The department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology (MPP) had the pleasure of hosting this year's Graduate Student Invited Lectureship and Awards Ceremony 2022-2023 on October 26, 2023, in the Genomics Auditorium & Lobby. This year's award recipients included: Benjamin Hoyt - Peter and Pamela Tsao Endowed Graduate Student Scholarship Award Dylan Enright - Microbiology and...

Congratulations to Dr. Emma Gachomo on receiving a 2023 NSF CAREER Award! These prestigious awards are provided to "...early career faculty who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic role models and advance their organization's mission." Dr. Gachomo’s research will "investigate how potential contaminants known as chemicals of emerging concern impact the yield of soybean...

Congratulations to Dr. Jin whose lab has published an article in Nature Communications titled "Fungal small RNAs ride in extracellular vesicles to enter plant cells through clathrin-mediated endocytosis." Her research was recently highlighted on UC Riverside News examining recent discoveries of how "lipid 'bubbles' secreted by mold cells on crops...are essential for communications between pathogens...

In collaboration with other UC Riverside researchers, Drs. James Borneman and Poonamjot Deol, of the MPP department, have helped to discovered a link between high consumption of soybean oil and ulcerative colitis. These findings were recently published in the Gut Microbes journal with the title Diet high in linoleic acid dysregulates the intestinal endocannabinoid system...

In local news, Dr. Vidalakis and Dr. Jin were recently quoted in an article by the Press Enterprise discussing how their research is helping combat the citrus greening disease that is impacting southern California. Dr. Vidalakis and his team are working to disrupt the "disease triangle" which prevents the elements that cause the disease from...

Congratulations to Dr. Glassman whose lab published an article in Molecular Ecology titled "Rapid bacterial and fungal successional dynamics in first year after chaparral wildfire." PhD Candidate Fabiola Pulido-Chavez and Dr. Glassman were quoted in a recent article about their research. You can read the article here: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/02/07/fungi-and-bacteria-are-binging-burned-soil

Congratulations to Dr. Sydney Glassman who has recently received a $3.1 Million grant, from the U.S. Department of Energy, to fund research studying the effects that post-wildfire conditions have on microorganisms and their emission of the greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. Check out the article on the UC Riverside News site here.

Congratulations to Dr. Emma Aronson's lab, who, in collaboration with UCSD, UC Mexus Personnel, & CCB personnel, has found that Mexican mangroves have been capturing carbon for 5,000 years. Their findings have recently been published in the Marine Ecology Progress Series (MEPS) journal: https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v695/p15-31/ Read more about this exciting research in the UC Riverside News...

Congratulations to Dr. Emma Aronson whose lab published a paper in the Frontiers in Microbiology journal titled "Landscape Topography and Regional Drought Alters Dust Microbiomes in the Sierra Nevada of California." The study was led by UC Presidential Postdoc Fellow, Dr. Mia Maltz who was also quoted in a recent article featured on UC Riverside...

Congratulations to Siyi Ge from the Microbiology and Plant Pathology department who has been awarded a 2021-2022 Outstanding Teaching Assistant (OTA) award. The Outstanding Teaching Assistant (OTA) Award is a departmental-level award granted by Graduate Division on behalf of the departments to recognize teaching excellence within specific fields. OTA Award recipients are recognized during the...

The department of Microbiology & Plant Pathology (MPP) had the pleasure of hosting this year's Graduate Student Invited Lectureship and Awards Ceremony 2021-2022 on May 27, 2022, in the Genomics Auditorium & Lobby. As the first major event back on-campus for the department, we were excited to have all of this year's award recipients present...

Congratulations to Dr. Sydney Glassman whose lab has just published a paper in Molecular Ecology: "Mega-fire in redwood tanoak forest reduces bacterial and fungal richness and selects for pyrophilous taxa that are phylogenetically conserved" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.16399. This recent publication was featured on UC Riverside News. You can read the article here: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2022/04/25/meet-forest-microbes-can-survive-megafires Since its publication, this...

Dr. Sydney Glassman, Professor in the department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, provides insight into her current research, in partnership with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, examining microbes' role in greenhouse gas emissions, which was recently featured in an article from UC Riverside News. You can read the article here: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2022/03/30/why-doesnt-fire-kill-some-bacteria-and-fungi

Congratulation to Dr. Patrick Degnan whose lab's study results have been published in the journal Cell Reports: "Mobilization of vitamin B 12 transporters alters competitive dynamics in a human gut microbe" This recent publication was featured on UC Riverside News. You can read the article here.

Congratulations to Dr. Alexander Putman whose lab collaborated in publishing a paper in Biotechnology and Bioengineering: "Exploring the potential of engineering polygalacturonase-inhibiting protein as an ecological, friendly, and nontoxic pest control agent" This recent publication was featured on UC Riverside News. You can read the article here.

Congratulations to Dr. Juliet Morrison for co-authoring an Opinion piece published in the New York Times regarding COVID vaccine guidelines. You can read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/opinion/covid-vaccine-guidelines.html

Congratulations to PI Rong Hai, who has just received word that his National Institutes of Health R01 grant will be funded! The title of the grant is "Mechanistic Insights into flavivirus NS5-mediated STAT2" Suppression" and the total amount over 5 years is $1.94M

Congratulations to Dr. Juliet Morrison on being appointed to the Board of Trustees at Bard College. You can read the announcement from Bard College here: https://www.bard.edu/news/microbiologist-juliet-morrison-03-appointed-to-bard-college-board-of-trustees-2021-02-24

Professor Hailing Jin has just published an article in Nature Plants: "RNA-binding proteins contribute to small RNA loading in plant extracellular vesicles" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-021-00863-8. Professor Yinsheng Wang’s lab from Chemistry helped with proteomic analysis.

Congratulations to Professor Hailing Jin as she has published another high impact paper in less than a week! Professors Arthur Jia from BPSC and Xinping Cui from Statistics were co-authors. The citation is below. Chien-Yu Huang, Diana Sanchez Rangel, Xiaobo Qin, Christine Bui, Ruidong Li, Zhenyu Jia, Xinping Cui, Hailing Jin*. The chromatin remodeling protein...