BMB Weekly #28: July 18, 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.

 

 

 

 

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.

Join us for our next afternoon tea/chat hour downstairs in the lounge area of Chittenden Hall. Stop by for some special treats and stay for the conversation and fun! Bonus treat: Our friend Amey will be making a super special home made masala chai for us! Don’t miss it! Learn more here.

Graduate students who may need accommodations often face a series of challenges throughout the process, from qualifying exams to research responsibilities that often don’t align with conventional support for undergraduate students. The demands of graduate programs can make the process feel overwhelming and isolating. This workshop brings together a student access specialist and a workplace accommodations specialist to demystify the accommodations process for graduate students, whether you are on a research or teaching assignment. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of how to seek accommodations (timeline, communications, and strategies, etc.) to suit their specific needs. Learn more and register here.

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.

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. Learn more and register here.

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. Students are highly encouraged to read and follow the Thesis and Dissertation information available on the Graduate School’s website. 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.

 

NatSci Excellence-in-Teaching Citation and Undergraduate Learning Assistant packets are due September 1, 2024 to natsci.dean@msu.edu. Excellence-in-Teaching citation awards lead to nominations for corresponding MSU university-wide awards. The descriptions of each award and nomination information can be found here. Please feel free to contact Teri Compeau or Angela Wilson with any questions.

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.

 

The Council of Graduate Students (COGS) is seeking graduate student volunteers to help with our Fall Welcome Celebration. This event will take place on Saturday, August 23, 2025 from 12:00 to 3:00 pm in Benefactors Plaza, behind Chittenden Hall.

We are so excited to be back again his year to offer a chance for new and returning graduate & professional students and their families to engage, in-person, for a fun day celebrating new beginnings! We'll have great food, fun music and dancing featuring MSU’s own Impact Radio, plus, an array of activities/booths hosted by our amazing campus partners. Other fun activities include yard games, demos by the Round net Club and MSU Swing Dance Society, caricature art, face painting, prize giveaways, and more!

We hope some of you might like to lend a hand and get to know some more of your fellow graduate & professional students in the process! We’re looking for student volunteers to help with check-in/registration, food, games & activity station monitoring, etc., just to help make the day go more smoothly for our guests. Volunteers will be given plenty of time to enjoy the event too. All volunteers will receive a thank you gift from COGS as well. Learn more and sign up 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!

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 is a temporary or an on-call position. Provides professional support. Responsibilities may include general business, science, medical, agricultural or other professional support functions.

Unit Position Summary:

• Investigate plant gene expression regulation 

• Order supplies, assist in general lab organization, prepare media and solutions, perform experiments following lab protocols, document the results

• Develop research maturity and independence while actively collaborating and communicating with other members of the lab

• Participate in lab meetings and other lab activities

Learn more about this MSU Careers posting 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

The lipid bilayers strengthens the cooperative network of membrane proteins, Muhammed Nazaar, S., Yao, J., Necelis, M.R., Park, Y.C., Shen, Z., Bridges, M.D., Guo, R., Swope, N., Rhee, M.S., Kim, M., Kim, K.H., Hubbell, W.L., Fleming, K.G., Columbus, L., Kang, S.-g., and Hong, H., Sci Adv 2025, 11, eadv9568.

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

 

To provide feedback or submit content, please email bmb.web@msu.edu. Don't forget to follow us on social media!

College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 58, No.28