BMB Weekly #16: April 18, 2025

 

Heather Wilson Receives "Rising Star in Academic Advising" Award   Read the full article here. Grotewold to Give ASBMB Breakthrough Webinar Professor Erich Grotewold will deliver a talk titled "Biosynthesis and regulation of plant phenolic compounds" on May 14, 2025, 12:15–1 p.m. Eastern. This talk is part of ASBMB's Breakthrough Webinar series that seeks to offer a window into the cutting-edge biochemistry and molecular biology research driving discovery. More information on Grotewold's talk and event registration can be found here: https://www.asbmb.org/meetings-events/plant-phenolic-compounds

 

 

Tony Schilmiller from Michigan State University will be presenting the Boezi Lecture titled "Mass spectrometry and metabolomics at MSU: Past, present and future".

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

The Spring BMB Seminar Series will run through April 24, 2025. The complete schedule is available on the BMB Spring 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.

 

APIDA Celebratory Ceremony is a meaningful event that honors the achievements of APIDA-identifying and those who wish to celebrate APIDA-identifying undergraduates and graduates. This celebration serves as a reflection of the challenges our students have overcome and a tribute to the strength of our community. It also recognizes our staff and faculty in all of their hard work and advancements. 

Stoles and alumni shirt pick up will happen the week of April 21 to April 25. Follow @MSUAPIDACelebratory on Instagram for location and time for pick up. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Amily Ko at koamily@msu.edu or Anna Lin at linanna1@msu.edu. Learn more here.

This upcoming Monday is the Anton Lang Memorial Awards and Seminar with Maureen Hansen from Cornell University as our lecturer. The seminar will be held at 4:00 p.m. in room PLB 247.

Maureen’s talk is titled “Engineering carbon fixation”. We would like to invite graduate students and postdocs to join the speaker for a lunch and discussion on Monday, April 21th. Lunch will be provided at 12:00 p.m. in PBL 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 at morrisk@msu.edu with any dietary restrictions by Friday April 18, 2025 at 12 p.m. 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.

Attend this seminar on Zoom. Passcode: 028299

Join us for a full-day symposium celebrating neurodiversity in STEM. Explore how neurodiverse perspectives drive innovation, hear from expert speakers and advocates, and engage in discussions about inclusivity and accessibility in the sciences. Learn more here and register using this link.

Join us for our final coffee hour of the semester! Network with your peers while enjoying delicious treats and a morning beverage. Meet us in the lobby area of the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility and check out this cool space! We hope to see you there! Learn more here.

Building on a series of Climate Cafes, we are following up with a workshop on actionable steps to deal with the climate crisis.

Join GROW's Graduate Assistant and climate resilience Ph.D. candidate Clara in this interactive workshop to strengthen our head-heart-hand connection - moving from climate emotions to actions. If you are feeling stuck, don't know where to start, or feel like nothing you could do would make a difference, this workshop is for you! Learn more here.

The MSU Genetics and Genome Sciences Program is pleased to announce GGS Day 2025! This event is open to all MSU faculty, staff, and students, as well as members of neighboring institutions and the greater community. This year’s GGS Day will feature various talks, panels, workshops, poster sessions, and lunch provided by Barrio – East Lansing. The full agenda can be viewed here. Learn more here and register using this link.

This conference will bring together plant scientists and students to push the boundaries of plant science, promote collaborations, and empower the next-generation plant science leaders. This conference is organized by 10 universities in the states and provinces around the Great Lakes and open to anyone in the world. Learn more and register here.

 

The Henry Ford Health (HFH) Cancer Epidemiology Prevention and Control research program invites applications for a postdoctoral fellow to begin a 1-2-year fellowships to start in July 2025. The successful candidate will join a team of over 100 cancer researchers conducting studies across the cancer continuum and have the opportunity to share in Henry Ford Health + Michigan State University Health Sciences research mission to become an NCI-designation worthy cancer center with robust clinical, basic and population science research programs that translate findings into state-of-the-art clinical care for our cancer patients. Learn more and apply here.

This award program is a one-year, paid fellowship designed to introduce early-stage life science researchers to the process of bringing medical breakthroughs from the lab space to the commercial shelf. Fellows will be connected to researchers at UIC, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago, as well as members of the Chicago biotech startup community, and industry partners. Learn more and apply here.

Students seeking a career in pharmacological sciences require training in chemistry, molecular biology, biochemistry, cellular and integrative physiology, biostatistics, and interpretation of complex data sets. The IPSTP is committed to bringing these disciplines together in one cohesive training program reflecting the broad scope of knowledge required in pharmacology and drug discovery.

IPSTP students will participate in three week-long intensive boot camps on critical themes of the program (in vivo pharmacology, drug discovery, and computational pharmacology/big data). Students will also be provided non-classroom opportunities for career development planning, to develop critical thinking skills, grant writing experience, and a strong understanding of rigor and reproducibility and research ethics. The application process includes a form for the student to complete outlining how their proposed project fits into the fields of in vivo pharmacology or drug discovery and how they believe being part of the IPSTP will improve their training. The IPSTP Executive Committee completes a holistic review of the application packets every year. Learn more here and register here.

 

Finals/graduation can be a stressful time for students, but they may not be interested in ongoing counseling. CAPS Connect can be a great support alternative because of its brief nature. Learn more here.

You can find the latest department news over on LinkedIn and BlueSky. Give us a follow and be sure to tag us with research updates, publications, and lab updates to help spread the word!

Hot off the press! The second University Health and Wellbeing Annual Report is now available! Explore the latest insights on how health and wellbeing was advanced on campus and delivered positive impact for the Spartan community in 2024.

The MSU Student Food Bank is a resource available to students and scholars who may be experiencing food insecurity. The Food Bank provides free food and other essential items to those in need within our MSU community. Learn more here.

 

This position is a joint appointment between the Lundquist research lab and the graduate training program, Plant Biotechnology for Health and Sustainability. The Lundquist lab group is a part of the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and the Plant Resilience Institute, both at Michigan State University. The group seeks to develop a fundamental understanding of the ubiquitous plastoglobule lipid droplets of plant chloroplasts and employ them as a novel tool for crop improvement and metabolic engineering.

The Plant Biotechnology for Health and Sustainability (PBHS) program is a NIH-supported training program for graduate students at Michigan State. The specific mission of the PBHS training program is to leverage the strengths of MSU’s vibrant plant biology research community while supplementing graduate student training with a structured environment for graduate education, professional development, and student leadership. PBHS seeks to enrich the training of doctoral students and help prepare the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists who will assume leadership roles in biotechnology-related careers across diverse positions in industry, government, academia, and policy. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting here.

 

 

A Farrugia, M., Rajagopalan, R., & Kroos, L. (2025). Transcriptomic analysis of Myxococcus xanthus csgA, fruA, and mrpC mutants reveals extensive and diverse roles of key regulators in the multicellular developmental process. BMC genomics, 26(1), 355. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-025-11417-z

Allahyartorkaman, M., Chan, T. H., Chen, E. H., Ng, S. T., Chen, Y. A., Wen, J. K., Ho, M. R., Yen, H. Y., Kuan, Y. S., Kuo, M. H., & Chen, R. P. (2025). Phosphorylation-Induced Self-Coacervation versus RNA-Assisted Complex Coacervation of Tau Proteins. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 147(12), 10172–10187. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c14728

Babineau, N., Dien Nguyen, L. T., Mathieu, D., McCue, C., Schlecht, N., Abrahamson, T., Hamberger, B., & Busta, L. (2025). A molecular representation system with a common reference frame for analyzing triterpenoid structural diversity. Plant communications, 101320. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xplc.2025.101320

Babin, K. M., Kilinc, C., Gostynska, S. E., Dickson, A., & Pioszak, A. A. (2025). Characterization of the Two-Domain Peptide Binding Mechanism of the Human CGRP Receptor for CGRP and the Ultrahigh Affinity ssCGRP Variant. Biochemistry, 10.1021/acs.biochem.4c00812. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biochem.4c00812

Boismier, E. C., Aboulnaga, E. A., & TerAvest, M. A. (2025). Zymomonas mobilis: bringing an ancient human tool into the genomic era. Current opinion in biotechnology, 92, 103257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103257

Chen, D., Chen, C. L., & Wei, G. W. (2025). Category-specific topological learning of metal-organic frameworks. Journal of materials chemistry. A, 13(13), 9292–9303. https://doi.org/10.1039/d4ta08877h

Cross, M. C. G., Aboulnaga, E., & TerAvest, M. A. (2025). A small number of point mutations confer formate tolerance in Shewanella oneidensis. Applied and environmental microbiology, e0196824. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.01968-24

Fu, Y., Guzior, D. V., Okros, M., Bridges, C., Rosset, S. L., González, C. T., Martin, C., Karunarathne, H., Watson, V. E., & Quinn, R. A. (2025). Balance between bile acid conjugation and hydrolysis activity can alter outcomes of gut inflammation. Nature communications, 16(1), 3434. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58649-x

Jafari, M., Sagresti, L., Hu, J., & Merz, K. M., Jr (2025). Ion-Induced Dipole Interactions Matter in Metadynamics Simulation of Transition Metal Ion Transporters. Journal of chemical theory and computation, 10.1021/acs.jctc.4c01535. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.4c01535

Lee, H. D., Grady, C. J., Krell, K., Strebeck, C., Al-Hilfi, A., Ricker, B., Linn, M., Xin, N. Y., Good, N. M., Martinez-Gomez, N. C., & Gilad, A. A. (2025). A novel protein for bioremediation of gadolinium waste. Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society, 34(4), e70101. https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.70101

Marks, R. A., Ekwealor, J. T. B., Artur, M. A. S., Bondi, L., Boothby, T. C., Carmo, O. M. S., Centeno, D. C., Coe, K. K., Dace, H. J. W., Field, S., Hutt, A., Porembski, S., Thalhammer, A., van der Pas, L., Wood, A. J., Alpert, P., Bartels, D., Boeynaems, S., Datar, M. N., Giese, T., … Rhee, S. Y. (2025). Life on the dry side: a roadmap to understanding desiccation tolerance and accelerating translational applications. Nature communications, 16(1), 3284. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58656-y

Petrich, J., Alvarez, C. E., Gómez Cano, L., Dewberry, R., Grotewold, E., Casati, P., & Falcone Ferreyra, M. L. (2025). Functional characterization of a maize UDP-glucosyltransferase involved in the biosynthesis of flavonoid 7-O-glucosides and di-O-glucosides. Plant physiology and biochemistry : PPB, 221, 109583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphy.2025.109583

Rhee, S. Y., Anstett, D. N., Cahoon, E. B., Covarrubias-Robles, A. A., Danquah, E., Dudareva, N., Ezura, H., Gilbert, K. J., Gutiérrez, R. A., Heck, M., Lowry, D. B., Mittler, R., Muday, G., Mukankusi, C., Nelson, A. D. L., Restrepo, S., Rouached, H., Seki, M., Walker, B., Way, D., … Weber, A. P. M. (2025). Resilient plants, sustainable future. Trends in plant science, 30(4), 382–388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2024.11.001

Singh, S. K., Kauffman, N., Lynch, I. M., Kunt, Z. M., Zinn, K. R., Agnew, D., & Fan, J. (2025). 212Bi-Macroaggregated Albumin Inhibited Mouse Melanoma Growth by Regulating Cell Cycle Checkpoint Markers Without Promoting Living Cell Repopulation. Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine, jnumed.124.269190. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.2967/jnumed.124.269190

Zia, M., Jones, B., Feng, H., & Wei, G. W. (2025). Persistent Directed Flag Laplacian (PDFL)-Based Machine Learning for Protein-Ligand Binding Affinity Prediction. Journal of chemical theory and computation, 10.1021/acs.jctc.5c00074. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.5c00074

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 58, No.16