Biological Sciences

UC Merced biology Professor Rudy Ortiz is furthering his innovative research into diabetes with support from a major pharmaceutical company.

A collaboration between a dean and a professor and a grant from the National Science Foundation have made UC Merced part of a national nanotechnology-biology hub that will expand both knowledge and opportunities for students in Merced.

Graduate student Sharon Patris likes spending time at a lake in the middle of the forest on an uninhabited island in the western Pacific.

The marine lake named Ongiem’l Tketau and informally known as Jellyfish Lake, is home to the golden jellyfish, a species Patris studies as part of her work with UC Merced School of Natural Sciences Professor Michael Dawson in Palau.

Editor's Note: As of mid-February, UC Merced's graduate student applications increased by 6.6 percent over last year. This press release reports a 41 percent increase, which at the time (Jan. 18) was an accurate figure. The current figure is lower.

Professor Christine Isborn is doing quantum chemistry at the speed of graphics.

Counting the number of species that live in the Earth’s oceans sounds as impossible as counting the grains of sand on a beach.

But a global collaboration involving a UC Merced researcher and a graduate student is doing just that, and found that about a third of all the oceans’ species are still undescribed.

That doesn’t mean they cannot be counted, though.

Professor Fabian Filipp is trying to put up roadblocks. But instead of stopping cars, he's trying to keep cancers from growing.

Filipp, a systems biology professor who started at UC Merced this fall, studies the metabolic cycle of melanoma, which is the leading cause of death from skin cancers.

Professor Mónica Medina started out as the only marine biologist in a National Science Foundation workshop last year, but she ended up with a group of new partners and an opinion piece in the prestigious journal Science that’s being released today.

Staph, e-coli, meningitis, MRSA and botulism are just a few of the thousands of bacterial infections that plague people all over the world.

For example, almost 23,300 people in the United States were sickened by food-borne bacterial illnesses in 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

From the caves of Belize to laboratories in Japan, UC Merced faculty members and students are abroad conducting research this summer across the globe.