News
Feb. 2, 2021
BIPS: Bringing Plant Science and Engineering Together
Nick Dietz and Marianne Slaten observing a plant in the lab. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Technology advancements have always driven scientific discoveries in order to perform in depth research, but that has never been more true today. “A couple of decades ago it was perfectly fine to be an engineer and a biologist and live in your own world,” David Mendoza said. “But as science has advanced, we depend more on mathematics and computer sciences now.” Mendoza, principal investigator at Bond Life Sciences Center and associate professor of plant…
Jan. 29, 2021
#IAmScience Michael Pisias
By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Michael Pisias came to realize that he wanted to study polyploidy while sitting in an undergraduate genetics lecture class at California State University-Sacramento (CSUS) a few years ago. This unique phenomenon is when the cells of an organism have more than two paired sets of chromosomes, which intrigued Pisias. “I knew I liked to figure out how living things work, especially at the smallest, genetic level,” Pisias said. “I find it fascinating that there are some creatures that are able to survive and thrive with doubled genetic information, which would be lethal…
Jan. 26, 2021
Bond LSC Researchers Named Most Highly Cited for 2020
Bond Life Sciences Center principal investigators Bing Yang (left) and Ron Mittler (right) are pictured above. | photos by Erica Overfelt, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Building onto previous knowledge is a pillar of the scientific process, and citations in research do just that. This makes recognition of Bond Life Sciences Center principal investigators Ron Mittler and Bing Yang, as well as Mizzou biochemistry professor Shuqun Zhang in the Highly Cited Researchers list for 2020, an important acknowledgment. “I’m glad to have this, and this is the second year…
Jan. 22, 2021
Bond LSC Alumnus Celebrates Black Botanists Through Social Media Initiative
Morgan Halane, Bond Life Sciences Center alumnus, visits his former middle school to get students interested in botany. | photo contributed by Morgan Halane, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC It seems most people grow out of bombarding their parents with millions of questions. However, plant biologist Morgan Halane never could shake the habit. Such boundless curiosity could not be contained to just one man. Halane has reached out to other Black students and botanists through cofounding the social media initiative #BlackBotanistsWeek. However, his path didn’t begin until he was an undergraduate at the…
Jan. 15, 2021
#IAmScience Leland Cseke
By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC In a cluttered basement in Dearborn, Michigan, one could find Leland Cseke conducting amateur plant tissue culture experiments on his family’s pool table as a child. These attempted experiments consisted of whatever he could find around the house, such as gelatin mix, items from his mother’s bathroom, and motors from his step-father’s work. Now Cseke is the research lab manager in the Gassmann lab at Bond Life Sciences Center and has an actual lab to work in, with all the supplies he needs. “I look back in amusement that I’m still kind…
Jan. 4, 2021
The Group Approach
Cell sheet development promises better treatment for destroyed tissue After 30 minutes on ice, a cell sheet begins to materialize in the fluid. | photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Imagine a sticker a few centimeters wide and as thin as a strand of human hair except made of cells. For medicine, this sticker — called a cell sheet — can regenerate tissue damaged by chemotherapy radiation wherever it’s placed. Kihoon Nam uses cell sheet technology to help head and neck cancer patients who have lost the ability to produce…
Dec. 22, 2020
Finding how a Virus Navigates the Nucleus of a Cell
Kinjal Majumder and David Pintel | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Four years of hard work certainly paid off for Kinjal Majumder. Majumder, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Pintel lab at Bond Life Sciences Center, spent the past four years looking at how the parvovirus, Minute Virus of Mice (MVM), is getting to the sites in the nucleus that it needs to replicate. Parvovirus is used as a model to study virus behavior because it is a simple, single stranded DNA virus. MVM infects mouse cells and transformed…
Dec. 18, 2020
#IAmScience Caley Smith
By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC With her cheerful and friendly demeanor, graduate student Caley Smith can transform any rigid lab into a place of warmth and scientific excitement. In 2017, Smith was searching for a lab on campus where she could explore the world of genetics. “It was probably not until high school biology class where I got my first real lecture on genetics and genetic diseases,” Smith said. “It was more about understanding. You have this gene, and this mutation happens, and this disease happens. That I always found super fascinating.” By the…
Dec. 14, 2020
Visiting professor wins women in science award
Imbalance in research is steep, but visibility and confidence key factors for women Victoria Calzada is visiting the Donald Burke-Agüero lab from Uruguay to study aptamers. | photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Victoria Calzada was in the corner of the Donald Burke-Agüero lab, focused on her computer when she missed an important call. Eventually, she stood up from her bench and listened to the voicemail. She had won the 2020 L’Oréal-United Nations Educational Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Women in Science award for her country, Uruguay. “It was very…
Dec. 11, 2020
#IAmScience Zhentian Lei
By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Columbia has been very different than Ardmore, Oklahoma, for Zhentian Lei. But the move from the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, a nonprofit agricultural research center, to Bond Life Sciences Center has been a good one for the researcher. “I like it here much better,” Lei said. “The town that we used to live in Oklahoma is very small and at least 100 miles from other universities. So, it wasn’t convenient to collaborate or visit other labs. It’s not like here where you can just walk across the campus to another building and…
Dec. 4, 2020
#IAmScience Toshi Ezashi
By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Despite his quiet demeanor, Toshi Ezashi leaves an impression on those who meet him in the halls of Bond LSC through his quiet intensity and constant courtesy. The research professor was here before the “Joy of Discovery” sculpture in the atrium was built or the living plant wall was hung, calmly making progress with stem cells as part of the Mike Roberts lab team. “I’m mainly doing research on trophoblast that compose the main component of the placenta tissue,” said Ezashi, who first came to Mizzou in 1995. “Using stem…
Dec. 3, 2020
Connecting the World Through the Cloud
Maria Lusardi-Claire, an undergraduate student in the Mendoza lab, uses the cloud, a program apart of CyVerse. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Clouds come in many shapes and sizes. Some are big and fluffy, others dark and ominous. Or, as in David Mendoza’s case, the cloud is a hub of experiment information. Mendoza, an associate professor of plant sciences and scientist in Bond Life Sciences Center, recently joined the CyVerse, a cyberinfrastructure system used by Mendoza’s lab that acts as and allows his team and collaborators to see data in…