Re: Clinical Canine And Feline Reproduction: Evidence Based Answers
Melva Simons
Faculty from within the School of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Medicine, College of Biological Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and College of Engineering are eligible to serve as mentors for student Scholars. While serving as mentors, they are expected to fulfill certain criteria.
The list of faculty mentors is not all-inclusive - other eligible faculty can also be sought after as STAR mentors. Also, some mentors may be listed under more than one research area.
Clinical Canine and Feline Reproduction: Evidence Based Answers
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While all faculty within the School of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Medicine, College of Biological Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and College of Engineering are eligible to serve as mentors for student Scholars, they are expected to fulfill certain criteria:
Along the guidelines of the American Physiological Society, a successful mentor is one who engages in a dynamic process whereby mentor and mentee both learn to respect and trust each others commitment, expertise, and individuality. To sign up as a mentor, a faculty member must commit to the mentoring process and be willing to invest time, energy and resources into the relationship. The text of the relationship can be difficult to define, because mentoring is in many ways an elusive concept and an individual process. However, a mentor must possess the following characteristics:
Faculty in the School of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Medicine, College of Biological Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and College of Engineering who are eligible to act as a mentor are asked to provide a brief paragraph describing their background, research interests, and other pertinent information.
This information should assist students who have not yet selected a faculty mentor.
I am a geneticist/bioinformatician focused on making use of the immensely growing Next Generation Sequencing data to understand, diagnose and treat biological disorders. I have contributed to multiple genomic resources including the chicken genome and a tissue-specific equine transcriptome. Also, I participated in large-scale sequencing efforts for gene discovery, using multiple animal models, including the dog, horse and cow. In addition, I collaborated in the development of software algorithms and platforms to detect sequencing errors, visualize structural variants, detect gene fusions, and identify novel transcriptomic structures. I am eager to collaborate with one of our STAR students on using new bioinformatic approaches a creative analysis of publicly available. In this project, he/she should 1) Learn how to search for publicly available RNAseq data for a phenotype of interest. 2) Benchmark classical RNAseq expression analysis techniques against the new alignment free approaches. 3) identify possible novel transcriptomic structures associated with our phenotype.
Dr. Monica Aleman obtained her veterinary degree at the University UNAM-Mexico. She completed residencies in large animal internal medicine (equine emphasis) and neurology and neurosurgery at UC Davis; and achieved board certification for both specialties by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. She completed a PhD in comparative pathology of neuromuscular diseases at UC Davis. Her research and clinical interest has focused in neurology, neuromuscular and muscle disorders in all species with equine emphasis. Currently, she is a faculty member of the equine internal medicine and neurology services, and Director of the Neuromuscular Disease Laboratory at UC Davis. Dr. Aleman is one of the founding members of the Comparative Neurology Research Group, and is affiliated with the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory at UC Davis. Dr. Aleman is author of over 90 peer reviewed medical publications, over 100 proceedings and abstracts, and over 25 book chapters; and is a regular speaker in national and international meetings. Currently, she works in the investigation of neuromuscular disorders in multiple species including humans.
Dr. Ammersbach is a veterinary clinical pathologist with a special interest in non-traditional species. The areas of expertise of clinical pathologists include clinical chemistry, hematology and cytology. Non-traditional species include exotic pets, zoo animals, wildlife and laboratory animals. There are many potential projects, including several collaborations with other faculty members, such as: 1. A collaboration with the primate center and Dr. Olstad to evaluate neutrophil morphology with inflammation (retrospective study), and cerebrospinal fluid analysis findings (retrospective and prospective) and their association with a number of diseases. 2. A collaboration with Dr. Van Hoy on a project validating and establishing normal reference intervals for blood gases and coagulation tests in pet minipigs and 3. A collaboration with Dr. Beaufrere documenting lipoproteins in birds (including cockatiels and flamingoes) using high resolution lipoprotein electrophoresis.
Cranial (or anterior) cruciate ligament (CCL) rupture is one of the most common orthopedic conditions in dogs. CCL rupture results in instability within the stifle that initiates a downward spiral of synovitis, articular cartilage degeneration, and eventually osteoarthritis. Currently, intracapsular techniques replace the ruptured CCL with an autologous tissue or synthetic graft. However, these grafts aren't strong enough and so the repair is usually augmented with some form of extracapsular reconstruction. We have developed a viable alternative that should be strong enough on its own to return joint stability. Our unique method uses stem cells to engineer a ligament in vitro. Our current research is finalizing the optimal growth factor cocktail and mechanical intervention before beginning our implantation trails.
I am a Professor of Clinical Animal Behavior in the Companion Animal Behavior Service. My areas of interest include: prevention and treatment of behavior problems in companion animals, including the use of behavioral modification and psychotrophic medications; client compliance, especially as it relates to the treatment of behavioral problems; dog parks; and other areas of human-animal bond research, including owner attachment. I am open to ideas for research in other areas of behavior and the human-animal bond. Previous STAR projects include looking at: reasons for relinquishment of dogs to shelters in relation to behavior and training; effect of food enrichment in rhinos kept in zoos; effect of enrichment and hiding boxes on behavioral scores of cats in shelters; and the relationship between owner attachment and the term "guardian".
My program focuses on the epidemiology and ecology of mosquito-borne diseases, primarily those caused by West Nile, chikungunya, and dengue viruses, and including other livestock diseases such as Rift Valley fever and bluetongue. My research combines laboratory studies and epidemiological methods to understand the environmental drivers of disease outbreaks, and I oversee the UC Davis component of the statewide surveillance program for mosquito-borne viruses.
STAR project opportunities in my lab include [1] development of laboratory assays to monitor feeding or determine age of individual mosquitoes (methods: MALDI-TOF, mosquito rearing and handling), [2] field studies on the ecology and control of West Nile virus (methods: epidemiological analysis, mosquito trapping, bird banding and tracking), or [3] analysis of the relationship between West Nile virus disease and demographic risk factors in California (methods: epidemiology, GIS).
I am a microbiologist interested in Salmonella pathogenesis and host response. Our group has pioneered the use of a calf model to study Salmonella gastroenteritis and a rhesus macaque model to study co-infections with non-typhoidal Salmonella and HIV. In addition, we use the advantages of the mouse model to study host and bacterial factors involved in orchestrating intestinal inflammation. On the host side, we are interested in pattern recognition by the innate immune system (TLRs, NLRs and complement), pathways that amplify responses in tissue (the IL-23/IL-17 axis and the IL-18/IFNg axis) and effector responses induced in the intestinal epithelium (defensins, lipocalin-2, calprotectin, iNOS etc.). On the bacterial end, we study mechanisms that enable typhoidal Salmonella to evade innate immune recognition and mechanisms that enable non-typhoidal Salmonella to take advantage of the host inflammatory response to out-compete the microbiota in the gut.
Dr. Beaufrre main research area is on lipid disorders and lipid diagnostic tests in birds and reptiles such as studies on atherosclerosis, hepatic lipidosis, and plasma lipid biomarkers. Dr. Beaufrre is also very active in clinical research in companion zoological medicine on a variety of topics and has a special interest in applied biostatistics in zoological medicine.
Dr. Bellone is a molecular geneticist whose research interests include elucidating the genetics of economically and medically important traits in the horse as well as traits that serve as models for other species. Current projects in horses involve investigating the genetic and molecular basis of several ocular disorders and in some cases associated pigmentation phenotypes. Recently her laboratory discovered the genetic risk factor for the second most common tumor of horses, ocular squamous cell carcinoma. Other findings include identifying the genetic mechanisms for congenital stationary night blindness in multiple horse breeds, as well as distichiasis in Friesian horses. Currently her collaborative research team is trying to identify the genetic risk factor for equine recurrent uveitis, the leading cause of blindness in horses, among other projects. The primary research goal is to develop DNA diagnostic tests that assist animal breeders in making informed mating decisions and work towards better clinical management practices, by understanding the biological mechanisms behind complex heritable traits. Dr. Bellone is passionate about training and working closely with students in her laboratory to assist them in making significant contributions to these projects.
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