UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute

09/28/2026

🎗️Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and we're marking it with a milestone for our clinical lab:

The Colligan Clinical Diagnostic Laboratory, the clinical arm of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute's Treehouse Childhood Cancer Initiative, has earned accreditation from the College of American Pathologists (CAP)!

👶 Why it matters:

Most genomic tests look for mutations in a tumor's DNA, but because pediatric cancers carry far fewer mutations than adult cancers, these tests often come up empty.

The Treehouse CARE analysis, developed by Professor Olena Vaske and her team, looks at RNA instead to see which genes a tumor has switched on or off.

In the team's published study of relapsed, refractory, and rare cancers, their approach turned up findings of potential clinical significance in 94% of patients. Sometimes, these findings can point toward existing drugs or clinical trials that a mutation test would miss, meaning that the patient can start on a potentially life-saving treatment right away.

CAP accreditation is voluntary and sets a higher bar than the mandatory federal CLIA certification. The team hopes it will help open the door to insurance reimbursement and partnerships with new hospitals, broadening access to many more families.

Congratulations to the whole Colligan Lab team! 👏

🔗 Read the full story: https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/09/cap-accreditation/

09/16/2026

It's time to bring complete genome sequencing to the clinic 🧬🩺

Less than five years after first sequencing a human genome from end to end, we are working on making complete, "telomere-to-telomere" sequencing practical for personalized medicine.

End-to-end genome sequencing has already provided answers for patients with rare diseases whose genetic origins could not be determined by older sequencing methods. Access to more streamlined complete genome sequencing could have a huge and almost immediate impact for millions of patients with rare and undiagnosed diseases.

🔗 https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/09/bringing-complete-genome-sequencing-from-the-lab-to-the-clinic/

08/24/2026

Our Treehouse researchers are building a new device that could help diagnose a rare and difficult-to-detect cancer before it is too late 💛

"Life is a journey, live for the people you experience it with." ...

08/10/2026

💥Myth busted! Modern bison don't have significant cattle ancestry. They are, however, living in fragmented populations that put their genetic diversity at risk. 🦬

Bison are one of North America's great comeback stories. After dropping to just a few hundred in the early 1900s, they now number in the hundreds of thousands — but headcount alone doesn't tell the whole story.

A new UC Santa Cruz study, on the cover of Science, reads ancient DNA spanning 20,000+ years to build a genetic roadmap for restoring the species. It shows that bison have held onto important genetic diversity, but past management scattered them into isolated herds. With this genomic blueprint, conservationists can reconnect those herds and rebuild the connectivity bison had for millennia.

https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/08/bison-conservation-genomics/

08/06/2026

📣😮 BIG NEWS: We’ve just completed sequencing the DNA of a common marmoset, and it’s going to be a big win for Alzheimer’s research.

New-world primates like marmosets experience age-related memory loss, which has made them a great model for studying Alzheimer's and other neurological conditions.

Many of the same genes that contribute to cognitive decline in humans are also present in marmosets, but past attempts to sequence the marmoset’s DNA were unable to fully capture these genes. Today, researchers at UC Santa Cruz have filled in the gaps to uncover hundreds of genes, including previously undescribed forms of several important Alzheimer's-linked genes.

The marmoset genome is part of a major release of other telomere-to-telomere (T2T) complete genomes published today in Cell. The collection shows how technology has advanced to enable scientists to routinely fully sequence genomes from end to end, less than 5 years after UC Santa Cruz co-led the publication of a first complete human genome sequence in 2022.

This new ability to fully sequence genomes from telomere to telomere is expected to get easier and more affordable in the next 5 years, and could be a game changer for personalized medicine. Keep following us to see what the next few years will bring!

https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/08/first-complete-marmoset-genome/

04/02/2026

Exciting news! Mohammed Mostajo-Radji, a and UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute research scientist will serve as an investigator for a $13.9 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Led by scientists at UCLA, the research will use human stem cell-based models to uncover the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying autism and schizophrenia, and identify drug targets for both conditions.

At UC Santa Cruz, Mostajo-Radji will focus on understanding how different genetic mutations underlying neuropsychiatric disorders show up at the electrophysiological, or “circuit” level, in the brain.

Read more with the link in comments.

02/27/2026

🤯 The Braingeneers at UC Santa Cruz have blown our minds again: researchers trained brain organoids — tiny pieces of brain tissue grown in the lab — to solve a goal-directed task.

Associated with the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, the team coached the organoids to solve the cart-pole balancing problem, a classic benchmark in , , and used to test whether a system can process information and adapt in real time.

Coaching the organoids improved their success rate from 4.5% to 46% with consistent adaptive training, demonstrating their ability to process information in real time and learn to respond.

Led by Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Ph.D. student Ash Robbins, ECE Professor Mircea Teodorescu, and Distinguished Professor of Biomolecular Engineering David Haussler, the team published their findings in Cell Reports.

By exploring how complex neural circuits function and adapt, this research opens new possibilities for studying neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, stroke, concussion, dyslexia, and ADHD.

Other authors include Hunter Schweiger, Sebastian Hernandez, Alex Spaeth, Kateryna Voitiuk, David Parks, Tjitse van der Molen, Jinghui (Sury) Geng, Isabel Cline, Kenneth Kosik, Sofie Salama, Tal Sharf and Mohammed Mostajo-Radji.

02/06/2026

New research from UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute affiliate Shaheen Sikandar shows that pregnancy may “reset” how breast tissue ages, reducing cell changes that are linked to higher breast cancer risk later in life.

A small but potentially risky group of breast cells builds up with age in women who have never been pregnant—but is sharply reduced in those who had an early pregnancy.

The findings could help explain why women who have their first pregnancy before the age of 30 statistically have a decreased risk of getting breast cancer much later in life.

https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/01/pregnancy-resets-breast-cells/

02/04/2026

This , the theme is — a call to see the person before the patient and place lived experiences at the heart of cancer care.

The Treehouse Undergraduate Bioinformatics Immersion (TUBI) program provides a unique experience to be immersed in a cancer lab that puts the people who are impacted by cancer at the center. Now, two transformative gifts from Dragon Master Initiative and UC Santa Cruz's Degree Defining Experiences program are enabling them to expand their program to 80 undergraduates!

The results of this program speak for themselves. TUBI alumni have gone on to:
🔬 Careers in bioinformatics and cancer research
🎓 Prestigious Ph.D. and master's programs
🏥 Medical school
🤝 Roles that advocate for people and families impacted by cancer

Meet three alumni who were impacted by TUBI:

📸 Sneha Jariwala came to TUBI with no research experience. Today she's a medical student pursuing pediatric oncology.
"TUBI gave me the confidence to talk about something that I'm passionate about—childhood cancer—in medical school interviews and career-related conversations."

📸 Jackie Roger was one of TUBI's first mentors. Today she has a PhD in bioinformatics and is a postdoctoral scholar at Kaiser Permanente.
"It's never just data on a screen. You're always aware that these are real people who are affected."

📸 Samantha Garcia survived pediatric cancer twice. TUBI gave her a place to share her story, be seen as more than a patient, and find her voice.
"For the longest time, I was just labeled as a sick little girl. And I'm still kind of growing out of that in my 20s. Hearing people respond—it was like, all right, I'm becoming someone I want to be."

TUBI is an initiative of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. Learn more and consider giving: https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/02/expanding-tubi/

01/27/2026

Did syphilis originate in Europe or the Americas? A genomic study of ancient bones might be able to give us the answer! 🧬🦴

An ancient DNA analysis of a 5,500-year-old human skeleton found in Colombia has revealed oldest evidence yet of syphilis in the Americas. A study published in Science shows that the ancestor of the bacterium that causes syphilis was present in the Americas at least 3,000 years earlier than previously thought, long before Europeans arrived there.

"Our findings show the unique potential of paleogenomics to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of species, and potential health risks for past and present communities," said geneticist Lars Fehren-Schmitz at UC Santa Cruz

The finding emerged unexpectedly. The skeleton's DNA was originally sequenced at a paleogenomic lab at UC Santa Cruz to study human population history, but while screening the data, teams at UC Santa Cruz and the University of Lausanne independently detected the genome of the T. pallidum bacteria that causes syphilis.

Before publishing, the researchers shared their findings with communities in Colombia, recognizing the discovery's significance to the country's medical history.

"Engaging scholars, students, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members ensures the results are ethically communicated and interpreted in partnership with local communities," said archaeologist Miguel Delgado at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, who was one of the collaborators on the study. "This approach builds trust, supports responsible stewardship of sensitive discoveries, and reinforces local ownership of knowledge."

📷: A 1496 woodcarving by Joseph Grünpeck of people affected with syphilis being blessed by the Virgin Mary.