Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara recently conducted a study on fruit flies that shows that diet experience can alter taste preference. This finding has been speculated about before, but its implications now are important because taste preference is essential for survival when animals and humans are forced to respond to changing sources of food. The researchers exposed fruit flies to camphor, which the fruit flies disliked, and which caused a reduction in the response by the Transient Receptor Potential-Like (TRPL) channel. The degredation of the TRPL protein by an enzyme called E3 ubiquitin ligase, or Ube3a, caused a reduction in the fruit flie’s distaste for camphor.
"This study was inspired by trying to understand how it is an animal learns to like foods they didn't like before. We want to understand taste proclivity because it is a universal behavior in all animals," said Craig Montell, Duggan Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. "We not only found that ubiquination is important and leads to degradation, but we also discovered that mutations in Ube3a prevent this taste plasticity. This is because in the absence of Ube3a, TRPL is not ubiquinated so it is not degraded. This underscores that it's the decline in the TRPL levels that underlie this mechanism."
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara received $165 million in sponsored research funding from July 1st 2012 – June 30th, 2013. The University of California, Santa Barbara also received $134.6 million in direct and indirect federal funding in 2012–2013.
University of California, Santa Barbara
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In 2013, the National Institutes of Health gave the University of California, Santa Barbara $18.5 million in science research funding, while the National Science Foundation gave the University of California, Santa Barbara $42.9 million in research funding in 2012-2013. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara also receive a significant number of individual grants.
Below is a list of some of the most significant life science grants at the University of California, Santa Barbara:
- The National Institutes of Health awarded esearchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara a $1.7 million grant to study the synthesis of bioactive marine natural products.
- Dr. M.T. Bowers received a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study Amyloid AY-Protein Assembly and Inhibition.
- Researchers in the department of chemistry/biochemistry received $1 million from the Simons Foundation for a project titled ““Evolutionary Fitness Landscapes in the Origin of Life.”
- The National Science Foundation awarded Dr. S.J. Holbrook $247,000 to study the adaptive capacity, resilience, and shifts in socio-ecological systems in coral reefs.
- Researchers at UCSB received $178,721 from the Marine Science Institute for a "Santa Barbara Area Coastal Ecosystem Vulnerability Assessment."
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Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. is a full-service science research marketing and events-planning company. If you are interested in attending life science marketing events closer to home, we encourage you to view our 2014 calendar of events. For more life science funding statistics and exhibitor information on the University of California, Santa Barbara event, click on the button below.
