hen you feel mental distress (anxious, stressed or nervous), it’s common to express that your stomach is in knots. It wasn’t until fairly recently that researchers began to understand this connection as a two-way street and to study how the gut also influences the brain. This bi-directional communication pathway between the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and the central nervous system is now termed the microbiota-gut-brain (MGB) axis.
But how exactly do microorganisms in the gut—such as bacteria, fungi and viruses—impact communication between this organ and the brain?
While Nhung Nguyen, Class of 2026, grew up in the United States, she and her family maintained deep cultural ties to their homeland in Vietnam. Thanks to the support of the Office for Global Programs, Nguyen was able to spend eight weeks last summer in Hue, an imperial city located in the heart of the country.
ndividuals are generally drawn to veterinary medicine because they have a passion for animals and a desire to help them. But until about a decade ago, there wasn’t much discussion about the dark underside of the career—the fact that female veterinarians are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide relative to the general population, and male veterinarians are approximately twice as likely (J Am Vet Med Assoc, 2019).
Jaimie Brown, Class of 2025, has aspired to be a zoo veterinarian since she was in middle school—beyond her small zoo of pet dogs, cats, birds, turtles, goats, chickens, snakes, rat and iguana she had over the years.
Dr. Carrie Finno picked up a coiled rope from a table covered with horse bones, enteroliths (stones that can form in a horse’s gut), alfalfa cubes and a bag of horse teeth.
She held one end of the rope and handed the rest to the high school student on her right who passed it along to the next student until the entire length of rope encircled the room.
“You’re holding the equivalent of the small intestine of a horse,” Finno told the 21 students who were visiting the Center for Equine Health (CEH) as part of the week-long Vet Med Summer Academy. “That’s about 70 feet long!”
Beyond its role as a teaching facility for DVM students and a leading referral hospital for advanced care, the UC Davis veterinary hospital also serves as the world’s largest training ground for future veterinary specialists.
The hospital’s house officer program—which offers residencies, internships, and fellowships—attracts participants from around the globe.
Depending on your generational definition of the word, “basic” science could conjure a very different understanding. Contrary to the modern interpretation, basic is anything but unoriginal or unexceptional. This type of scientific inquiry forms the essential foundation or starting point for fundamental discoveries and innovation.
