Michael G. Barbour, noted ecologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis, passed away on Jan. 7 due to complications from a longstanding illness. He was 78.
Jim Lyons, professor emeritus of Vegetable Crops (Plant Sciences) at UC Davis, passed away at age 90. His many accomplishments include serving as CA&ES associate dean, founding the UC ANR statewide IPM program, and serving as assistant director of the Agricultural Experiment Station.
Philip Day, Steven Theg, and the late Kentaro Inoue, all UC Davis, determined how β-barrel proteins are sorted in plant chloroplast envelopes. Chloroplasts, which are responsible for photosynthesis in plants, evolved about a billion years ago from an ancient endosymbiotic relationship between a cyanobacteria species and a eukaryotic cell.
UC Davis Plant Sciences professor Kentaro Inoue, 47, was killed in a bicycle crash on Aug. 31, 2016 on West Capitol Avenue in Sacramento. Police said Inoue and a truck were both going west -- Inoue, with a helmet on, riding in the bike lane -- when the truck turned into Inoue's path, and the bike and truck collided.