BMB Weekly #28: July 19, 2024

 

Green gold: Turning trees into 'biofactories' Featuring Björn Hamberger. Read the full article here.

 

 

 

Another COGS Coffee and Connection hour is being hosted at Chittenden Hall! Join us on the back patio for coffee/tea, treats and conversation! Head indoors to the downstairs lounge if the weather is less than optimal! Either way– we can’t wait to connect with you! Learn more here.

Hsin-Ying Lin and Peixuan Yu will talk about their research, plans for future research, and/or journal article of interest, with plenty of time for questions and answers. Please join us for pizza and drinks, and a chance to hear what your peers are up to. We will meet outside at the picnic tables in the garden, or BCH 208 if inclement weather.

AGEP is excited to announce the Celebratory Retreat for Black Women in STEM (CR4BWS). It will be held both online and in person. There will be a wonderful lineup including a keynote speaker, gifts, cash prizes for lightning talk presenters, and more. Learn more here and register here.

Attention Master’s Plan A and Doctoral students: Do you have questions regarding formatting your thesis or dissertation? Stop in during one of our help sessions to talk to Graduate School staff about any specific formatting questions you may have. These are walk-in sessions. No registration is required. Learn more here.

• July 31, 2024: 2+ Year Students
• August 15, 2024: 1st Year Students

Scheduled to take place at Michigan State University, ComSciCon-MI is a free workshop focused on science communication. This event is tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs in Michigan and neighboring regions, and this year, we are pleased to extend participation opportunities to undergraduates interested in science communication as well. ComSciCon is widely recognized for its impactful professional development programs, conceptualized and led by STEM graduate students. Each year, we select 40 participants to attend the workshop at no cost, thanks to the generous support of our sponsors. The program features panel sessions with approximately 20 invited professional science communicators, writing sessions to hone participants' skills, peer and expert review of writing, and a pop talk contest where participants showcase their science outreach projects and forge new collaborations. Learn more here and apply here.

 

 

Whether students are feeling overwhelmed due to academic, social, or personal pressures or just need to connect, Togetherall is available 24/7 to remind them they are not alone. This free, anonymous, waitlist free, peer-to-peer mental health support community is monitored and moderated 24/7 by licensed clinicians and empowers students to give and receive support for a full range of concerns. Many students do not seek out campus in-person/virtual mental health treatment. Togetherall provides an alternative option for students seeking mental health support, offering an additional resource for students who are looking for an outlet to share and process their emotions. Learn more here.

The MSU Department of Police and Public Safety has released an online Active Violence Incident Awareness Training program that is available for students, faculty, and staff. This training includes a presentation explaining how to respond during an active violence situation. Throughout the training, knowledge checkpoint questions will appear on screen to evaluate participants’ understanding of the content. In addition, a video is in development, which will be included in the training at a later time. Learn more 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.

 

This position is located with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Pacific West Area, US Arid Land Agricultural Center in Maricopa, AZ. In this position, you will serve as a Research Leader and provide leadership in developing strategies to produce new germplasm with higher yield and better tolerance to abiotic/biotic stresses in arid climates and associated with global climate change, and for use as new sources of biofuels and bioproducts.

Duties:

• Serve as leader of a research team using multidisciplinary approaches to improve sustainability, productivity, and profitability of U.S. agriculture in arid agroecosystems.
• Develop novel methods of high-throughput phenotyping that enable non-destructive measure of plant traits important for understanding heat and drought responses.
• Conduct research to predict likely impacts of climate change and develop adaptations for cropping systems through experimental approaches.
• Strengthen physiological and genetic components of eco-physiological and economic models that provide present-day solutions through improved crop growth models.
• Conduct field-based studies of crops such as cotton, oilseeds, cereal grains, industrial and other crops to characterize plant responses to heat and drought and elucidate genes and stress response pathways that inform crop management and improvement.

Learn more and apply here.

The small-molecule regulation group led by Dr. Aleksandra Skirycz seeks a postdoctoral researcher associate with expertise in plant molecular biology and biochemistry. Experience with untargeted metabolomics and compound identification is a plus. The research associate will lead or contribute to projects focused on the identification and functional characterization of novel small-molecule compounds involved in plant growth and stress tolerance and, more generally, organismal health. The starting point of our research is protein-metabolite interaction networks mapped in the group using an array of biochemical approaches and primarily co-fractionation mass-spectrometry. The available interactomes, spanning microbes, animals, and plants, are a treasure trove for discovery. The research associate will query the available interactomes for novel regulatory metabolite-protein pairings, followed by biochemical and functional characterization. The lab is working closely with the MSU metabolomics and proteomics cores. It is fully equipped for molecular and biochemical work, including state-of-the-art technologies to characterize protein-ligand binding. The lab has a strong collaboration network, and the research associate will be encouraged to tap into this network and forge their own collaborations. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting and apply at this link.

We seek to recruit a highly motivated and skilled postdoctoral researcher with training in molecular biology, plant genetics, or cell biology. The project will leverage recent advances in microscopy, genetics, and physiology to understand molecular mechanisms of dehydration and desiccation tolerance in Arabidopsis. This project is part of a recently funded NSF Biology Integration Institute called Water and Life Interface Institute (WALII, pronounced “Wally”). WALII studies how life interacts with water, from the molecular to the organismal level, across plants, fungi, and animals. WALII is a virtual institute, with scientists located at nine research facilities across the United States. Working together, WALII team members aim to uncover the rules by which organisms interact with water. The candidate selected for this position will be working primarily on Theme 2. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting and apply at this link.

 

Bellucci, M., Mostofa, M. G., Weraduwage, S. M., Xu, Y., Abdelrahman, M., De Gara, L., Loreto, F., & Sharkey, T. D. (2024). The effect of constitutive root isoprene emission on root phenotype and physiology under control and salt stress conditions. Plant direct, 8(7), e617. https://doi.org/10.1002/pld3.617

Hird, K., Campeciño, J. O., Lehnert, N., & Hegg, E. L. (2024). Recent mechanistic developments for cytochrome c nitrite reductase, the key enzyme in the dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium pathway. Journal of inorganic biochemistry, 256, 112542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2024.112542

Hoffmann-Benning, S., & Simon-Plas, F. (2024). Editorial: Lipid signaling in plant physiology. Plant science : an international journal of experimental plant biology, 344, 112088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2024.112088

Pastor-Cantizano, N., Angelos, E. R., Ruberti, C., Jiang, T., Weng, X., Reagan, B. C., Haque, T., Juenger, T. E., & Brandizzi, F. (2024). Programmed cell death regulator BAP2 is required for IRE1-mediated unfolded protein response in Arabidopsis. Nature communications, 15(1), 5804. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50105-6

Wojciechowska, I., Mukherjee, T., Knox-Brown, P., Hu, X., Khosla, A., Subedi, B., Ahmad, B., Mathews, G. L., Panagakis, A. A., Thompson, K. A., Peery, S. T., Szlachetko, J., Thalhammer, A., Hincha, D. K., Skirycz, A., & Schrick, K. (2024). Arabidopsis PROTODERMAL FACTOR2 binds lysophosphatidylcholines and transcriptionally regulates phospholipid metabolism. The New phytologist, 10.1111/nph.19917. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19917

Zheng, D., Elnegiry, A. A., Luo, C., Bendahou, M. A., Xie, L., Bell, D., Takahashi, Y., Hanna, E., Mias, G. I., Tsoi, M. F., & Gu, B. (2024). Brd4::Nutm1 fusion gene initiates NUT carcinoma in vivo. Life science alliance, 7(7), e202402602. https://doi.org/10.26508/lsa.202402602

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 57, No.28