News
Nov. 28, 2019
Jordyn Lucas #IAmScience
By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC Fourteen billion years ago, the universe began expanding. Four billion years ago, the earth formed. Four million years ago, humans began to roam the Earth. Four years ago, Jordyn Lucas began her graduate degree studying the origins of life in the lab of Donald Burke at Bond LSC. “We have this really cool grant from NASA that I’m working on,” she said. “We’re working with RNA to see if it would have been a good progenitor molecule for life, and testing the bounds of what it can do on its…
Nov. 25, 2019
A return to mentor: Gant advises on PREP for Ph.D.’s
Kristal Gant, a former MU PREP Scholar and current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Roger Meissen | Bond LSC Kristal Gant is a long way from the student she was when she donned a lab coat and wielded a pipette in labs at Bond Life Sciences Center nearly four years ago. As she stood in front of a group of MU students hoping to one day follow their own routes to graduate school, Gant recounted her long and winding path to her Ph.D. program at…
Nov. 22, 2019
#IAmScience Rachel Martin
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Rachel Martin always faced challenges head-on. As a budding freshman who began her college career in the School of Journalism, she switched to biological sciences, tackled a double major in music, joined two research labs and kept up with clubs throughout her undergraduate career. Through it all, she has maintained an unwavering ambitious spirit. Now in her final year, Martin has wrapped up her music degree and enjoys a more relaxed course load than she’s used to. From freshman to junior year, she often took over 18 credit hours at…
Nov. 19, 2019
A blight-free future
Bond LSC scientist works with global consortium to eliminate costly rice disease Rice terraces in Sapa, Vietnam: Rice is the world’s most important food plant, playing a vital role for nutrition in Asia and Africa in particular. In those countries, rice is generally grown by small farmers. If their fields are infected by bacterial blight, their very existence is threatened. | Photo by HHU / Sarah M. Schmidt By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC COLUMBIA, Mo. – Deep in the basement of the Bond Life Sciences Center is a small room emanating neon purple…
Nov. 15, 2019
#IAmScience Clayton Kranawetter
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Taking things apart to figure out how they function was a huge part of Clayton Kranawetter’s childhood. From dismantling his parents’ old computer to disassembling a baseball pitching machine, he’s always been curious about the way things work. Kranawetter always looked for old machines or items that weren’t being used anymore to take apart and analyze. The comical part is that he never put them back together. Throughout his life, Kranawetter has carried a sense of curiosity about him that has led him to learn new hobbies or languages…
Nov. 12, 2019
Exceeding the Challenge
Focus on new grants results in research funding bump On Oct. 11, 2019, as part of University of Missouri Homecoming festivities, Chancellor Alexander N. Cartwright shared about MU’s value to society during the annual State of the University address. | Contributed by MU News Bureau By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC It’s an inconvenient truth that every scientist knows; progress in research is driven by the money they receive to pursue discoveries. As MU’s Chancellor Alexander Cartwright addressed the Mizzou community in October, he announced positive gains in securing grants for future science. “Not long ago, we…
Nov. 8, 2019
#IAmScience Maddy Creach
“Science is concrete, but it isn’t rigid. Research is constantly new and fresh.” By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC For Maddy Creach, a scientific career was always the end goal, and television and books have played a part in that inspiration. When she was a kid, her “big science nerd” of a dad watched NOVA all the time with her along with dinosaur documentaries, and she could always turn to him for support in her career aspirations. That support has continued for her current dream — to work for NASA’s plant research team. Astronaut Scott…
Nov. 1, 2019
#IAmScience Sharon Pike
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Sharon Pike grew up in an era that didn’t encourage young girls to pursue fields predominantly occupied by men. Through trial and error in various careers, she eventually landed a spot as a lab technician at MU in 1985. Since then, she found her passion and voice in science, and at the age of 77, she doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. Pike felt the limitations of being a girl, growing up in the Midwest and lacking the financial means to obtain an education beyond the undergraduate level. But,…
Oct. 24, 2019
#IamScience Paul Martin
By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC Two years ago, Paul Martin found his love for biology in a freshman-level non-majors course. He’s now a researcher in Walter Gassmann’s lab helping to study transcription factors that regulate a plant’s immune response to bacterial pathogens. Martin grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, near Arrowhead Stadium and has always loved sports. He recalled caring more about baseball stats in school than learning. By the time he reached high school, he loved to write and thought he could make a career out of it. …
Oct. 23, 2019
Nature’s cinema: New technique allows plant imaging in real-time
The September issue of Molecular Plant depicts a plant fluorescing in response to reactive oxygen species propogation taken by Yosef Fichman of the Mittler Lab. By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Plant biologists across the country opened their mailboxes last month to the glowing leaves of Arabidopsis on the cover of the latest issue of Molecular Plant. That cover taken by post-doctoral researcher Yosef Fichman of Bond Life Sciences Center depicts plants fluorescing in response to reactive oxygen species (ROS) propagation, a technique that allows researchers to track plant response to certain stressors. The novel approach is…
Oct. 18, 2019
#IAmScience Fernanda Amaral
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Growing up on farm in Brazil, Fernanda Amaral often wondered why her father had to treat the soil with nitrogen fertilizer between growing cycles. She questioned why the soil wasn’t enough to consistently provide crops the nutrients they needed to grow and flourish. Amaral remembers her father explaining soybeans take a lot out of the soil, leaving nothing behind for the next batch of crops. So, he needed to artificially treat the soil with chemical fertilizers to continue the harvest cycle, maintain his business and support his family.
Oct. 16, 2019
Homegrown researcher
Years at MU lands student turned faculty tenure-track position Maggie Lange-Osborn is a newly appointed assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. | Photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Where can passion, hard work and more than a decade worth of experience get you? They landed Maggie Lange-Osborn her own research lab on the University of Missouri campus. Lange is starting down that path in Bond Life Sciences Center but will move to a permanent space in either the Medical Science Building or Schweitzer Hall eventually. She’s excited to…