BMB Weekly #5: January 30, 2026

 

"This shrub thrives in Death Valley's scorching temperatures. Where do its heat-tolerant superpowers come from?"

Featuring Sue Rhee.
Read the Smithsonian Magazine article here.

 

 

 

Gino Cingolani from the University of Alabama at Birmingham will be presenting the lecture titled "Signaling into the cell nucleus".

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

The Spring BMB Seminar Series will run through April 23, 2026. The complete schedule is available on the BMB Spring 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.

 

 

In this session you will learn about MSU approved tech and AI tools available to you with your teaching, managing tasks, and secure use. You can ask questions as they apply to any technology and learn about opportunities to advance your technology knowledge. Learn more and register here.

MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine Annual Dr. William G. Anderson Lecture Series gives the community opportunities to interact with multicultural leaders from education, business, industry, entertainment and government. For 26 years, this series has featured living icons of the American Civil Rights Movement and community change makers. All activities are offered at no cost, thanks to the support of our generous sponsors, and can be attended in person or virtually.

Dr. Jelani Cobb is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of "The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic." He has also edited or co-edited several volumes of a collection of The New Yorker's writings on race and "The Essential Kerner Commission Report." He has also produced or co-produced several documentaries. Learn more and register here.

The Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) is a gateway to graduate education at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities. SROP helps prepare undergraduates for graduate study through intensive research experiences with faculty mentors and enrichment activities. At this open house event, prospective interns can learn about the upcoming summer program and gain valuable insight into application best practices. Learn more and register here.

Join us on the first Friday of each month for three hours of dedicated time to advance your scholarship. Past participants have written journal articles, grant proposals, book chapters, theses or dissertations, curricula, pieces for public audiences, and community engagement portfolios. Participants should plan to write for the full three hours. We start the write-in by sharing writing goals for the day and wrap up with accomplishments and next steps. Learn more and register here.

COGS will have a limited number of spots for timed-entry to Lansing's Hawk Island Snow Tubing hill on Friday, February 6th!  If you're feeling adventurous, come out and try it with us! Learn more here.

The North American Plant Phenotyping Network (NAPPN) annual conference is coming to Michigan State University next month, bringing together a uniquely interdisciplinary community spanning basic and applied plant sciences and plant breeding, computer science, engineering, and data science. This is an excellent opportunity to meet new people from a wide range of disciplines, forge new collaborations, and hear the latest updates in this rapidly evolving field.

What’s coming up:

• NAPPN Conference - Feb 10-12
  Three days of talks, posters, and discussion centered on predictive plant phenomics, modeling, and data-driven approaches to plant biology and agriculture.
  NAPPN registration virtual registration closes Friday, February 6, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. CST.

Learn more here.

The Data Management and Infrastructure and Single-Cell Sequencing committees of the Plant Cell Atlas are organizing a workshop series that aims to equip participants with essential skills and knowledge to achieve the critical goal of ensuring data reproducibility in single-cell research, especially as the technology that enables this research strategy becomes more widely adopted, and the utility of the data generated grows in scale.

This three-part workshop will take place over three days and cover:

• Day 1 (February 9, 2026 - 12:00 p.m.): Version control (git) for single-cell code repositories and recording sample metadata
• Day 2 (February 10, 2026 - 12:00 p.m.): Reproducibly running single-cell preprocessing pipelines using Docker
• Day 3 (February 11, 2026 - 12:00 p.m.): Using reproducible workflows in R and/or Python for analyzing and visualizing single-cell data

Learn more and register here.

 

This fellowship will be awarded to students at graduate levels. Applicants will have graduated from a US public high school and demonstrated academic excellence in their undergraduate studies.

Applicants may be pursuing a degree in the following disciplines:

• Education: preference to be given to those who currently teach S.T.E.M subjects (i.e. classroom teachers returning for a Masters or PhD)
• Healthcare: this includes students in healthcare related fields, i.e., medical, nursing, pharmacy, veterinary medicine and public health.
• Engineering: students who are pursuing an advanced degree in bioengineering.

The award will be disbursed for fall semester, and the recipient must be enrolled in that semester. Learn more and apply here.

The KCP-FFF program aims to increase the pool of academically or economically disadvantaged candidates pursuing faculty teaching careers in postsecondary education. The program is implemented in partnership with the State of Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO).

If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to Terah Chambers, Ph.D., Associate Dean and MSU’s KCP-FFF Program Director or Deanne Hubbell, MSU’s KCP-FFF Program Assistant. Learn more and apply here.

The Office of Research and Innovation is seeking applications for the Neogen Land Grant Prize. Funded by a gift from former Provost and Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, Dr. John E. Cantlon and his wife, Carolyne Irene Cantlon, this endowed award program seeks to advance the work of an MSU graduate student whose research has the potential to contribute to economic and scientific improvements in society, with a promise of practical applications that benefit U.S. economic interests.

Applicants must be graduate students in good standing who have successfully completed their preliminary exam, have a track record of research accomplishment, and a project that is ripe for translation to impact through a commercialization/dissemination pathway. The preliminary research leading to the proposed work should be ongoing or have been completed in the last two years and must be the work of the applicant. The application must be written by and support the proposed work of the applicant graduate student. The student's research mentor must write a letter of support, describing their significant commitment to foster and nurture the proposed line of translational research. Learn more and apply here.

The Graduate School Mentoring Awards help to recognize graduate programs, faculty mentors and doctoral students whose practice exemplifies the Foundational Values for Graduate Student and Faculty Mentoring Relationships and who make exceptional efforts to sustain the rights and fulfill the responsibilities outlined in the MSU Guidelines for Graduate Student Mentoring and Advising.

There are 3 separate award categories:

• Outstanding Graduate Program Community Award
• Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award
• Outstanding Doctoral Student Mentor Award

Learn more and make a nomination here.

 

This virtual workshop series presented by the COGS Graduate Welfare Committee. Each session connects graduate & professional students with vital campus resources through informal, expert discussions, and provides impactful insights, interactive Q&A opportunities, and practical guidance for student success and well-being. Learn more here.

More than 32,000 Spartans used the MSU Food Bank and Basic Needs Program in 2025, and demand continues to grow. Support fellow Spartans as a member of the program’s volunteer team. Volunteers help distribute food and basic needs supplies, assist with inventory and restocking, support online ordering, and more.

The program will host two volunteer trainings in the coming months:

• In person: Friday, February 6, 10-11:30 a.m. at the MSU Union Lake Ontario Room
• Virtual: Tuesday, March 24, 3-4:30 p.m.

Learn more here.

The MSU Libraries Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) is a unit that supports the transformative use of digital technologies in teaching and research. We regularly provide workshops and training opportunities for the campus community. We are happy to share our Spring Semester 2026 lineup, which will offer hands-on opportunities to develop skills in data visualization, data management, R, Python, mapping tools like QGIS and ArcGIS, OpenRefine, 360 cameras, and virtual reality. 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.

 

Looking for Your Next Step? Check Out the Postdoc Opportunities Board

This free online resource connects you with postdoc positions at 18 world-leading institutions across 11 states. Explore openings and access advice to help you find the right postdoc position to thrive and succeed. Start your search today and take the next step in your career! 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.

 

 

Dobson, G., & Balbach, M. (2026). Stable isotope labelling mass spectrometry analysis of isolated mouse sperm. Biology of reproduction, ioag022. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolre/ioag022

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., Peraro, M. D., & Schwede, T. (2026). ModelCIF update: Supporting Emerging Classes of Computational Macromolecular Models. Journal of molecular biology, 169658. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2026.169658

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