GVL Visits Doodad Ranch! 3/27/2026 Graduate students Diana Munoz, Anderson Tate, and Carlos Esperanza spent the day at Doodad Ranch in Elverta, California with two main goals: obtain a genetic sample of a Western bluebird, an...

One of our PhD students, Carlos Esperanza, recently visited Doodad Ranch to collect a genetic sample for his Western Bluebird population genetics project!

GVL project scientist Ravi Nagarajan gave a great talk at the Interagency Ecological Workshop about how eDNA metabarcoding is about as sensitive as qPCR in detecting Chinook salmon in tidal wetlands, and run-typing from eDNA looks promising!

How CRISPR and Biotechnology Can Revolutionize Conservation Contemporary conservation management faces a variety of challenges. One of those challenges being the ability to identify species accurately when visual identification is unreliable. Conservation team...

Luis Alvarez, an undergraduate in the BioInnovation Group at UC Davis, wrote this article highlighting some of our work!

Our undergraduate interns are vital to our graduate students' research! Many use the skills they developed to initiate their own projects, preparing them to be the researchers of tomorrow 🧪.

California Rice Footprint: Giant Gartersnake YouTube video by RiceNews

So proud of the GVL's own Anna Jordan, who educates Californian's about her study species, the giant gartersnake, in this great video by RiceNews.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSqw...

Hi Bluesky! We are the Genomic Variation Laboratory based at UC Davis. Our current projects include:

🧬 CRISPR-based SHERLOCK assays for eDNA detection

🧬 Metabarcoding to detect animal and plant diversity in predator diets and ecosystems

🧬 Population genetics of fishes

and more!