Smooth and salmony

What does it take to make a fine California wine? Grapes, water, sunshine, the skilled hand of a master vintner — and a few thousand dead fish, chinook salmon to be specific, according to new research from UC Davis.

It shows for the first time that the salmon that die naturally in the Mokelumne and Calaveras rivers contribute significantly to the growth — and likely the quality — of wine grapes raised nearby. How? Wild animals eat the carcasses, converting the nutrient-laden fish into fertilizer for the grapevines.

The study was led by Joseph Merz, a Lodi-based fisheries biologist with the East Bay Municipal Utility District and an instructor at California State University, Sacramento. He collaborated with his former doctoral adviser and the leading authority on California native fishes, Peter Moyle of UC Davis, which just happens to house the world's premier wine school.

The study appeared in the June issue of the journal Ecological Applications.

-- Sylvia Wright

Rapid evolution noted

One of the fastest-evolving pieces of DNA in the human genome is a gene linked to brain development, according to research published in the Aug. 17 issue of the journal Nature.

In a computer-based search for pieces of DNA that had undergone the most change since the ancestors of people and chimps diverged, Human Accelerated Region 1, or HAR1, was a clear standout, said lead author Katie Pollard, assistant professor at the UC Davis Genome Center and the Department of Statistics.

"It's evolving incredibly rapidly," Pollard said. "It's really an extreme case."

As a postdoctoral researcher in David Haussler's lab at UC Santa Cruz, Pollard first scanned the chimpanzee genome for stretches of DNA that were highly similar in chimpanzees, mice and rats. Then she compared those regions between chimpanzees and humans, looking for the DNA that, presumably, makes a big difference between other animals and people.

In HAR1's 118 letters of DNA code, there are two changes between chimpanzees and chickens. But in the roughly 5 million years since people shared an ancestor with chimpanzees, 18 of HAR1's 118 letters in the have changed in the human genome.

-- Andy Fell

Smoke damage detailed

UC Davis researchers have described in unprecedented biochemical and anatomical detail how cigarette smoke damages the lungs of unborn and newborn children.

The findings illustrate with increased urgency the danger that smoke presents to smokers' families and friends, said UC Davis Professor Kent Pinkerton, and should give doctors new insight into the hidden physical changes in their young patients' lungs.

"Smoke exposure causes significant damage and lasting consequences in newborns," Pinkerton said. "This research has a message for every parent: Do not smoke or breathe secondhand smoke while you are pregnant. Do not let your children breathe secondhand smoke after they are born."

The research appeared in the Aug. 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

-- Sylvia Wright

$800,000 for mice on ice

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $800,000 to UC Davis and the University of Missouri to acquire, store and distribute genetically modified mice and make them available to researchers. "Knockout" mice, in which specific genes have been disrupted, are used in the study of cancer, heart disease and obesity in people, as well as growth, development and behavior.