BMB Weekly #27: July 11, 2025

 

Thomas D. Sharkey retires after 51 years of plant research   After 51 years of research and teaching, University Distinguished Professor Thomas D. Sharkey is earning the title of Emeritus University Distinguished Professor as he heads to retirement. Sharkey’s prolific career in the plant sciences spans continents and scientific topics, touching on the lives of many researchers who continue to work in the field today. Read the full article here.

 

 

 

 

The MSU Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) is hosting The Celebratory Retreat for Black Women in STEM (CR4BWS) in the Brody Hall Private Dining Room. The goal of this event is to empower black female faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates at MSU and beyond to feel more welcomed and excited about contributing to the field of science. To accomplish our goal, The CR4BWS seeks to provide community support for Black Women in STEM to celebrate their contributions in their respective fields and tools to maintain emotional & physical well-being and professional success. The retreat is Open to All, and will include a keynote presentation, research lightning talks, and a wellness activity: critical reflections through yoga, be held in person and online, and have gifts for the presenters and attendees. We hope to see you there! Feel free to spread the word to others who may be interested! Learn more and register here.

In this session we will provide you with information of how to best navigate your first two weeks at MSU. We will share tips based on experiences of current international graduate students to help you best get through your first two weeks and help you plan to make your transition as smooth as possible. We will share resources, a “Survival Guide,”  and give you opportunities to ask questions and make new connections. Learn more and register here.

Michigan State University Plant Resilience Institute Associate Director Dr. David Lowry is leading a five-week virtual workshop series on demystifying the academic job application process. Dr. Lowry has hosted these workshops annually since 2020 with the goal of helping trainees gain a better understanding of how to approach writing each component of an academic job package. Participants will read through successful applications, then break down what works well and does not work well piece by piece. All five workshops will take place via Zoom and are open to anyone at MSU. Learn more and register here.

Are you having a hard time getting things off your to do list? Would you benefit from a dedicated space and being around others to find motivation and productivity? If so, please join us in a structured community space for supporting goal achievement. We will start at 1pm with a brief time of connecting and sharing goals. We will then have two sessions of about 50 minutes where everyone will work on their individual goals with a 10-minute break in between. You can come for one or both sessions or just stop in at any point. Learn more here.

Join us for food, fun, and games outside Chittenden Hall! We hope to see you there! This event is sponsored by Council of Graduate Students, GRaduate Educator Advancement, + Teaching (GREAT) Office, and Graduate School Office of Wellbeing (GROW).

The MSU Plant Science Community is pleased to share the details of our community event for MSU attendees of ASPB’s Plant Biology 2025 conference in Milwaukee this summer! Join your fellow Michigan State University plant scientists attending Plant Biology 2025 at our community mixer! Taking place at the end of the poster session on Sunday, the event is just a short walk away from the conference at The Brewery in downtown Milwaukee. Current, former, and future Spartans are all invited to attend this casual networking event, so please help us spread the word!

What to expect:

• Food and drinks provided
• Network across disciplines and career levels
• Socialize with fellow MSU plant scientists
• Unwind after a long day at the conference
• Free to attend, no registration required

This event is organized by the MSU Plant Resilience Institute and sponsored by the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, Department of Horticulture, Department of Plant Biology, Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, and the Plant Resilience Institute. For questions regarding the community mixer, please contact PRI.admin@msu.edu. We hope to see you in Milwaukee this July! Learn more here.

ComSciCon is a nationally recognized 501(c)(3) organization that empowers the next generation of science communications through workshops organized by STEM graduate students. Each year, we select 40-60 participants to engage in a program featuring professional development seminars, panels with professional science communications, writing workshops with peer and expert feedback, and “pop talks” for sharing science outreach projects and building collaborations. Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, attendance is free for all participants. Learn more and apply here.

 

This summer CIRTL is offering 3 courses and 5 workshops for graduate students and postdocs pursuing teaching careers in higher education. Anyone can register to attend programming, but participants from CIRTL member institutions and alumni will receive priority when registering for programming with limited seats; capped programming typically reaches capacity within a week of registration opening. Learn more and register here.

 

CSD is an organization for undergraduate students with disabilities and their supporters in the MSU community who want to focus on awareness, advocacy, support, and removing barriers to full participation on MSU's campus. Visit CSD's Website.

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.

 

The Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology (IPMB), Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan (https://ipmb.sinica.edu.tw/), invites applications for tenure-track faculty positions at all levels in the research areas of plants and plant-related microbes. Successful candidates should have research records complementary to the current IPMB research capacities or have the potential to launch a new research direction. Preference will be given, but not limited to, applicants with research experience in integrative structural biology or translational plant biology.

The mission of IPMB is to explore the functionality of plants and microbes to benefit science, agriculture, environmental sustainability, and human well-being. As a research institution funded by the central government, IPMB maintains well-equipped core facilities managed by Research Specialists/Assistants to provide state-of-the-art resources and key technical expertise for proteomics, genomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics, cell biology, and imaging. The successful candidates will receive generous startup, annual intramural funds, and external competitive grant opportunities to establish independent/collaborative research programs. Learn more and apply here.

 

 

Chen, D., Wang, R., Wei, G. W., & Pan, F. (2025). Enhancing energy predictions in multi-atom systems with multiscale topological learning. Journal of materials chemistry. A, 13(27), 21555–21563. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5ta02687c

Chen, D., Liu, G., Du, H., Jones, B., Wee, J., Wang, R., Chen, J., Shen, J., & Wei, G. W. (2025). Drug Resistance Predictions Based on a Directed Flag Transformer. Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany), e02756. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202502756

Devkar, V., D'Agostino, L., Kshetry, A. O., Chen, Y., Ghose, K., Lenin, Y. V., Nadaf, A. B., Thirumalaikumar, V. P., Skirycz, A., Sonah, H., Ma, J., Stupar, R. M., Miller, A. J., Herrera-Estrella, L., Deshmukh, R., & Patil, G. B. (2025). Cell-type-specific response to silicon treatment in soybean leaves revealed by single-nucleus RNA sequencing and targeted gene editing. The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology, 123(1), e70309. https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.70309

Gray, J., & Grotewold, E. (2025). Decoding complexity: tackling the challenge of how many transcription factors regulate a plant gene. Transcription, 1–23. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/21541264.2025.2521767

Janson, G., & Feig, M. (2025). Generation of protein dynamics by machine learning. Current opinion in structural biology, 93, 103115. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbi.2025.103115

Keng, M., & Merz, K. M., Jr (2025). Assigning Peptide Structure from Ion-Mobility Mass Spectrometry Collision Cross Section Data. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 10.1021/jasms.5c00078. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/jasms.5c00078

Madsen, C. S., Makela, A. V., Maduka, C. V., Greeson, E. M., Tundo, A., Ural, E., Kulkarni, S. H., Zarea, A. A., Kiupel, M., Sayadi, M., & Contag, C. H. (2025). Engineered Endosymbionts that Modulate Primary Macrophage Function and Attenuate Tumor Growth by Shifting the Tumor Microenvironment. ACS applied bio materials, 10.1021/acsabm.5c00590. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsabm.5c00590

Madsen, C. S., Makela, A. V., Maduka, C. V., Greeson, E. M., Tundo, A., Ural, E., Kulkarni, S. H., Zarea, A. A., Kiupel, M., Sayadi, M., & Contag, C. H. (2025). Engineered Endosymbionts that Modulate Primary Macrophage Function and Attenuate Tumor Growth by Shifting the Tumor Microenvironment. ACS applied bio materials, 10.1021/acsabm.5c00590. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsabm.5c00590

Susanto, F. A., Jones, A. D., Donnelly, S. L., & Lundquist, P. K. (2025). Cyanoglobule lipid droplets are a stress-responsive metabolic compartment of cyanobacteria and the progenitor of plant plastoglobules. The Plant cell, 37(7), koaf127. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koaf127

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 58, No.27