BMB Weekly #37: September 19, 2025

 

BMB Shares Science at Annual Symposium   This year's BMB symposium at the MSU Union was a great success, offering a day filled with talks, posters, and colleague connections. Thank you to all who attended, and those who made the gathering possible with your organizing!

 

 

Prashant Sonawane from the University of Missouri will be presenting "Biosynthesis and Engineering of Plant Natural Products".

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

The Fall BMB Seminar Series will run through December 4, 2025. The complete schedule is available on the BMB Fall 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.

 

Are you exploring career opportunities outside academia? Do you engage with the public about your science? Is the impact of your research for broader use important to you? You might be a science communicator! Join MSU SciComm on September 25th at 4:00PM in the MSU Horticulture Gardens Greenhouse to connect with science communication professionals, fellow graduate students, and community members to learn more about career opportunities and build shared experiences in science communication. Learn more and register here.

COGS invites you to come on out and explore with your graduate and professional student peers as we tour one of MSU’s points of pride! Join us for a fun and informative look at Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB). Event is free. Learn more and register here.

Join us for MPS speaker Marcus Dillon from University of Toronto Mississauga. The seminar will be held at 4:00 p.m.

Marcus’s talk is titled “From weapon to warning: How bacterial phytopathogens can be kept in check by their own effectors”. We would like to invite graduate students and postdocs to join the speaker for a lunch and discussion on Monday, September 22nd. 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 September 19, 2025 at 1 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

The focus of this discussion-based workshop is on reviewing some real-world cases studies illustrating examples of poor mentorship and how this can lead to inappropriate research and scholarship practices and ultimately to research misconduct. Additionally, case studies will explore examples of student mentees failing to fulfill their responsibilities, which leads to ineffective mentor-mentee relationships. Following the training, participants will better understand what constitutes effective mentor-mentee relationships, what student mentee responsibilities are, and learn how to navigate conflicts that might arise with a mentor. Learn more and register here.

We're meeting up at Foster Coffee Company in East Lansing for our next coffee hour!  Head to the counter and grab a morning beverage & treat (courtesy of COGS) & head upstairs for conversation and camaraderie with fellow grad & professional students. Learn more here.

This year’s conference will be a half-day packed full of topics that focus on disability inclusion and belonging, lived experience, and accessible practices. This half-day event will feature keynote speaker, disability advocate, and author Haben Girma, networking opportunities, and more. In addition to this year’s Summit, there will be weekly virtual sessions held on Fridays throughout the month of October to honor MSU Disability Pride Month and keep the conversations going. Learn more and register here.

The Office of Graduate Career Development announces three virtual career fairs this October hosted by the Big Ten consortium of 18+ institutions. Fairs are free to attend and designed specifically for MS, PhD, and postdoctoral scholars like you. Wherever you are in your academic training or postdoctoral work, now is the perfect time to begin shaping your next professional step. Registration is handled via Handshake, MSU's Career platform!

• BIG10 Academia Postdoc Hiring Fair 
  Tuesday, October 21 | 12:00 – 3:00 PM ET
  Registration Deadline: September 29, 2025
  Open to: PhD students and Postdocs only
   
• BIG10 Academia Faculty Hiring Fair
  Wednesday, October 22 | 12:00 – 4:00 PM ET
  Registration Deadline: September 29, 2025
  Open to: PhD students and Postdocs only
   
• BIG10 Graduate Student & Postdoc Industry Recruitment Event (GSPIRE)
  Thursday, October 23 | 12:00 – 4:00 PM ET
  Registration Deadline: October 13, 2025
  Open to: MS, PhD, and Postdoc students from all disciplines

Check out more great resources on the Graduate Career Development website.

 

Nominations for the College of Natural Science Alumni Awards are open for 2026! Submit your nominations for Outstanding Alumni, Recent Alumni, Alumni Service, and more by Friday, September 26. Learn more and make a nomination here.

The MSU Plant Resilience Institute (PRI) is seeking trainee-led proposals for collaborative projects exploring novel ideas in plant resilience research, broadly defined. The proposed research must not already be funded by an existing grant or part of a current research program. We encourage proposals to be synergistic across MSU laboratories and focus on projects that are both high-risk and high-reward.

Any MSU graduate student or postdoctoral researcher is eligible to submit a proposal, and proposals with graduate student lead PIs will be evaluated separately than those with postdoctoral lead PIs. However, at least one Co-PI must be a member of a PRI lab. Faculty members are not permitted to serve as PIs or Co-PIs, and individuals may participate as PI or Co-PI on only one proposal.

For more information, including proposal preparation and submission instructions, visit this link. Learn more and apply here.

Expenditure will be used to provide fellowship support for students enrolled in graduate programs at MSU. All graduate students including Master’s, Professional and Doctoral students will be eligible, with preference given to students pursing an advanced degree offered in the School of Human Resources & Labor Relations or Community Sustainability. Learn more and apply here.

 

Community Volunteers for International Programs (CVIP) is a volunteer organization within OISS that provides outreach, programs and support to MSU international students and scholars. Learn more here.

COGS Funding Opportunities are available, including professional development and conference attendance awards as well as funds for registered GSOs to hold events.
Visit this page to learn about this and other funding resources.

Counseling Services offers a variety of counseling, support, and educational groups each semester. Participants benefit from the mutual support and learning that occurs from interaction with others who have similar concerns. Unless otherwise noted, all groups will require a pre-group meeting. For more information, or to schedule your pre-group consultation, please schedule an appointment and state your interest in group counseling on the form.

Groups include:

• Graduate Student Support Group
• RA Support Group
• International Student Support Space
• & More

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!

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.

 

Michigan State University's Plant Resilience Institute (PRI) is seeking a highly motivated and skilled postdoctoral researcher to lead a project focused on discovering a new class of regulatory metabolites and their nuclear signaling mechanisms that govern plant resilience. The project integrates bioinformatics, molecular genetics, protein structural prediction, and experimental validation to investigate their roles in gene regulation and stress response. The postdoctoral researcher will lean efforts in gene characterization, reverse genetics and ligand screening using phenotyping and molecular genetic approaches. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to conceptual advances in plant stress hormone biology, while building tools and resources of broad utility to the plant science community. The successful candidate will join a highly interdisciplinary team led by Dr. Gregg Howe, with collaborators across PRI. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting here.

The Fitzsimmons lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is seeking a postdoctoral research associate for projects focused on the intersection of RNA biology and metabolism. The lab’s research directions include: 1) investigating molecular-level metabolic factors driving RNA modification changes; 2) understanding the regulation of RNA writers and erasers by metabolism; and 3) the role of tumor heterogeneity in RNA gene regulation. The lab employs multidisciplinary approaches from chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, and bioinformatics to investigate the role of RNA modifications and modification enzymes both in vitro and in vivo. Learn more about this MSU Careers posting here.

 

 

Koper, K., de Oliveira, M. V. V., Huß, S., Hataya, S., Soleymani, F., Hawkins, C., Rhee, S. Y., Takasuka, T. E., Nikoloski, Z., & Maeda, H. A. (2025). Mapping multi-substrate specificity of Arabidopsis aminotransferases. Nature plants, 10.1038/s41477-025-02095-6. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02095-6

Cottrell, S., & Wei, G. W. (2025). Multiscale Cell-Cell Interactive Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis. Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany), e08358. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202508358

Sagresti, L., Benedetti, L., Merz, K. M., Jr, & Brancato, G. (2025). Simulating Metal Complex Formation and Ligand Exchange: Unraveling the Interplay between Entropy, Kinetics, and Mechanisms on the Chelate Effect. Journal of chemical theory and computation, 10.1021/acs.jctc.5c01079. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.5c01079

Ford, K. C., Miller, S. D., Tefft, N. M., & TerAvest, M. A. (2025). Overlap and Differences Between the Inward and Outward Electron Transfer Pathways in Shewanella oneidensis. FEMS microbiology letters, fnaf094. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnaf094

Barkarar, M., Sarkar, D., Hunt, C. G., & Vermaas, J. V. (2025). Quantifying Chemically Modified Acetylation Induced Changes in the Plant Secondary Cell Wall Structure and Dynamics. Biomacromolecules, 26(9), 5645–5656. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.5c00391

 

 

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College of Natural Science | BMB Weekly | Vol. 58, No.37