BMB Weekly #29: July 26, 2024

 

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

 

 

 

Emma Boismier and Amberly Crawford 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.

Each semester has a deadline for the initial submission of theses and dissertations to ProQuest. The deadline is generally two weeks prior to the final deadline. Plan your defense accordingly. The document submitted to ProQuest is expected to be a final version, meaning it has been successfully defended, corrections the committee wants have been made, and there are no more content changes. Learn more here.

Stop by Chittenden Hall front lawn between 5:30pm and 5:45 pm on Wednesday July 31^st to meet up with some of our COGS Leaders and walk over to the lawn by Beaumont Tower to enjoy this classic MSU Summer Carillon event together! Music starts at 6PM, so if you miss us for the walk over, just look for us over by Beaumont. Picnics welcome! Bring blankets or lawn chairs to sit on. See schedule for more Carillon Concerts here and learn more here.

All new graduate teaching assistants (international and domestic) are strongly encouraged to participate in this workshop, which will prepare them to successfully start teaching undergraduate students.

New GTAs will be able to:

• Identify ways of how to best address various learner differences including identities and experiences to help foster student success.
• Discuss strategies to successfully run their classrooms, their recitation sessions, their work as graders or homeroom tutors.
• Provide procedures to address policy related issues in their individual roles as GTAs.
• Find solutions to student scenarios they may encounter in their GTA role.
• Connect with graduate students to discuss engagement opportunities.

This event is fully virtual. Learn more and register 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.

 

 

This event is available entirely virtually with select hybrid sessions and features a variety of no-cost trainings and webinars to help MSU educators and staff prepare for the fall semester and beyond.

The seminars will focus on ways to enhance student success and connect to an array of resources including:

• Intro to classroom technology
• Intro to MSU Libraries
• Accessibility and blended learning skills
• Overviews of tools like D2L, Microsoft 365, Teams, Forms, and OneDrive
• And much more!

Learn more and register 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.

 

Cavuzic, M. T., de Sousa, A. S., Lohman, J. R., & Waldrop, G. L. (2024). Kinetic characterization of the C-terminal domain of Malonyl-CoA reductase. Biochimica et biophysica acta. Proteins and proteomics, 1872(5), 141033. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbapap.2024.141033

George, N. L., Bennett, E. C., & Orlando, B. J. (2024). Guarding the walls: the multifaceted roles of Bce modules in cell envelope stress sensing and antimicrobial resistance. Journal of bacteriology, 206(7), e0012324. https://doi.org/10.1128/jb.00123-24

López-Goldar, X., Mollema, A., Sivak-Schwennesen, C., Havko, N., Howe, G., Agrawal, A. A., & Wetzel, W. C. (2024). Heat waves induce milkweed resistance to a specialist herbivore via increased toxicity and reduced nutrient content. Plant, cell & environment, 10.1111/pce.15040. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.15040

Rafnsdottir, S., Jang, K., Halldorsdottir, S. T., Vinod, M., Tomasdottir, A., Möller, K., Halldorsdottir, K., Reynisdottir, T., Atladottir, L. H., Allison, K. E., Ostacolo, K., He, J., Zhang, L., Northington, F. J., Magnusdottir, E., Chavez-Valdez, R., Anderson, K. J., & Bjornsson, H. T. (2024). SMYD5 is a regulator of the mild hypothermia response. bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2023.05.11.540170. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.11.540170

Shen, L., Feng, H., Qiu, Y., & Wei, G. W. (2024). Author Correction: SVSBI: sequence-based virtual screening of biomolecular interactions. Communications biology, 7(1), 864. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06554-2

Zhao, G., Richaud, A. D., Williamson, R. T., Feig, M., & Roche, S. P. (2024). De Novo Synthesis and Structural Elucidation of CDR-H3 Loop Mimics. ACS chemical biology, 19(7), 1583–1592. https://doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.4c00236

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 57, No.29