For over thirty years, a mysterious infectious disease has been killing parrots and other exotic birds. The disease, called Proventricular Dilatation Disease, or PDD, has plagued bird owners, aviaries, zoos, and endangered bird recovery efforts. Using the ViroChip, the DeRisi and Ganem labs, in collaboration with veterinarians Susan Clubb in the US, and Ady Gancz in Israel, have identified a novel avian bornavirus strongly associated with PDD.
Read the Frequently Asked Questions about PDD and this new virus.
Or, read the full press release here.


Welcome to the new DeRisi Lab web site! The DeRisi Lab is in located Byers Hall at the new UCSF Mission Bay campus.
Read more about The California Institute of Quantitative Biomedical Research


The Center for Advanced Technology is a collection of instrumentation dedicated to serving the research needs of the UCSF andQB3 communities. Our primary focus is on instrumentation for high-throughput experimental biology, but we are also interested in any instrumentation too large or complex to be maintained by a single laboratory.

Go to the CAT Facility

Nathan Yozwiak is a graduate student in the Infectious Disease and Immunity Program at UCBerkeley and doing his thesis work in the DeRisi laboratory at UCSF. His project focuses on monitoring the threat of international emerging infectious diseases. Occasionally, sending him to Nicaragua.

Read the Blog

The RhinoBase is a companion website to our publication on selective pressure operating on the human rhinovirus genome. This site contains easy downloads of all the new complete rhinovirus genomes we sequenced, data mapped onto crystal structures, movies, media, and other helpful resources.

Visit the RhinoBase.