Molecular and Cell Biology

Molecular biology Professor Chris Amemiya and his former graduate student Molly Phillips have made a discovery that upends traditional ideas about a structural polysaccharide called chitin that is found in some fish.

Having had the common cold appears to have programmed some people’s immune cells to recognize the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

That discovery — by an immunology team that includes a UC Merced alumnus — could change scientists’ understanding of the virus behind the current pandemic.

Maybe now more than ever, scientists need to understand the immune system.

A new National Institutes of Health grant is funding a cross-disciplinary collaboration between bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer and immunology Professor Jennifer Manilay that will allow them to watch as immune-system cells develop in the bone marrow of a living mouse to gain insights into how they work.

Many of the items people use in their everyday lives, from baby clothes and Halloween costumes to furniture, are doused with chemical flame retardants designed to make the items safer.

A UC Merced researcher and her lab have unlocked one of the mysteries that could lead to treatments — or even cures — for prion diseases in mammals.

Prion diseases are a family of rare, progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans — such as with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or fatal familial insomnia — and animals, such as mad-cow disease. These disorders are usually rapidly progressive and always fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Breakthrough collaborative science by an interdisciplinary team of researchers brought together by computational biology Professor David Ardell promises a new approach for treating all types of infections.

Infections have become more dangerous in recent years because bacteria and parasites rapidly evolve resistance to the medicines.

Proteins are miniscule machines inside the body, about 10,000 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. They control all the processes of life — like how cells communicate to each other, how the immune system combats infection, how muscles contract, and how oxygen is picked up in the lungs and delivered to those very same muscles.