Jerome Zack, professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, and his colleagues, have recently engineered blood stem cells to create immune cells that seek out and attack a type of human melanoma.

David Walker, assistant professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology, recently led a study showing that when the expression of a single gene, PGC-1, was boosted within the digestive tracts of fruit flies, the flies lived as much as fifty percent longer. PGC-1 activates the cells' mitochondria and regulates mitochondrial activity in mammals and flies.

The 2011 Brick in Architecture Awards, sponsored by the Brick Industry Assn., have recognized the Terasaki Life Sciences Building at the University of California-Los Angeles as Best in Class in the Educational category. The architect was Bohlin Cywinski Jackson; Stenfors Associates Architects was the associate.

An international team of scientists, including Dr. Robert Modlin, UCLA professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, has found that vitamin D also plays an essential role in the body’s immune response against infections such as tuberculosis.

V. Reggie Edgerton, UCLA distinguished professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology and Yury Gerasimenko, a UCLA researcher in Integrative Biology and Physiology and director of the laboratory of movement physiology at Russia's St. Petersburg's Pavlov Institute are among the four recipients of the 2011 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award for a new procedure that uses direct electrical stimulation to give spinal injury patients back some voluntary movement.

Thomas B. Smith, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and colleagues, recently discovered the first evidence of the H1N1 virus in animals in Africa. In one village in northern Cameroon, a staggering 89 percent of the pigs studied had been exposed to the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the swine flu.

Utpal Banerjee, the Irving and Jean Stone Professor and chairman of the Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology Department received the National Institutes of Heath’s Pioneer Award, which recognizes leading-edge, innovative research.

Shelley E. Taylor, distinguished professor in the department of Psychology, is senior author of new research that has identified for the first time, a particular gene's link to optimism, self-esteem, and "mastery," the belief that one has control over one's own life— three critical psychological resources for coping well with stress and depression.

UCLA research studying the nature of human pluripotent stem cells featured William Lowry, assistant professor of molecular, cell and development biology and a researcher with the Broad Stem Cell Research Center, led the study. The findings could have implications both clinically, in terms of transplantation, and for disease modeling.