,000 grant for research, teaching, or service activities. Dennis, who joined UC Davis in 2015, has become a leader in studying the genetic factors affecting the brain, particularly in conditions like autism. Her research aims to identify hidden genetic changes linked to diseases, improving diagnoses and treatments.

Researchers at the Genome Center have contributed to a groundbreaking study published in Science, revealing that chimpanzees possess genetic adaptations enabling them to thrive in diverse habitats, including forests and savannahs. Notably, the study identifies genetic variants in chimpanzees that may confer resistance to malaria, similar to protective mechanisms observed in humans.

Co-authored publications by UC Davis Genome Center Members or publications where UC Davis Genome Center or a GC Core is acknowledged for their technical support and services:

A paper titled, "Dr.Nod: computational framework for discovery of regulatory non-coding drivers in tissue-matched distal regulatory elements" by Tomkova et al. 2023 was recently published in Nucleic Acid Research.

Published in Nature Methods in December 2022, the paper titled “SVDSS: structural variation discovery in hard-to-call genomic regions using sample-specific strings from accurate long reads” by Denti, Khorsand, Bonizzoni, Hormozdiari, and Chikhi describes a newly developed method to discover structural variants. Structural variants are defined as medium to large size genetic variations and are shown to be important in human genomics, evolution, and diseases.

This post summarizes the publication "Counter the weaponization of genetics research by extremists" by Carlson et al. (2022) in Nature.

Every modern mammal, from a platypus to a blue whale, is descended from a common ancestor that lived about 180 million years ago. We don’t know a great deal about this animal, but the organization of its genome has now been computationally reconstructed by an international team of researchers. The work is published Sept. 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.