BMB Weekly #44: November 3, 2023

 

MTRAC Award supports BMB's Eric Hegg to transform $165 billion pulp and paper industry Michigan State University biochemist Eric Hegg has shown promising results for a more environmentally friendly and more efficient process for creating pulp and paper. Now, the MSU Innovation Center has chosen his project for a Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (MTRAC) Award to move this research forward. The $125,000 award will help fund his research project, “Adapting a Novel, Patented Process to Deconstruct Woody Biomasses to Add Value to Pulp Production.” Read the full article here. Faculty Spotlight: Assistant Professor Melanie Balbach Get to know Assistant Professor Melanie Balbach who joined MSU in August 2023. The Balbach Lab will explore key biochemical questions related to reproductive physiology and sperm metabolism--research with breakthrough applications for our understanding of infertility and potential male contraceptives. Read the full article here.

 

 

Federico Rey from the University of Wisconsin, Madison will be presenting "Gut bacterial metabolism and cardiometabolic disease"

To join us on Zoom, click this link. Password: bmbseminar

The Fall BMB Seminar Series will run through December 7, 2023. The complete schedule is available on the BMB Fall Seminar Series website. If you are interested in meeting with any of these speakers please email Leslie Williams, glady@msu.edu. Many speakers are planning to visit in-person. A zoom option will continue to be offered for all seminars.

 

Join us for MPS speaker Catherine Espinoza Patharkar from Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations. The seminar will be held at 4:00 p.m. in MPS room 1200.

Catherine’s talk is titled “Being a Scientific Program Manager at Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations”. We would like to invite graduate students and postdocs to join the speaker for a lunch and discussion. Lunch will be provided at 12:00 p.m. in PLB 168. This is a great opportunity to meet our outside speaker in an informal environment. If you would like to participate in the luncheon, please RSVP to Keri Morris (morrisk@msu.edu) with any dietary restrictions by Friday, November 3, 2023 at noon. All students and post docs who are interested in this week’s seminar topic are welcome to attend. You do not need to be in the MPS program or affiliated with an MPS faculty member.

Statistical analysis of high-dimensional biomedical data: a gentle introduction to analytical goals, common approaches, and challenges

Presented by: Lara Lusa, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

RCR eligible for students with a focus in quantitative sciences, e.g. working with omics data, but is open to all. Learn more and register here.

Conversation about qualitative research

Presenter: Dr. Christine Greenhow, Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, College of Education, MSU

RCR eligible with focus on students in qualitative science, but is open to all. Learn more and register here.

The MSU AGEP program invites you to help us as judges for the in-person PowerPoint (Nov 11) and virtual Poster Presentations (Nov 10) during the hybrid 2023 AGEP Student Success Conference. Morning and afternoon shifts are short, and we need volunteers of all disciplines. If you are interested in volunteering, please RSVP with this link, https://bit.ly/3OuLu0t by Friday, October 20 at 10 a.m. Judge orientation sessions will occur over Zoom the following week. Learn more here.

The MSU AGEP Program will be hosting a virtual presentation entitled “Enhancing Cultural Awareness” with Etta Ward (IUPUI Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Development) and Randall Roper (Associate Professor of Biology and Director of the IUPUI Graduate Mentoring Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). This event will be valuable for any graduate student, post-doc, faculty member or community leader interested in developing their skills in cultural sensitivity as well as the creation of inclusive environments and work teams. Learn more and register here.

The Women*s Initiative for Leadership Development (or WILD) is a student leadership conference facilitated by a committee of engaged students in collaboration with the Office of Women*s Student Services and Women*s Council at Michigan State University. All Spartans (students, faculty, staff) who are interested in gender equity, empowerment, and leadership development are encouraged to attend! Learn more and register here.

The goal of this conference is to create more integrated Research, Extension, and Education (REE) teams for collaborative proposals that improve urban agriculture and food systems broadly, as well as work at the intersection of urban agriculture and food systems that operate in, near, or within urban settings. This conference takes part in three phases in late 2023 and early 2024. Learn more and register here.

 

University Outreach and Engagement recognizes and shines a light on exemplary high-quality community-engaged scholarship and outreach activities through its awards programs. There are four separate awards that are accepting nominations:

• Community Engagement Scholarship Award
• Graduate Student Award for Community Engagement Scholarship
• Graduate Student Award for Science Communication and Outreach
• Institutional Champion Award for Community Engagement Scholarship

Learn more and make a nomination here.

 

The MSU Science Festival is seeking presenters to share what excites you about your field with communities across Michigan! Learn more and submit a proposal here.

Eligible to undergraduates, graduates, and professional students enrolled in Fall/Spring semester and without a dining plan. Fruits, soups, pasta, rice, protein, cereal, bread, and fresh produce available year-round! To learn more about visiting the MSU Foodbank, or to donate, visit here.

To help field questions, Global Safety has developed a guide with recommended steps and resources. This is available as a PDF and on the Global Safety website at www.globalsafety.msu.edu/positive-COVID-19. The first step is to call ISOS for guidance.

 

Applications are invited for a Research Associate (Postdoc) position in the Hegg lab. The project will focus on our patented Cu-AHP process for fractionating woody biomass into clean sugar and lignin streams suitable for biofuels and bioproducts. The global pulp and paper market is valued at over $165 B, and the US is one of the largest producers of pulp and paper products. Our Cu-AHP pretreatment technology effectively and economically fractionates woody biomass to generate clean lignin and sugars streams. The goal of this project is to: (a) optimize the process for treating wood chips to generate pulp and lignin-rich streams, (b) evaluate the prepared pulp for specific applications, (c) conduct technoeconomic analyses to identify key factors contributing to the production cost, and (d) collaborate with various companies for potential scale-up and commercialization of the technology. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting and apply at this link.

The selected candidate will work with members in the Kuo lab to perform drug discovery and disease mechanism studies of Alzheimer’s disease. Responsibilities include preparing recombinant proteins for in vitro and animal (mouse) studies. Experiments include, but not limited to, protein aggregation assays, cell viability quantification, mouse primary neuron isolation, mouse intracerebral injection and behavioral analysis, and immunohistological examination of mouse brain sections. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting and apply at this link.

A Postdoctoral Research Associate position is available in the laboratory of Melanie Balbach in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The Research Associate will focus on the metabolic changes and underlying regulatory pathways in the male germ cell during activation and during zygote development. Opportunities for professional development include participation in grant proposal writing, attending and presenting at scientific research symposiums and conferences, networking with other scientists within and outside MSU as well as mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting and apply at this link.

 

 

Case, D. A., Aktulga, H. M., Belfon, K., Cerutti, D. S., Cisneros, G. A., Cruzeiro, V. W. D., Forouzesh, N., Giese, T. J., Götz, A. W., Gohlke, H.,
         Izadi, S., Kasavajhala, K., Kaymak, M. C., King, E., Kurtzman, T., Lee, T. S., Li, P., Liu, J., Luchko, T., Luo, R., … Merz, K. M., Jr (2023). AmberTools.
         Journal of chemical information and modeling, 63(20), 6183–6191. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.3c01153

Chatterjee, S., Nevarez, J. L., Rankin, J. A., Hu, J., & Hausinger, R. P. (2023). Structure of the LarB-Substrate Complex and Identification of a
         Reaction Intermediate during Nickel-Pincer Nucleotide Cofactor Biosynthesis. Biochemistry, 10.1021/acs.biochem.3c00242. Advance online publication.
         https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biochem.3c00242

Jiang, Y., Li, Z., Sui, D., Sharma, G., Wang, T., MacRenaris, K., Takahashi, H., Merz, K., & Hu, J. (2023). Author Correction: Rational engineering
         of an elevator-type metal transporter ZIP8 reveals a conditional selectivity filter critically involved in determining substrate specificity. Communications
         biology, 6(1), 1082. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05460-3

Kulke, M., Kurtz, E., Boren, D., Olson, D. M., Koenig, A. M., Hoffmann-Benning, S., & Vermaas, J. V. (2023). PLAT Domain Protein 1 (PLAT1/PLAFP)
         Binds to the Arabidopsis thaliana Plasma Membrane and Inserts a Lipid. Plant science: an international journal of experimental plant biology, 111900.
         Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2023.111900

Liu, X., Rao, S., Chen, W., Felix, K., Ni, J., Sahasrabudhe, A., Lin, S., Wang, Q., Liu, Y., He, Z., Xu, J., Huang, S., Hong, E., Yau, T., Anikeeva, P.,
         & Zhao, X. (2023). Fatigue-resistant hydrogel optical fibers enable peripheral nerve optogenetics during locomotion. Nature methods, 10.1038/s41592-023
         02020-9. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-023-02020-9

Raza, S., Sievertsen, T. H., Okumoto, S., & Vermaas, J. V. (2023). Passive permeability controls synthesis for the allelochemical sorgoleone in sorghum
         root exudate. Phytochemistry, 113891. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phytochem.2023.113891

Shajan, A., Manathunga, M., Götz, A. W., & Merz, K. M., Jr (2023). Geometry Optimization: A Comparison of Different Open-Source Geometry Optimizers.
         Journal of chemical theory and computation, 10.1021/acs.jctc.3c00188. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.3c00188

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 56, No.44