Noted Malaria, Honey Bee Researcher to Speak at UC Davis Monday

By Kathy Keatley Garvey

Special to Dixon Patch

DAVIS--Joseph DeRisi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor and vice chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, will speak on two topics, honey bees and malaria, from 10 to 11 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 9, in the main auditorium (Room 2005) of the Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility on the UC Davis campus.

His presentation, "A Seminar in Two Acts: Honey Bees and Malaria," is sponsored by the Biological Networks Focus Group of the Genome Center. Host is Oliver Fiehn, professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Genome Center.

The Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility is located in the Health Sciences District, approximately 160 feet north of Tupper Hall.

DeRisi, a molecular biologist and biochemist, was named the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant (also known as "the genius award") in 2004. In 2008, DeRisi won the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. Among his many accomplishments: he designed and programmed a groundbreaking tool for finding (and fighting) viruses -- the ViroChip, a DNA microarray that test for the presence of all known viruses in one step.

The DeRisi lab drew international attention last year with publications in Public Library of Science journals on malaria research (PLoS Biology) and honey bee research (PLoS One).

Malaria:
Chemical Rescue of Malaria Parasites Lacking an Apicoplast Defines Organelle Function in Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum (published in PLoS Biology, August 2011)

Honey Bees:
Temporal Analysis of the Honey Bee Microbiome Reveals Four Novel Viruses and Seasonal Prevalence of Known Viruses, Nosema, and Crithidia (published in PLoS One, June, 2011)

Among those working on the honey bee research and co-authoring the paper was insect virus researcher  Michelle Flenniken, a postdoctoral fellow in the Raul Andino lab at UC San Francisco and the recipient of the Häagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellowship in Honey Bee Biology at UC Davis.

Among his malaria research collaborators is UC Davis molecular biologist  Shirley Luckhart, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and an advisor in the Entomology Graduate Program.

DeRisi received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and molecular biology in 1992 from the University of Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1999 from Stanford University.