Justin Dunnavant at Garland for Academic Pathways Program and myVU. Photo by Susan Urmy
UCLA archaeologist and assistant professor of anthropology Justin Dunnavant is working toward a more just and equitable future — and the scientific community is celebrating his efforts. National Geographic magazine has spotlighted his work to uncover shipwrecks from the global slave trade, and Dunnavant has participated in a special season of the SAPIENS podcast, featuring narratives and research by Black and Indigenous archaeologists.
“Part of the reason I got into this field was that I saw the potential for archaeology to really shed light on issues faced by marginalized communities without formally recorded histories,” Dunnavant told the UCLA College of Letters and Science last fall. “Archaeology provides us with another way to explore questions about history and heritage, and the more people we have coming in from diverse backgrounds, the more it leads us to more innovative questions, interpretations and methods.”
Dunnavant co-founded the Society of Black Archaeologists and has been named a National Geographic Explorer, a title the organization bestows on “exceptional individuals in their fields who receive funding and support from the Society to illuminate and protect our world through their work in science, exploration, education, and storytelling.”
You can explore Dunnavant’s work in the March 2022 issue of National Geographic, read his profile in the magazine, and listen to his insights (starting at 8:45) on the SAPIENS podcast. National Geographic will also release a podcast series about his work, and he will appear in an upcoming episode of the Science Channel and Discovery+ series “Underground Railroad: The Secret History.” Some content may require registration or a subscription.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Dunnavant-363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-17 14:36:472022-02-28 12:26:11Archaeologist Justin Dunnavant’s research in the spotlight
The UCLA College’s 2022 Sloan Fellows. Top row from left: Seulgi Moon, David Baqaee, and Mikhail Solon. Bottom row from left: Chong Liu, Natalie Bau, and Guido Montúfar. Image credit: UCLA
Editor’s note: Congratulations to all of the UCLA scholars selected to receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, including six professors from the College of Letters and Science!
By Stuart Wolpert
Eight young UCLA professors are among 118 scientists and scholars selected today to receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, making UCLA No. 1 among U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities in the number of new fellows.
The fellowships, among the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers, are often seen as evidence of the quality of an institution’s science, math and economics faculty. MIT, with seven new faculty fellows, had the second most.
“Today’s Sloan Research Fellows represent the scientific leaders of tomorrow,” said Adam Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “As formidable young scholars, they are already shaping the research agenda within their respective fields — and their trailblazing won’t end here.”
Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said, “UCLA has an exceptional faculty — world-leaders in their fields. The quality of our faculty research is mind-boggling, and I’m delighted but not surprised that UCLA is No. 1 in faculty awarded 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships.”
An expert in macroeconomics and international trade, Baqaee studies the role production networks play in business cycles and economic growth. His research tackles a central macroeconomic dilemma known as the aggregation problem, which involves reasoning about the behavior of aggregates composed of many interacting heterogenous parts — for instance, how shocks to oil production or trade barriers in parts of supply chains may affect real GDP. He has also studied monetary and fiscal policy, the macroeconomics of monopoly power and the macroeconomic consequences of supply and demand shocks caused by COVID-19. A faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Baqaee is also affiliated with the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
Natalie Bau Assistant professor of economics
Assistant professor of public policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Bau studies a variety of topics in development and education economics, with an emphasis on the industrial organization of educational markets. Her research has looked at how cultural traditions affect economic decision-making, how interpersonal skills facilitate intergenerational investment, whether government policy can change culture, and the effects of human capital investment in countries with child labor. She is affiliated with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Aparna Bhaduri Assistant professor of biological chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Using bioinformatics, single-cell genomics and developmental neurobiology, Bhaduri studies how the human brain is created with billions of cells, as well as how certain cellular building blocks can reappear later in life in brain cancers. She is detailing the hundreds or thousands of cell types in the developing brain, allowing her to produce cell atlases that improve our understanding of glioblastoma. Her research is revealing how stem cells give rise to the human brain during cortical development and how aspects of this development can be “hijacked” in glioblastoma and other brain cancers.
Quanquan Gu Assistant professor of computer science, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
Gu leads UCLA’s Statistical Machine Learning Lab. In his research on machine learning, he is developing and analyzing what are known as non-convex optimization algorithms to understand large-scale, dynamic, complex and heterogeneous data and is building the theoretical foundations of deep learning. Gu aims to make machine learning algorithms more efficient and reliable for a variety of applications, including recommendation systems, computational genomics, artificial intelligence for personalized health care, and government decision-making. In March 2020, he and his research team launched a machine learning model to predict the spread of COVID-19 — a model that has informed predictions by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chong Liu Assistant professor of inorganic chemistry
Liu, who holds UCLA’s Jeffrey and Helo Zink Career Development Chair, is an authority on electrochemical systems for energy and biology. His laboratory combines expertise in inorganic chemistry, nanomaterials and electrochemistry to address challenging questions in catalysis, energy conversion, microbiota, and carbon dioxide and nitrogen — with important implications for the environment. In 2020, he received $1.9 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to conduct research on electrochemically controlled microbial communities, and in 2017, Science News chose him as one of 10 Scientists to Watch who are “ready to transform their fields.”
Guido Montúfar Assistant professor of mathematics and statistics
Montúfar, who leads the Mathematical Machine Learning Group — centered at UCLA and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, in Germany — works on deep learning theory and mathematical machine learning. Through investigations of the geometry of data, hypothesis functions and parameters, he and his team are developing the mathematical foundations of deep learning and improving learning with neural networks. Montúfar is the recipient of a starting grant from the European Research Council and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and he serves as research mentor with the Latinx Mathematicians Research Community. He and his team have organized a weekly online math machine learning seminar since 2020.
Seulgi Moon Assistant professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences
Moon studies the weathering and erosion or bedrock using various methods, including fieldwork, laboratory analysis, topographic analysis, numerical models, near-surface geophysics and rock mechanics. Among her research topics is physical and chemical bedrock weathering, which affects groundwater storage and soil nutrient supply and can result in natural hazards like earthquake-induced landslides and debris flows. Her expertise includes tectonic geomorphology, low-temperature geochemistry and quaternary geochronology, as well as quantitative geomorphic analysis and landscape evolution of Earth and other planetary bodies.
Mikhail Solon Assistant professor of physics and astronomy
Solon, a member of UCLA’s Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics, holds the David S. Saxon Presidential Term Chair in Physics. His research explores phenomena that can be described using the mathematical and physical tools of theoretical high-energy physics. He focuses on using new and wide-ranging applications of quantum field theory to understand the nature of dark matter, the large-scale structure of the cosmos and gravitational waves. He was awarded the J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award, the American Physical Society’s highest honor for doctoral research in theoretical particle physics.
Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of exceptional young scientists and scholars in chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Fellows receive a two-year, $75,000 award to support their research from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was established in 1934.
Fifty-three Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, including Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, in 2020. Seventeen have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science and 22 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics.
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/UCLASloanfellows2022_rev-363.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-16 15:14:502022-04-04 16:30:22Six UCLA College faculty among 2022 Sloan Research Fellows
Parched land in Nevada. A UCLA-led research team studied centuries of megadroughts in the region spanning southern Montana to northern Mexico and the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. Photo credit: Famartin/Wikimedia Commons
Climate change is a significant factor, UCLA-led research finds
By Anna Novoselov
The drought that has enveloped southwestern North America for the past 22 years is the region’s driest “megadrought” — defined as a drought lasting two decades or longer — since at least the year 800, according to a new UCLA-led study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Thanks to the region’s high temperatures and low precipitation levels from summer 2020 through summer 2021, the current drought has exceeded the severity of a late-1500s megadrought that previously had been identified as the driest such drought in the 1,200 years that the scientists studied.
UCLA geographer Park Williams, the study’s lead author, said with dry conditions likely to persist, it would take multiple wet years to remediate their effects.
“It’s extremely unlikely that this drought can be ended in one wet year,” he said.
The researchers calculated the intensity of droughts by analyzing tree ring patterns, which provide insights about soil moisture levels each year over long timespans. (They also confirmed their measurements by checking findings against historical climate data.) Periods of severe drought were marked by high degrees of “soil moisture deficit,” a metric that describes how little moisture the soil contains compared to its normal saturation.
Since 2000, the average soil moisture deficit was twice as severe as any drought of the 1900s — and greater than it was during even the driest parts of the most severe megadroughts of the past 12 centuries.
Studying the area from southern Montana to northern Mexico, and from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, researchers discovered that megadroughts occurred repeatedly in the region from 800 to 1600. Williams said the finding suggests that dramatic shifts in dryness and water availability happened in the Southwest prior to the effects of human-caused climate change becoming apparent in the 20th century.
Existing climate models have shown that the current drought would have been dry even without climate change, but not to the same extent. Human-caused climate change is responsible for about 42% of the soil moisture deficit since 2000, the paper found.
One of the primary reasons climate change is causing more severe droughts is that warmer temperatures are increasing evaporation, which dries out soil and vegetation. From 2000 to 2021, temperatures in the region were 0.91 degrees Celsius (about 1.64 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from 1950 to 1999.
“Without climate change, the past 22 years would have probably still been the driest period in 300 years,” Williams said. “But it wouldn’t be holding a candle to the megadroughts of the 1500s, 1200s or 1100s.”
As of Feb. 10, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 95% of the Western U.S. was experiencing drought conditions. And in summer 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, two of the largest reservoirs in North America — Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River — reached their lowest recorded levels.
Regulators have continued to implement water conservation measures in response to water shortages caused by the drought. In August, for example, federal officials cut water allocations to several southwestern states in response to low water levels in the Colorado River. And in October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency and asked Californians to voluntarily decrease their water usage by 15%.
Williams said initiatives like those will help in the short term, but water conservation efforts that extend beyond times of drought will be needed to help ensure people have the water they need as climate change continues to intensify drought conditions.
The study was a collaboration among researchers from UCLA, NASA and the Columbia Climate School.
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/CrackedlandinNevadaFamartinWikimediaCommons-363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-14 14:58:332022-03-14 14:09:13Megadrought in southwestern North America is region’s driest in at least 1,200 years
Sea ice in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, photographed from an aircraft 1,500 feet above ground. Image credit: Michael Studinger/NASA
By David Colgan
Sometime in the next few weeks, during late summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the area covered by sea ice around Antarctica will reach its annual minimum. According to UCLA climate scientist Marilyn Raphael, the measurement could set a new record low, just five years after the last record was established.
That’s because current conditions in the region are similar to those of late 2016 and early 2017, and the planet has just experienced a year of record-high ocean temperatures.
“The temperature of the ocean limits how much area the ice can cover,” said Raphael, a professor of geography and director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “The same thing happened five years ago, when warming and more exposed ocean caused earlier retreat of the ice.”
A paper co-authored by Raphael and published in the journal Nature Climate Change puts those developments in context by using historical data to determine the amount of area covered by sea ice across the entire Antarctic region, season by season, from 1905 to 2020.
Since 1979, scientists have relied on satellite imaging to track the daily extent of Antarctic sea ice, which expands dramatically during the Antarctic winter and contracts in the summer, typically reaching its minimum in mid-February. The new study, a collaboration between UCLA and Ohio University researchers, used extensive weather data, ocean data and previous research findings from locations around Antarctica to reconstruct which portions of the region were covered by ice before satellite imaging existed.
The total area covered by sea ice fluctuates each year according to the seasons. It also fluctuates in cycles of roughly five to seven years. The research also uncovered longer-term trends: The area covered by sea ice declined from 1905 to the 1960s, but since then, despite rising global temperatures, the average area per year covered by ice has increased — in stark contrast to the rapidly declining amount of sea ice in the Arctic region around the North Pole.
It will take further research to determine why these trends occurred and whether 2017’s record low signaled that global warming has begun to affect long-term patterns. But measurement of the 2022 sea ice minimum, expected between mid-February and early March, is the next critical observation point. A repeat of 2017, Raphael said, would provide further evidence that global warming may be playing a major role in this massive, complex natural system.
While previous papers reconstructed historic sea ice conditions seasonally at specific locations, doing so around the entire continent fills a critical gap in baseline information — particularly because conditions vary greatly from place to place in the region, said Mark Handcock, a UCLA statistician and co-author of the new study.
“Statistical methods can weave all the individual sources into a complete picture of the region,” he said.
Antarctic sea ice provides habitat for penguins, seals and other animals around Antarctica itself, but it also important to a range of life around the world. It plays a major role in climatic and oceanic patterns as far north as Iceland and the North Pacific Ocean.
“Antarctic sea ice helps control things like the equator-pole temperature gradient,” Raphael said, referring to the temperature difference between the equator and poles. “That gradient influences large-scale atmospheric circulation.”
Sea ice also influences thermohaline circulation, a global system of surface and deep-water ocean currents. One such current is the Gulf Stream, which is responsible for the Northeast United States’ relatively mild weather.
The scale of Antarctic sea ice is massive. At its maximum size, which typically occurs each September, the ice expands to cover about 7 million square miles — only slightly larger than the land area of South America.
The paper’s findings can be used in future studies on the underlying causes of historic sea ice changes and what to expect as climate change continues to warm the planet.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, is expected to produce additional findings that will enable scientists to reconstruct historical models for the extent of sea ice at daily, rather than seasonal, intervals.
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Antarcticaseaice-363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-10 16:08:592022-03-14 14:35:03Antarctic sea ice level could reach record low in 2022, UCLA climate scientist says
UCLA study shows the strange markings are the result of trapped big cats chewing through wire snares, indicating these animals are injured at far higher rates than previously assumed
An encounter with lions in captivity helped UCLA’s Paula White solve the riddle behind the dental damage she had observed on wild lion and leopard skulls. Image courtesy of Paula White
By Alison Hewitt |
In a hunting camp in Zambia more than a decade ago, UCLA biologist Paula White puzzled over the heavy skull of a trophy-hunted lion. Zambia permits limited hunting in certain areas to help fund its national conservation program, and White had gained permission to examine the trophy skulls and hides to evaluate how hunting was affecting conservation efforts.
This particular skull had a pronounced horizontal V-shaped notch on one of the canine teeth — a marking White had never seen before from natural wear. Over the next few months, she began noticing similar notches on other lions’ teeth.
It wasn’t until three years later, when she visited lions bred in captivity and saw them gnawing on a wire fence, that it clicked: The tooth notches in wild lions resulted from the animals chewing their way out of wire snares — noose-like traps set by poachers. The sheer number of notched teeth she’d seen suggested that such traps, illegal in conservation areas, were injuring far more lions than experts had estimated.
“It was an odd mix of thrilling to figure out the cause of the notches and horrifying to realize that so many animals had been entangled in a snare at some point in their lives,” said White, director of the Zambia Lion Project and a senior research fellow with the Center for Tropical Research at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
From 2007 to 2012, White crisscrossed Zambia examining and photographing the skulls, teeth and hides of trophy-hunted lions and leopards. She shared the photos with UCLA paleobiologist Blaire Van Valkenburgh, a carnivore tooth-wear expert.
They examined White’s photos of 112 lions and 45 leopards in two Zambian conservation areas and found that 37% of the lions and 22% of the leopards had snare scars and tooth notches, according to a study published today in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science.
“Identifying the snare damage to the teeth is a real innovation. I’d never seen anything like those horizontal notches before,” said Van Valkenburgh, a professor emerita of ecology and evolutionary biology. “Usually I’m looking at decades-old skulls in museums, but these are the animals we’re trying to conserve right now. This is real-time information, and that’s what you need for conservation decisions.”
Images on the left show notches caused by chewing wire snares, while those on the right show regular wear to lions’ teeth. Image courtesy of Paula White
With lions and leopards having declined in numbers across their former African range and both now classified as “vulnerable,” vigorous conservation efforts are particularly important, the researchers said. The paper recommends requiring trophy hunters to share remains for forensic examination, which would help show whether current conservation programs are effectively reducing the number of human-caused injuries to the animals from illegal activities like poaching.
The researchers were surprised by the findings that more than a third of the lions and more than a fifth of the leopards White examined in the Luangwa Valley and Greater Kafue Ecosystem — which include Zambia’s largest conservation areas — had old snare injuries, even though they suspected existing data undercounted the problem. Previous estimates suggested that only 5% to 10% of Zambia’s lions had snare injuries, and there was virtually no prior data on such injuries among the nation’s leopards.
The authors also discovered that 30 of the 112 lions had shotgun pellets embedded in their skulls and that 13 of these 30 had both shotgun and snare injuries.
The study authors noted that overall rates of injuries among animals in the conservation areas are probably even higher than the current study suggests because researchers can’t count snared animals that never escaped or died undetected.
Some of the lions and leopards are injured or killed when they become unintended victims of wire snares set by poachers to catch wild game, while others fall victim to traps meant to protect poaching camps. Some poachers intentionally capture the big cats to sell their claws, teeth and other body parts. The animals can also be struck by shotgun pellets when people attempt to scare them away from livestock or homes.
More than one-third of lions and one-fifth of leopards studied showed signs that they had chewed through poachers’ noose-like wire snares like the one pictured here. Courtesy of Paula White
Even for those that escape death, their injuries — damaged teeth, feet severed by snares and lead-shot poisoning — can seriously hinder their ability to compete for resources like food, mates and territory.
“Our new method of evaluating anthropogenic injuries provides a window into the stresses these carnivores are experiencing,” Van Valkenburgh said. “So for every trophy animal, a forensic examination such as ours should be routine. Studying the dead animals can help conserve the living animals.”
White’s research has already helped bring about policy changes by Zambia’s parks and wildlife department, which has lowered the number of lions that can be hunted annually by about two-thirds, stipulated that only older animals may be hunted and required that each trophy taken be examined by officials to confirm the age. Unfortunately, White said, problems like poaching and habitat encroachment continue to pose greater threats to conservation.
The paper recommends that countries expand their existing inspections by requiring hunters to provide their specimens for systematic photographic archiving to document tooth damage, snare scars or old embedded shotgun pellets before they export their trophies. The authors note that it’s also possible to detect snare-wear tooth injuries on tranquilized lions.
“I wholeheartedly believe that as long as hunting continues, scientists working with hunters can obtain information that would have been lost and which will really benefit conservation,” White said. “We could compare the past 10 years of data with data 10 years from now. I would hope that if the anti-poaching efforts are successful, we would see a reduction in these types of injuries.”
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/skullbyPaulaWhite-363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-10 15:51:462022-02-28 12:30:40Notches on lions’ teeth reveal poaching in Zambia’s conservation areas
UCLA faculty and alumni contributed ideas, expertise and artworks to the $100 million revitalization project
Overhead view of Destination Crenshaw’s Sankofa Park featuring designs for works by Maren Hassinger, Kehinde Wiley and Charles Dickson. Image credit: Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
By Avishay Artsy |
A cultural and economic corridor that celebrates the contributions of Southern California’s Black community is coming to South Los Angeles. Destination Crenshaw is a $100 million revitalization project that will bring public art, pocket parks and small business investment to 1.3 miles of Crenshaw Boulevard.
Helping bring this project to life? UCLA faculty and alumni.
Crenshaw is a neighborhood in transition. Construction of a light rail line connecting Crenshaw and LAX airport and the opening of SoFi Stadium in nearby Inglewood have boosted home values and brought in new businesses, while accelerating gentrification and displacement. Destination Crenshaw was incorporated as a non-profit in November 2017 to draw attention to the area’s Black history and culture.
“It was a way to kind of lay an anchor and say that this is a Black community, and we want to show that through our cultural heritage,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences in the UCLA College, and a member of the Chancellor’s Council on the Arts. Since 2017, Hunt has served as an advisor to the project at the invitation of city councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is spearheading the initiative.
Members of Harris-Dawson’s staff had read “Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities,” a book that Hunt had co-edited with Ana-Christina Ramón at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA and published in 2010.
In his role as advisor, Hunt recommended key moments and figures in Black L.A. history to include. Marcus Hunter, a professor of sociology and the inaugural chair of the department of African American studies at UCLA, also became an advisor.
“UCLA was kind of the scholarly anchor,” Hunt said. “We were the place that was trying to make sure that they were staying true to the history.”
The community partners working on Destination Crenshaw include artist Judith Baca, distinguished professor emeritus in the departments of Chicana and Chicano and Central American studies and world arts and cultures/dance, and a long list of UCLA alumni: arts educator and independent filmmaker Ben Caldwell, educator Mandla Kayise, curator Naima Keith, community organizers Karen Mack and Alberto Retana, and art advisor Joy Simmons.
Kehinde Wiley’s “Rumors of War” figure in the location of his planned Destination Crenshaw sculpture, which will be a bookend to “Rumors of War” and feature a female figure. Image credit: Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
Turning insult into opportunity
Destination Crenshaw took shape after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans to build the portion of the Crenshaw/LAX line between Hyde Park and Leimert Park at-grade, rather than underground. Area residents fumed at how building the line at-grade would bisect Crenshaw Boulevard in two, making it less walkable and thereby reducing the foot traffic vital to small businesses and a connected community.
Locals vowed to turn an insult into an opportunity, launching an ambitious project to upgrade infrastructure, build community gathering places and parks, add more than 800 trees, invest in small businesses on the boulevard, and install public artworks by local Black artists.
In meeting with Harris-Dawson’s office, Hunter, a Leimert Park resident, heard city council staff members talk about Crenshaw/LAX rail passengers “passing through” the area.
“Then it became a discussion about like, what does it mean to pass through?” Hunter said. “You want to invite people to get off, but also you want people to have some kind of experience or awareness of what they’re passing through on their way to downtown or wherever they’re going on the train.”
Artis Lane’s sculpture “Emerging First Man” in Sankofa Park. Image credit: Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
Creating a showcase space for public art
Destination Crenshaw, which spans Crenshaw Boulevard from 48th to 60th streets, will include a new “Afrocentric streetscape” design and six new pocket parks. More than 100 public artworks and exhibits, including monuments, statues, murals and augmented reality storytelling, are set to be included.
In October 2021, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission approved plans for seven permanent outdoor sculptures along the route. Destination Crenshaw commissioned work from seven prominent Black artists with local ties, including Kehinde Wiley and Alison Saar. Artists Maren Hassinger and Brenna Youngblood, both UCLA alumna, have also been commissioned to create work.
Sankofa Park featuring design for Maren Hassinger’s sculpture “An Object of Curiosity, Radiating Love.” Image credit: Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
Hassinger, who was born in Los Angeles in 1947, recalls childhood visits to the May Company department store at the corner of Crenshaw and Santa Barbara (now Martin Luther King Jr.) boulevards. She graduated from Bennington College in Vermont with a bachelor’s in sculpture in 1969, and from UCLA with an M.F.A. in 1973. Her work often incorporates unconventional materials such as plastic bags, leaves and branches, wire, rope and found trash.
For the Destination Crenshaw project, “I knew right away that I wanted to do something that I hadn’t done before,” Hassinger said, “but I somehow wanted it to reflect on an L.A. experience. When I think of L.A., I think of bright and sunny and shiny and warm and loud and busy, and for some reason, I started seeing this pink sphere in my head.”
Hassinger’s sculpture will be installed on a grassy area at the center of Sankofa Park, an elevated outdoor plaza that Destination Crenshaw is building at 46th Street. “An Object of Curiosity, Radiating Love” is a large fiberglass orb, hot pink and six feet in diameter.
As people approach the orb, sensors will trigger it to light up and emit a soft pink glow. This sensation of a dialogue with passers-by is meant to evoke the community-minded spirit of a neighborhood in the midst of a dramatic and unsettling transition.
“So, it’s as if this warm hot pink thing said hello, or winked, or nodded. I want you to know, as a person walking by, that you’re noticed. You exist,” Hassinger said.
I AM Park featuring design for Brenna Youngblood’s work “I AM.” Image credit: Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
Youngblood grew up in Riverside but visited South L.A. as a child, attending church with her family in Compton and South Gate. She now has a home and studio in the Crenshaw district.
“I’ve been here about six years. Not that long, but long enough to see some changes,” she said.
Youngblood received her bachelor’s of fine arts from Cal State Long Beach in 2002 and her M.F.A. from UCLA in 2006. In 2012, she participated in the Hammer Museum’s inaugural “Made in L.A.” biennial exhibition.
Her piece “I AM” will be installed toward the southern end of the route, near Slauson Avenue, in Welcome Park and I AM Park. The letters I AM evoke the posters carried by Civil Rights demonstrators that read “I AM A MAN.” The 8-foot-tall bronze sculpture resembles stacked toy blocks with letters along the sides spelling out I AM. The blocks also look like a jungle gym, which speaks to the formative role of language in shaping identity. The sculpture is a reimagining of one of Youngblood’s earlier works, “MIA,” (2011).
“I think that people will enjoy it because it’s a sculpture that you can touch, that you can crawl up on,” she said.
A tribute to history based on meticulous research
Harris-Dawson’s Council office asked Hunter and his UCLA students to add historical context to Destination Crenshaw. Hunter and 10 graduate students pored through the archives of the African American newspapers California Eagle and the Los Angeles Sentinelto revisit L.A. history from 1850 to 2015. The students presented their research to the design team of Perkins&Will, the architect-of-record for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., which they worked on alongside design architect Adjaye Associates.
What became clear, Hunter said, was that any conversation about Black L.A. history has to start with Bridget “Biddy” Mason. Born a slave, Mason became one of the first prominent citizens and landowners in Los Angeles in the 1850s and 1860s. Working as a midwife and nurse, she used her money to purchase land in what is now the heart of downtown. The investment made her the wealthiest Black woman in the city. She donated to charities, fed and sheltered the poor, visited prisoners and founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles in 1872.
“[Mason] is the godmother of Black LA. You cannot talk about Black Los Angeles without talking about her,” Hunter said. People passing through this area “need to see her or experience something about her.”
Other historical markers will track Crenshaw’s role in shaping the nation’s cultural imagination. Crenshaw has been home to many prominent Black entertainers, such as stand-up comedian Redd Foxx, rapper Ice-T, and singers Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner and Nancy Wilson. It was also home to the hit TV show “Soul Train,” which host Don Cornelius started in Chicago in 1970 but brought to L.A. the following year. Local high school students packed Soul Train’s stage to show off fashion styles and new dance moves that were then copied by teens across the country.
Welcome Park at 50th Street featuring design for Alison Saar’s work “Bearing Witness.” Image credit: Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
Mapping the movement of Black L.A.
Using census data, the UCLA student researchers also mapped the migration of the Black population across time.
“Black populations have shifted. They’ve moved throughout the decades and centuries in pretty interesting ways,” Hunt said.
Because of redlining and racist housing policies, the neighborhood’s early residents were almost exclusively middle-class and upper-middle-class white families. Former L.A. Mayor (and UCLA alumnus) Tom Bradley and his wife needed a white intermediary to buy their first house in Leimert Park in 1950, while he was serving as a Los Angeles police officer and prior to his entry into politics. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racially restrictive housing covenants, Japanese American families began to move in, and the center of the city’s Black population shifted west from its longtime home along Central Avenue.
However, Hunt continues, “after the ’92 Uprising, a lot of Blacks moved into the Inland Empire for cheaper housing and schools. And for the first time the Black population actually declined during that decade.” Despite this migration to the Inland Empire, Crenshaw’s population remains above 60% Black, while other former Black strongholds like Watts are now predominantly Latino.
“Crenshaw and the surrounding areas, Baldwin Hills, View Park, is still a heavy Black concentrated population, and parts of it are middle class and upper middle class, which is kind of unique,” Hunt said, describing the Crenshaw neighborhood as the “center of gravity” for the community. “It’s where a lot of the action is concentrated, even though it’s not inclusive of the entirety of Black L.A.”
Destination Crenshaw moves ahead
Construction on Destination Crenshaw slowed during the height of the pandemic, but work is now moving apace, and organizers expect the project to be completed by spring of 2023, and to debut the seven permanent artworks before next fall. Fundraising now stands at about $72 million, and the Getty Foundation has provided $3 million to commission and fabricate the first seven sculptures, as well as plan for their conservation. The project, which aims to include more than 100 works of art by Black artists, will continue to commission new works in order to create what’s billed as “the nation’s largest art and cultural celebration of African American contribution to world culture.”
“The intention is to enshrine in a proper, meaningful way what Black people have contributed and that they were here, even if you’re not seeing them now, that they were here and they contributed,” Hunter said.
And while the new streetscaping, pocket parks and large-scale sculptures may lure passengers off the train, the project is largely aimed at boosting local businesses and catering to those who live in the district, not just pass through it.
“It’s definitely for the Black community. It’s about staking claim to our history, our culture, and making sure that those stories are remembered,” Hunt said. But, he added, Destination Crenshaw can also raise awareness that “this is a signature Black community that has a history and is connected to a broader history in L.A.”
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/OverheadviewofSankofaPark.jpg9571700Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-10 09:49:302022-02-28 12:30:31Destination Crenshaw pays tribute to Black creativity and history in Los Angeles
Cortisol is well-suited for measurement through wearable devices, according to study co-author Sam Emaminejad, because its concentration levels in sweat are similar to its circulating levels. Photo credit: Yichao Zhao and Zhaoqing Wang/UCLA
The human body responds to stress, from the everyday to the extreme, by producing a hormone called cortisol.
To date, it has been impractical to measure cortisol as a way to potentially identify conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress, in which levels of the hormone are elevated. Cortisol levels traditionally have been evaluated through blood samples by professional labs, and while those measurements can be useful for diagnosing certain diseases, they fail to capture changes in cortisol levels over time.
Now, a UCLA research team has developed a device that could be a major step forward: a smartwatch that assesses cortisol levels found in sweat — accurately, noninvasively and in real time. Described in a study published in Science Advances, the technology could offer wearers the ability to read and react to an essential biochemical indicator of stress.
“I anticipate that the ability to monitor variations in cortisol closely across time will be very instructive for people with psychiatric disorders,” said co-corresponding author Anne Andrews, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and member of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “They may be able to see something coming or monitor changes in their own personal patterns.”
Cortisol is well-suited for measurement through sweat, according to co-corresponding author Sam Emaminejad, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, and a member of CNSI.
“We determined that by tracking cortisol in sweat, we would be able to monitor such changes in a wearable format, as we have shown before for other small molecules such as metabolites and pharmaceuticals,” he said. “Because of its small molecular size, cortisol diffuses in sweat with concentration levels that closely reflect its circulating levels.”
The technology capitalizes on previous advances in wearable bioelectronics and biosensing transistors made by Emaminejad, Andrews and their research teams.
The technology capitalizes on previous work by Sam Emaminejad, Anne Andrews and their UCLA research teams. Image credit: Emaminejad Lab and Andrews Lab/UCLA
In the new smartwatch, a strip of specialized thin adhesive film collects tiny volumes of sweat, measurable in millionths of a liter. An attached sensor detects cortisol using engineered strands of DNA, called aptamers, which are designed so that a cortisol molecule will fit into each aptamer like a key fits a lock. When cortisol attaches, the aptamer changes shape in a way that alters electric fields at the surface of a transistor.
The invention — along with a 2021 study that demonstrated the ability to measure key chemicals in the brain using probes — is the culmination of a long scientific quest for Andrews. Over more than 20 years, she has spearheaded efforts to monitor molecules such as serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain tied to mood regulation, in living things, despite transistors’ vulnerability to wet, salty biological environments.
In 1999, she proposed using nucleic acids — rather than proteins, the standard mechanism — to recognize specific molecules.
“That strategy led us to crack a fundamental physics problem: how to make transistors work for electronic measurements in biological fluids,” said Andrews, who is also a professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
Meanwhile, Emaminejad has had a vision of ubiquitous personal health monitoring. His lab is pioneering wearable devices with biosensors that track the levels of certain molecules that are related to specific health measures.
“We’re entering the era of point-of-person monitoring, where instead of going to a doctor to get checked out, the doctor is basically always with us,” he said. “The data are collected, analyzed and provided right on the body, giving us real-time feedback to improve our health and well-being.”
Emaminejad’s lab had previously demonstrated that a disposable version of the specialized adhesive film enables smartwatches to analyze chemicals from sweat, as well as a technology that prompts small amounts of sweat even when the wearer is still. Earlier studies showed that sensors developed by Emaminejad’s group could be useful for diagnosing diseases such as cystic fibrosis and for personalizing drug dosages.
One challenge in using cortisol levels to diagnose depression and other disorders is that levels of the hormone can vary widely from person to person — so doctors can’t learn very much from any single measurement. But the authors foresee that tracking individual cortisol levels over time using the smartwatch may alert wearers, and their physicians, to changes that could be clinically significant for diagnosis or monitoring the effects of treatment.
Among the study’s other authors is Janet Tomiyama, a UCLA associate professor of psychology, who has collaborated with Emaminejad’s lab over the years to test his wearable devices in clinical settings.
“This work turned into an important paper by drawing together disparate parts of UCLA,” said Paul Weiss, a UCLA distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry and of materials science and engineering, a member of CNSI, and a co-author of the paper. “It comes from us being close in proximity, not having ego problems and being excited about working together. We can solve each other’s problems and take this technology in new directions.”
The latest research builds upon early work that was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The current study received funding from the NSF CAREER program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse through an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, the National Institute of General Medical Science of the NIH, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the Stanford Genome Technology Center, the Brain and Behavior Foundation and the PhRMA Foundation.
The UCLA NanoLab, Electron Imaging Center for NanoMachines and Nano and Pico Characterization Laboratory, all housed at CNSI, provided instrumentation for the new study.
The paper’s co-first authors are UCLA postdoctoral scholar Bo Wang and Chuanzhen Zhao, a former UCLA graduate student. Other co-authors are Zhaoqing Wang, Xuanbing Cheng, Wenfei Liu, Wenzhuo Yu, Shuyu Lin, Yichao Zhao, Kevin Cheung and Haisong Lin, all of UCLA; and Milan Stojanović and Kyung-Ae Yang of Columbia University.
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Cortisolsensingsmartwatch-363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-10 09:11:102022-03-02 10:44:34Sweating the small stuff: Smartwatch developed at UCLA measures key stress hormone
Ellen Sletten’s Photonbooth gives L.A. students a picture-perfect lesson in fluorescence
Students from El Marino Language School in Culver City, California, in the Photonbooth. The exhibit has inspired hundreds of budding scientists to recognize that there is more to the world than what their eyes typically see. Photo credit: Courtesy of Ellen Sletten
By Jonathan Riggs
If you know how to look, our world can be wildly colorful. Under an ultraviolet light, once-familiar objects can take on dreamlike brilliance: Think neon green scorpions, hot pink flying squirrels and electric blue diamond rings.
Known as fluorescence, this ability of certain molecules to absorb light in one colored wavelength and emit it in another is a phenomenon many scientists, including UCLA professor Ellen Sletten, are still exploring.
And a few years ago, Sletten devised a clever way to make her research into fluorescence more accessible to non-scientists: the Photonbooth. A clever twist on the traditional photo booth that’s a staple of carnivals, arcades and parties, Photonbooth — the pun in its name a reference to the fundamental particle of light — has inspired hundreds of budding scientists to recognize that there is more to the world than what our eyes typically see, and that key scientific principles underpin everyone’s daily existence.
“It’s very clear right now, with the pandemic, that misinformation about science is dangerous for us all,” says Sletten, a chemical biologist. “Younger generations especially need us to focus on accurate, responsible scientific communication. Besides, everyone loves a photo booth, right?”
Ellen Sletten. Photo credit: Penny Jennings/UCLA
The concept evolved out of an attraction from her 2015 wedding reception. To echo her engagement ring, which her fiancé chose for its fluorescence (caused by a defect in the diamond’s lattice structure), Sletten envisioned black lights installed in a standard photo booth with fluorescent props for guests to pose with. Her party-phobic father, an engineer, jumped at the chance to pay tribute to his daughter’s life work and to help turn her plans into a reality.The Photonbooth was born.
“It was such a huge hit, even with the non-scientists,” Sletten says. “I realized it was very synergistic with many of my lab’s research goals and could be a perfect avenue for science outreach.”
When Sletten discussed the booth with members of her UCLA research team, her then-graduate student Rachael Day — now a biochemistry professor at Drury University in Missouri — was so inspired that she took it upon herself to build a version of the booth, and they immediately began using it at local parties and educational events, including Exploring Your Universe, UCLA’s annual hands-on science fair.
A typical Photonbooth presentation begins with a quick science lesson demonstrating the fluorescent properties of common household items such as tonic water or detergent, followed by a discussion of the biomedical uses of fluorescence. Attendees next create their own glowsticks, enter the booth with whimsical props they choose and pose for photos, first under normal light and then, to best show off their fluorescent items, under a black light.
“A lot of science — especially chemistry, where everything is nanoscale or smaller — can be difficult to comprehend,” Sletten says. “I really like using fluorescence because it’s so easy for kids to see. I also love how we can take something kids are familiar with, like a highlighter, and then help them realize there is this whole other side to it if they are curious enough to look and question.”
An adult and two children in the Photonbooth at UCLA’s Exploring Your Universe science festival. Photo credit: Courtesy of Ellen Sletten
Science education outreach is especially important to Sletten because it highlights the human connection that she says is so crucial to scientific progress. As she looks back on her lab’s first five years, she cites her relationship with her students and their growth among her most important accomplishments.
“My students are amazing, and I try hard to be an effective mentor who gets to know each of them well,” Sletten says. “In many ways, starting a lab is like starting a small company. You go through all the challenges and problem-solving together, which makes for strong bonds. It has been incredibly rewarding to be a part of my students’ journeys to becoming excellent scientists and communicators.”
Sletten says the experience of children delighting in the Photonbooth experience mirrors the optimism she and her team share for the future of their own research.
“When I think about the videos of molecules flowing within mice which our lab has been able to produce with previously unattainable speeds, colors and resolutions, I can relate to how those kids feel stepping in the Photonbooth,” Sletten says. “The opportunity to see something new, the feeling of discovery and fun — I hope it inspires those kids to become science-savvy citizens or even future scientists.”
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/PHOTONbooth5-363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-01-24 13:49:442022-04-05 10:10:24Professor’s invention is a kid-friendly introduction to the chemistry of light
In Western U.S., health risks from ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter continue to grow, study shows
In October 2017, smoke from a nearby wildfire turned the sky orange-brown in Los Angeles’ Mar Vista neighborhood. Photo credit: Sean Brenner
By David Colgan
After decades of air quality improvement due to the Clean Air Act of 1970 and other regulations since, the Western U.S. is experiencing an increase in the number of days with extremely high levels of two key types of air pollutants due to climate change.
From 2000 to 2020, the growing number of wildfires — made more intense by climate change — and the increasingly common presence of stagnant, hot weather patterns combined to increase the number of days with hazardous levels of ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter. Those conditions are creating health risks for people throughout the region, according to a paper published in Science Advances.
Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist and co-author of the paper, said the increased pollution affects densely populated regions across a broad swath of the West, including the Los Angeles basin, Salt Lake City, Denver and Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The study found that the number of days when both pollutant levels were extremely high increased in nearly every major city from the Pacific Coast to the eastern Rocky Mountains. (The scientists judged pollution levels to be “extremely high” on days when they were in the 90th percentile of their daily average for the study’s 20-year span.)
Smoke from wildfires can travel thousands of miles, harming people who don’t live directly in wildfire-prone areas.
“When we looked at satellite imagery of the whole country this past summer, we could see smoke from Western wildfires making it all the way to New York City,” Swain said. “There could be a connection with air pollution as far away as the East Coast.”
Wildfires and stagnant, hot weather patterns increase the presence of pollution classified as PM 2.5 — particles that measure less than 2.5 microns in width, the equivalent of about three one-hundredths the width of a human hair — which can make its way deep into lungs and can cross into the bloodstream. Scientific studies have linked PM 2.5 pollution to health problems such as decreased lung function, irregular heartbeat and even premature death in people with heart or lung disease.
The combination of weather patterns and wildfires also increases the formation of ground-level ozone, another threat to respiratory health. Ground level ozone forms due to chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (such as nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide) and volatile organic compounds, both of which can come from vehicles, power plants, industrial facilities and other sources.
The researchers found that the increase in extreme levels of PM 2.5 due to climate factors increased hazardous air quality conditions by an average of 25 million person-days each year of the past two decades in the Western U.S. and adjacent areas of the Great Plains, Mexico and Canada. (A person-day refers to a single day of exposure by a single person.)
The analysis is based on pollution data from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency monitoring sites, as well as atmospheric observations and data on atmospheric pressure and temperatures.
The poor air quality conditions highlighted in the paper are likely to get worse for at least the next few decades, even if drastic climate change mitigation measures are implemented, Swain said.
“It has gotten hotter, wildfire conditions have gotten worse and we’re seeing more persistent periods of high atmospheric pressure,” he said. “Each of those factors is projected to increase in the coming years.”
While mitigating emissions from wildfires and climate change will take decades, cities could still enact regulations and other programs to that would help reduce the presence of oxides of nitrogen and volatile ogranic compounds — so-called ozone precursor emissions — in the near term. Although the benefits of those changes would take years to accrue, it could be practical for cities to implement emissions-reduction measures during periods of hazardous air quality, and it would likely help reduce the dangers to human health, Swain said.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Sunsetinsmoke-filledsky-363x237v2.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-01-24 13:17:182022-01-24 13:17:18Days with hazardous levels of air pollutants are more common due to increase in wildfires
Study in mice could point toward method for clearing virus from people who would otherwise depend on medication
A microscope image of HIV particles. The “kick and kill” approach uses cells that are naturally produced by the immune system to kill HIV-infected cells that hide in the body. Photo credit: A. Harrison and Dr. P. Feorino/CDC
By Enrique Rivero
In a study using mice, a UCLA-led team of researchers have improved upon a method they developed in 2017 that was designed to kill HIV-infected cells. The advance could move scientists a step closer to being able to reduce the amount of virus, or even eliminate it, from infected people who are dependent on lifesaving medications to keep the virus from multiplying and illness at bay.
The strategy, described in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, uses cells that are naturally produced by the immune system to kill infected cells that hide in the body, potentially eradicating them, said Dr. Jocelyn Kim, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
“These findings show proof-of-concept for a therapeutic strategy to potentially eliminate HIV from the body, a task that had been nearly insurmountable for many years,” said Kim, the study’s lead author. “The study opens a new paradigm for a possible HIV cure in the future.”
Worldwide, there are currently 38 million people living with HIV, and an estimated 36 million have died of HIV-related diseases in the decades since HIV began circulating, according to UNAIDS.
People with HIV take antiretroviral medication to keep the virus at bay. But HIV has the ability to elude antiretrovirals by lying dormant in cells called CD4+ T cells, which signal another type of T cell, the CD8, to destroy HIV-infected cells. When a person with HIV stops treatment, the virus emerges from those reservoirs and replicates in the body, weakening the immune system and raising the likelihood of opportunistic infections or cancers that can lead to illness or death.
The UCLA-led study continues research on a strategy called “kick and kill,” which many of the same scientists first described in a 2017 paper. The approach coaxes the dormant virus to reveal itself in infected cells, so it can then be targeted and killed. In the earlier study, the researchers gave antiretroviral drugs to mice whose immune systems had been altered to mimic those of humans, and then infected with HIV. They then administered a synthetic compound called SUW133, which was developed at Stanford University, to activate the mice’s dormant HIV. Up to 25% of the previously dormant cells that began expressing HIV died within 24 hours.
But a more effective way to kill those cells was needed.
In the new study, while the mice were receiving antiretrovirals, the researchers used SUW133 to flush HIV infected cells out of hiding. They then injected healthy natural killer cells into the mice’s blood to kill the infected cells. The combination of SUW133 and injections of healthy natural killer immune cells completely cleared the HIV in 40% of the HIV-infected mice.
The researchers also analyzed the mice’s spleens — because the spleen harbors immune cells, it’s a good place to look for latent HIV-infected cells — and did not detect the virus there, suggesting that cells harboring HIV were eliminated. In addition, the combination approach performed better than either the administration of the latency reversing agent alone or the natural killer cells alone.
Kim said the researchers’ next objective is to further refine the approach to eliminate HIV in 100% of the mice they test in future experiments. “We will also be moving this research toward preclinical studies in nonhuman primates with the ultimate goal of testing the same approach in humans,” she said.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the National Science Foundation, a National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences UCLA CTSI Grant and the McCarthy Family Foundation.
The study’s co-authors are Tian-Hao Zhang, Camille Carmona, Bryanna Lee, Dr. Christopher Seet, Matthew Kostelny, Nisarg Shah, Hongying Chen, Kylie Farrell, Dr. Mohamed Soliman, Melanie Dimapasoc, Michelle Sinani, Dr. Kenia Yazmin, Reyna Blanco, David Bojorquez, Hong Jiang, Yuan Shi, Yushen Du, Ren Sun and Jerome Zack of UCLA; Natalia Komarova, Dominik Wodarz and Matthew Marsden of UC Irvine; and Paul Wender of Stanford University. Sun is also a member of the faculty of the University of Hong Kong.
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/HIVparticles363x237.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-01-14 13:06:072022-01-14 13:06:07UCLA-led team refines ‘kick and kill’ strategy aimed at eliminating HIV-infected cells
Photo by Susan Urmy
Image credit: UCLA
Famartin/Wikimedia Commons
Michael Studinger/NASA
Courtesy of Paula White
Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw
Yichao Zhao and Zhaoqing Wang/UCLA
Photo credit: Courtesy of Ellen Sletten
Photo credit: Sean Brenner
A. Harrison and Dr. P. Feorino/CDC
