BMB Weekly #33: September 18, 2026

 

Last, Vermaas honored at national Plant Biology gathering

At this year's meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists, Rob Last received the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award for his decades-long exploration of specialized plant metabolism, as well as his enduring impact as a mentor (having founded MSU's Plant Genomics Summer REU Program as well as an NIH-funded T32 Plant Biotechnology for Health and Sustainability program).

Josh Vermaas meanwhile was honored with the Robert Rabson Award, which recognizes stellar early career scientists, and in particular his pioneering work in molecular modeling that's reshaping our understanding of photosynthetic organisms with an eye on next-generation bioenergy.

Read the full article here.

 

 

 

Lisa Mydy from Purdue University will be presenting the lecture titled “How do plants BURP? Mechanistic insights in unique plant cyclic peptide biosynthesis”.

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

The Fall BMB Seminar Series will run through December 10, 2026. 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.

 

The navigating Ph.D. workshops are interactive writing workshops, given at least once a semester, are designed to help you develop an individualized plan for graduate writing, especially comprehensive exams, dissertation proposals, and dissertations. Session 1 is designed for students in the early years of their Ph.D. study. Session 2 is designed for students in the latter years of their Ph.D. study. Learn more and register here.

Try out paddle sports free with COGS at the MSU Sailing Center. COGS is hosting two sessions of paddle sports & sailing demos, no experience needed! The Sailing Center staff will be there to help you. No pre-registration is needed, but event is strictly first-come, first-served, accommodating up to 30 paddlers (per available equipment) at each session. Please arrive at least 15 minutes ahead of desired session to check in, sign the required liability waiver, and be fitted with safety gear. For Graduate & Professional Students and their accompanied guests. Dress for the weather and to get wet. Learn more here.

Please join us for a coworking session in Chittenden Hall! Coworking means we each get to focus on our own work while getting the benefit and accountability of working alongside others. We will start with a brief time of 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. We will meet in Chittenden Hall Room 110, the large conference room on the first floor. Learn more here.

The next PRI Networking Hour seminar is on September 24 at 1:00 p.m. and will feature Dr. Dush Fernando! Please note this event will be in-person only. The title of Dr. Fernando's talk is Building Resilience and Well-Being in Research Careers. Attendees will explore practical strategies for building personal and professional resilience in the inherent uncertainties of research work, including tools to manage stress, set boundaries, and navigate challenges. Learn more and register here.

In this guided-dialogue workshop, we’ll introduce the notion of vocational virtues and consider what, if anything, is the central, guiding purpose of scientific practice and what the means for understanding potential conflicts of interest. Completion of this workshop fulfills half of MSU's annual RECR requirement for graduate students. Learn more and register here.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to join the 3rd Annual Disability Summit on Friday, October 2, 2026. This year's theme, The Future of Disability in Higher Education, will explore accessibility, inclusive teaching and learning, technology, employment, and campus life. Mark your calendar and stay tuned for the keynote announcement, registration information, and a full event agenda. Learn more here.

 

MSU IT’s Educational Technology Department is excited to announce that applications are now open for the AT&T Excellence in Teaching with Technology Awards. These annual awards highlight successful uses of instructional technology to support student success in any courses at MSU and celebrate the educators responsible for implementing them. For application details and information about past winners, visit the AT&T Awards website.

This fellowship is intended to support doctoral students in the natural sciences and mathematics in recognition of academic achievements, research goals, contributions to a diverse educational community, and a record of overcoming obstacles whose progress in their chosen scientific discipline enhances educational diversity at MSU as may be evidenced by personal history and experience, research goals, and/or promotion of understanding among persons of different backgrounds and ideas, or by having demonstrated significant academic achievement in spite of barriers such as economic, social, and/or educational disadvantage. Learn more and apply here.

The MSU Plant Resilience Institute (PRI) is excited to announce the fall 2026 round of the PRI Seed Grant Program to support innovative, trainee-led research in the area of plant resilience! PRI invites proposals from any MSU graduate student or postdoctoral researcher. We encourage proposals to be synergistic across MSU laboratories and focus on projects that are both high-risk and high-reward. Proposals are required to focus on plant resilience, broadly defined, and should be distinct from current research programs. The proposed research must not already be funded by an existing grant, and funds cannot be used for graduate student or postdoctoral scholar salary/stipend support. More information, including proposal preparation and submission instructions, details on the selection process, and the list of previous awardees can be found here.

 

The Digital Scholarship Lab is delighted to share its fall lineup of events on immersive tech, data visualization, research data management, and digital scholarship tools. Through our partners, we’ll also be offering LaTeX, 3D printing, mapping, and foundational coding workshops in Python. Learn more here.

ComSciCon is a national organization that puts on a series of workshops focused on the communication of complex and technical concepts (science communication), organized by graduate students, for graduate students. We are currently recruiting interested graduate students for our organizing committee. We are aiming to put on a workshop at Michigan State University for graduate students throughout Michigan in March/April of 2027. Learn more here.

You can’t predict every challenge that life will bring, but you can build the skills to face them. Our Spartan Resilience courses empower MSU students and employees to strengthen their responses to life’s challenges. Courses are virtual and free. Learn more and register 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 Food Bank is a resource available to Spartans 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 Balbach lab seeks a professional aide to support ongoing lab research. Responsibilities will include overseeing the daily operations of the laboratory, maintaining the mouse colony, performing metabolomics experiments, and assisting/executing other routine experiments in the lab. The ideal candidate should be eager to learn, highly motivated, reliable, possess good communication skills, and be able to work independently and as part of a team. Learn more and apply here.

The Lundquist Laboratory Group is seeking a Researcher & Laboratory Manager to play a pivotal role in advancing our research on plastoglobule lipid droplets and their involvement in photosynthetic and phospho-regulation. In this dual-capacity role, you will dedicate approximately 20% of your time to operational leadership, ensuring seamless daily lab function through budget management, chemical/supply inventory control, safety protocol adherence, and digital outreach. The other 80% of your time will be dedicated to active scientific investigation, where you will integrate wet-lab techniques (e.g., immunoblotting, protein phosphorylation assays, cellular ultrastructure investigation, lipidomics, proteomics, etc.) with computational approaches (e.g., protein-protein interaction and structural modeling) to drive impactful discoveries. Learn more and apply here.

The Feldbrügge Lab at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf is recruiting two PhD researchers within the international doctoral network nEXt-RNA. Our lab pioneered the study of vesicle-coupled mRNA transport in infectious hyphae of the corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis. This work revealed fundamental principles of intracellular RNA transport that are conserved from fungi to human neurons (Vázquez-Carrada et al., 2026). We are now investigating how fungal mRNAs enter extracellular vesicles and whether they mediate communication with host cells during infection (Sankaranarayanan et al., 2023). The projects combine RNA biology, fungal cell biology, advanced live-cell imaging, membrane trafficking and extracellular-vesicle research. Both doctoral researchers will join the interdisciplinary and international training environment of nEXt-RNA. Learn more apply here.

 

 

Recent Publications

Brittain, K. S., Delfino, L. M., Thiemann, O. H., Cortines, J. R., & Parent, K. N. (2026). The organization and dynamics of viral factories. Journal of virology, e0089226. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1128/jvi.00892-26Brittain, K. S., Delfino, L. M., Thiemann, O. H., Cortines, J. R., & Parent, K. N. (2026). The organization and dynamics of viral factories. Journal of virology, e0089226. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1128/jvi.00892-26

Heyza, J. R., Mikhova, M., Phillips, C., Mehmood, S., Perez, G. I., Broadbent, D. G., & Schmidt, J. C. (2026). Dynamic chromatin tethering of MDC1 regulates genome stability. Nucleic acids research, 54(17), gkag866. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkag866

Ho, P. M., Nazeer, R. R., Askenasy, I., Quinn, R. A., & Welch, M. (2026). Microbial content versus microbial interaction: the impact of medications on CF airway microbial ecosystems. Journal of cystic fibrosis : official journal of the European Cystic Fibrosis Society, S1569-1993(26)03732-X. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcf.2026.08.011

Kim, A. B., Linning-Duffy, K., Balbach, M., Lucera, N., Delgado, M., Kummur, N., Toh, H., Caldas, L., & Yan, L. (2026). Daylight, Daily Rhythms, and Downstream Physiology: A Translational Study in Diurnal Nile Grass Rats (Arvicanthis niloticus). Journal of biological rhythms, 7487304261480753. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/07487304261480753

Liu, X., Huang, X., & Wei, G. W. (2026). Topological learning prediction of virus-like particle stoichiometry and stability. Biophysical journal, 125(18), 5027–5036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2025.10.013

Nikolovski, M., Wang, T., Sue, A., MacRenaris, K., Zhao, H., O'Halloran, T. V., & Hu, J. (2026). Functional screening of ZIP8 naturally occurring variants identifies pathogenic mutations and trafficking defects. The Journal of biological chemistry, 113544. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbc.2026.113544

Nunes Alves, A., Amaro, R. E., Choong, Y. S., Cournia, Z., He, X., Isayev, O., Kirchmair, J., Kitchin, J., Naidoo, K. J., Nguyen, D., Palermo, G., Soares, T. A., Wei, G. W., Zhu, T., & Merz, K. M., Jr (2026). Application Notes in JCIM: A Home for Data, Software, and Web-Based Services in Cheminformatics and Molecular Modeling. Journal of chemical information and modeling, 66(17), 10447–10449. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.6c02729

Tauriello, G., Lill, Y., Sgrignani, J., Zoete, V., Singer, B., Vallat, B., Webb, B. M., Garello, T., Bienert, S., Feig, M., Papaleo, E., Burley, S. K., Sali, A., Lill, M. A., Cavalli, A., Dal Peraro, M., & Schwede, T. (2026). ModelCIF Update: Supporting Emerging Classes of Computational Macromolecular Models. Journal of molecular biology, 438(18), 169658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2026.169658

Tutihashi, F. S., Hirota, M., Yamamura, M., Kobayashi, K., Hattori, T., Tobimatsu, Y., Hamberger, B. R., & Umezawa, T. (2026). Pinoresinol/lariciresinol reductases and secoisolariciresinol dehydrogenases involved in the specific production of (+)-enantiomer of matairesinol in Daphne genkwa. Plant & cell physiology, 67(8), 1328–1345. https://doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcag054

 

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