BMB Weekly #49: December 12, 2025

 

NatSci Recognizes Deanna Ely with Support Staff Award

Read the full article here.

 

BMB Congratulates 2025 Undergraduate Awardees

BMB Outstanding Undergraduate:
Nu Thuy Anh Le
Mentor: Dr. Kelly Kim

Professor Richard L. Anderson Endowed Undergraduate Research Prize:
Olivia White
Mentor: Eric Hegg

Dr. James K. Billman, Jr. Undergraduate Research Award:
Gloria Chou
Mentor: James Geiger

Kate Darrow
Mentor: Tommy Vo

Sooahn Jang
Mentor: Thomas O Halloran

Michael Burdick BMB Scholarship:
Kallun Cope

Carmela Ifraimov

Bianca Miller

Pamela J. Fraker Undergraduate Scholarship:
Barman Nasirpour

Moore-Billman Scholarship in BMB:
Benjamin Nketsiah
Mentor: Kyle Miller

BMB Undergraduate Research Fellowship:
Paige Franklin
Mentor: Michelle Hulin

Chloe Pluger
Mentor: Carolina de Aguiar Ferreira

Godfred Osei-Agye
Mentor: Ben Orlando

Rahgan Swaffer
Mentor: Jitao Zhang

Visit the awards page here.

 

 

 

 

 

If you're staying on campus during the break and need to work on your projects, writing, or preparations for the new semester, but find it difficult to stay productive at home, you are very welcome to join other students and scholars in this group and meet us at the Graduate School.

December sessions will be held from December 15 - 24 (except for weekends), from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

• Light snacks and warm drinks will be provided; please remember to bring your refillable water bottle and coffee mug.
• In between the meetings, there will be 15 minutes of social time as well to provide room for chatting and refreshment.
• Registration is appreciated.

Learn more and register here.

Each semester has a final deadline where documents have been accepted and delivered for publishing, all required paperwork has been turned in, all milestones have been completed, and all degree audits have been completed. Your document must be accepted and delivered to the publisher, ProQuest, by 5:00PM ET on the final deadline date. Students are highly encouraged to read and follow the Thesis and Dissertation information available on the Graduate School’s website using this link.

Join us for Relaxing Under the Stars, a peaceful in-person experience held monthly on Mondays from October 2025 to May 2026 at Abrams Planetarium on MSU's East Lansing campus. Each 50-minute session features a guided constellation tour using the Digistar projection system, followed by calming music under a starry sky—perfect for stress relief and mindful relaxation. Pre-register online or register in person upon arrival. Learn more here.

Thesis and Dissertation Writing Camp is an opportunity for MSU grad students to have dedicated time to work on writing their theses or dissertations before the hectic semester starts! Students can use this time to set structured goals and find social accountability with facilitators from the Writing Center and peers who are also writing theses and dissertations. For in-person attendees, food and coffee will be available, and crafts will abound to encourage brain breaks. Learn more and register here.

 

Nominations are being accepted for the 2026 MAGS Excellence in Teaching Award competition. This Teaching Award is very competitive, so we are looking for exceptional Ph.D. and Master’s students with great demonstration of teaching competence and knowledge of pedagogy, innovative teaching/instructional design, effective mentoring skills, and commitment to teaching professional development. Learn more about criteria and the nomination process using this link.

The Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities (RCPD) is excited to announce that their scholarship application is now open through January 30, 2026. Ten scholarships honor MSU students with disabilities who demonstrate leadership, academic excellence, and resilience. Recipients will be honored at the RCPD Awards Reception on April 17. We encourage you to share this opportunity with eligible students you advise. Learn more and apply here.

In addition, all Spartans are invited to nominate students, faculty and staff, and alumni for three awards that recognize meaningful efforts to advance belonging and inclusion. Recipients will also be honored at the RCPD Awards Reception. Learn more and make a nomination here.

 

In partnership with the QPR Institute, University Health and Wellbeing now offers a free, virtual, one-hour recommend training for students, faculty, and staff. QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) training teaches how to recognize warning signs and refer someone to help during a mental  health crisis. Much like CPR, QPR empowers individuals to respond effectively in moments of need. It is part of broader efforts to strengthen campus-wide capacity for primary prevention and to foster confidence in Spartans in having open, compassionate conversations about mental health. Learn more here.

MSU IT Educational Technology is excited to offer a variety of end of semester resources this December. Participate in Certification Pathways and watch 5-minute videos on end of the semester and accessibility tips. 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.

 

The Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) invites applicants for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant level in horticulture. We seek researchers who use genomic, biotechnological, and/or physiological approaches to address important topics in horticulture. The anticipated start date for this position is July 1, 2026. We are particularly interested in candidates whose research connects fundamental discovery with practical advances in horticulture.

Research that improves productivity, stress tolerance, post-harvest physiology, reproductive physiology, and environmental and economic sustainability is especially encouraged. Complementary areas of interest include: development of new cultivars, applications of genomics to trait discovery and approaches to link genotype with phenotype, gene editing or synthetic biology to accelerate cultivar development and neodomestication, urban landscape revitalization, regenerative agriculture, controlled environment agriculture, and precision/digital horticulture, among others. Learn more and apply 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.

 

 

Keng, M., & Merz, K. M., Jr (2025). PEAS: An Application for Autonomous Precision Conformation Sampling. Journal of chemical information and modeling, 65(22), 12161–12167. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.5c02104

Shammami, M. A., Virola-Iarussi, A., McCrary, I., & Ralston, A. (2025). Primitive means first, not worst: Critical roles for primitive endoderm in embryos and embryo models. Developmental biology, 528, 255–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2025.09.008

Luo, C., Zheng, D., Elnegiry, A., Bhatara, S., Mias, G. I., Tsoi, M. F., Yu, J., & Gu, B. (2025). SOX2 is a dispensable modulator of NUT carcinoma oncogenesis in mice. Life science alliance, 9(2), e202503447. https://doi.org/10.26508/lsa.202503447

Jiang, J., Li, D., Wang, G., & Wei, G. W. (2025). Recent advances in machine learning predictions of protein-ligand binding affinities. Current opinion in structural biology, 96, 103193. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbi.2025.103193

Subramanian, S., Dover, J. A., & Parent, K. N. (2025). The Shigella siphophage Sf11 tail structure and host attachment mechanism. Journal of virology, e0136725. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1128/jvi.01367-25

Yang, F., Dee, E. C., Singh, A., Wu, Y., Suggitt, J. O., Treechairusame, T., Silverio Polanco, E., Honawar, A., Zhang, Z., Mah, D., Sine, K., Shim, A., Lin, H., Kang, J. J., Tsai, C. J., McBride, S. M., Riaz, N., Gelblum, D. Y., Zakeri, K., Chen, L., … Lee, N. Y. (2025). Osteoradionecrosis After Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy or Proton Therapy in Oropharyngeal Carcinoma. JAMA otolaryngology-- head & neck surgery, e254179. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaoto.2025.4179

Gatreddi, S., Subramanian, S., Sui, D., Wang, T., Urdiain-Arraiza, J., Desguin, B., Hausinger, R. P., Parent, K. N., & Hu, J. (2025). Structures of two LarA-like nickel-pincer nucleotide cofactor-utilizing enzymes with a single catalytic histidine residue. Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society, 34(12), e70362. https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.70362

Janson, G., Jussupow, A., & Feig, M. (2025). Deep generative modeling of temperature-dependent structural ensembles of proteins. Communications chemistry, 8(1), 354. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-025-01737-2

Herrera-Tequia, A., Shivaiah, K. K., & Lundquist, P. K. (2025). Arabidopsis thalianaFibrillin 3a binds saturated fatty acids of chloroplast membranes. Plant signaling & behavior, 20(1), 2594894. https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2025.2594894

Xu, X., Wang, C., Wei, G. W., & Chen, J. (2025). PLNet: Persistent Laplacian neural network for protein-protein binding free energy prediction. Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society, 34(12), e70377. https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.70377

Mandal, S., Soriano, A., Erpelding, C., Ruffner, J., Smith, E., Orlando, B. J., & Kroos, L. (2025). Inhibitory proteins of Bacillus subtilis interact within the membrane to block intramembrane protease activity. Journal of bacteriology, 207(11), e0018625. https://doi.org/10.1128/jb.00186-25

O'Malley, A., Offermann, L. R., Khatri, K., Linn, C., Pote, S., McBride, J. K., Perdue, M. L., Hurlburt, B. K., Maleki, S. J., Mias, G. I., & Chruszcz, M. (2025). Structural analysis of 8-anilino-1-naphthalene sulfonate (ANS) binding to the PR-10 allergen Ara h 8. Biochemical and biophysical research communications, 793, 153013. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2025.153013

Nirmal, M. B., Pearce, M. E., Liu, C. T., Finkel, J. M., Darrow, K. S., & Vo, T. V. (2025). Deletion of Elongator Protein 1 (Elp1) relieves heterochromatin defects in a Pol II mutant of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Genetics, iyaf258. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyaf258

Dean, A. E., Guzior, D. V., Quinn, R. A., Gaulke, C. A., & Anakk, S. (2025). Serum cholic acid and cecal Faecalibaculum increase in a male-specific manner in a murine hepatocellular carcinoma model. Journal of lipid research, 100954. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlr.2025.100954

Hoh, D., Osei-Bonsu, I., Kanazawa, A., Fisher, N., Cruz, J., Roberts, P. A., Huynh, B. L., & Kramer, D. M. (2025). From quantitative trait loci towards mechanisms: Linkage Integration Hypothesis Testing (LIgHT) sheds light on the mechanisms of genetically modulated stress tolerance. Journal of experimental botany, 76(20), 5964–5981. https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/eraf323

Prado, K., Xue, B., Johnson, J. E., Field, S., Stata, M., Hawkins, C. L., Hsia, R. C., Liu, H., Cheng, S., & Rhee, S. Y. (2025). Photosynthetic acclimation is a key contributor to exponential growth of a desert plant in Death Valley summer. Current biology : CB, 35(22), 5502–5520.e11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.10.004

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