Vazquez poses with members of the Topological Molecular Biology lab.

The Tangled Fate of Math and Biology with Mariel Vazquez

  • by Greg Watry
From pocketed headphones to carelessly packed garden hoses, knots find ways to manifest. Even our DNA molecules get tied in knots too. Professor Mariel Vazquez applies her training in mathematics to fundamental questions about DNA structure and functionality.
Landscape of the Tibetan plateau, with sparse vegetation in foreground, snow peaks in background and blue sky showing through white fluffy clouds

Denisovans or Homo Sapiens: Who Were the First to Settle (Permanently) on the Tibetan Plateau?

  • by Kathleen Holder

The Tibetan Plateau has long been considered one of the last places to be populated by people in their migration around the globe. A new paper by archaeologists at UC Davis highlights that our extinct cousins, the Denisovans, reached the “roof of the world” about 160,000 years ago — 120,000 years earlier than previous estimates for our species — and even contributed to our adaptation to high altitude.

historic painting of three Native Americans wearing traditional headdresses

Archaeologists Use Tooth Enamel Protein to Show Sex of Human Remains

A new method for estimating the biological sex of human remains based on reading protein sequences rather than DNA has been used to study an archaeological site in Northern California. The protein-based technique developed at the University of California, Davis, gave superior results to DNA analysis in studying 55 sets of human remains between 300 and 2,300 years old.
Photo of sled dog team walking across snow.

Unique Sled Dogs Helped the Inuit Thrive in the North American Arctic

Inuit sled dogs have changed little since people migrated with them to the North American Arctic across the Bering Strait from Siberia, according to UC Davis researchers and colleagues who have examined DNA from the dogs from that time span. The legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in Arctic sled dogs, making them one of the last remaining descendant populations of indigenous, pre-European dog lineages in the Americas.
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