News
April 30, 2015
Float your boat
Bond LSC raised $600 for the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri as participants in the Float Your Boat event.
April 30, 2015
Outstanding mentors
Bond LSC faculty win and are nominated for Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Awards
April 23, 2015
Talking about science
Director Jack Schultz joins Radio Friends with Paul Pepper to talk about how we talk about science.
April 16, 2015
BPA overrides temperature to decide turtle sex
The environmental build-up of bisphenol A (BPA) can result in a life-changing shift for aquatic animals. For painted turtles, exposure to this chemical can disrupt sexual differentiation,, according to new research in the General and Comparative Endocrinology. Scientists at the University of Missouri have teamed up to show how low levels of certain endocrine disruptors like BPA can cause males to possess female gonadal structures in newly-hatched turtles. This collaboration between MU, Westminster College, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Saint Louis Zoo exposed turtle eggs to levels of BPA similar to those currently found in the environment.
April 13, 2015
Five Bond LSC undergraduates win Arts and Sciences Scholarships
Five undergraduate researchers at Bond LSC were awarded arts and sciences scholarships to help them continue their education. Congratulations to each of the winners. Hannah Baldwin/Bond LSC MU undergraduate Wade Dismukes gathers plants from a growing room in Bond LSC to prepare for an experiment about plant evolution on Thursday, April 9, 2015. Dismukes, who won an arts and sciences scholarship, is a researcher in Dr. Chris Pires’ lab. “I got into science because I had good mentors,” he said. Wade Dismukes started his career as an undergraduate researcher at Bond LSC in Dr. Jack…
April 9, 2015
Life Sciences Week preview: Doing more with less
A simple virtue lies at the heart of Xuemin (Sam) Wang’s research: thrift. “A good way to think of it is how to increase output without demanding more inputs,” Wang said. Wang, the E. Desmond Lee and Family Fund endowed professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, studies plant membrane lipids. His lab is focused on understanding the relationship between oil production and plant stresses such as drought and nutrient deficiency. Wang will speak during the 31st annual Missouri Life Sciences Week, a yearly celebration of MU’s…
March 31, 2015
Scientists dig into the epigenetics of cancer
Joya Chandra, associate professor of pediatrics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains the epigenetics of pediatric cancers at the 2015 MU LSSP Symposium on epigenetics on Sunday, March 15.//photo by Caleb O’Brien/Bond LSC The evolving science of epigenetics is shaking up how scientists and doctors think about cancer. At the 11th annual University of Missouri Life Sciences & Society Program symposium, scientists, historians and philosophers explored the epigenetic theme. On its final day, two researchers spoke about how cancer and epigenetics intersect. Epigenetics involves changes to how genes work that do not…
March 30, 2015
Translating soybean cyst nematode research
Roger Meissen/Bond Life Sciences Center – These soybean roots show some nematode cysts. The small, white circles are the hardened body of the nematodes and form when the nematode attaches itself to the root to create a feeding cell. Beneath a North Carolina field in 1954, a tiny worm inched its way through the soil and butted against a soybean root. The worm pierced the plant, slipped inside and inserted a needle-like appendage into a cell. It pumped a mixture of proteins into the root cell and waited for the potent blend to take effect on…
March 12, 2015
Five things you wanted to know about epigenetics (But were afraid to ask)
What the heck is it, anyway? Epigenetics involves changes in how your genes work. In classical genetics, traits pass from generation to generation in DNA, the strands of genetic material that encode your genes. Scientists thought alterations to the DNA itself was the only way changes could pass on to subsequent generations. So say you lost a thumb to a angry snapping turtle: Because your DNA hasn’t changed, your children won’t be born with smaller thumbs. Classic. Things get way more complicated with epigenetics. It turns out that some inherited changes pass on even though they…
March 11, 2015
Don’t stress, your kids will thank you
LSSP Symposium highlights epigenetics of the womb and how parental stress can change genetic makeup Could a stressful day during pregnancy change the future of a developing child nestled in the womb? Experts in the epigenetic research field are saying yes. This weekend the 11th annual Life Sciences and Society Program will kick off “Epigenetic Revolution: Nature, Nurture and What Lies Ahead,” bringing experts on environmental influences on offspring to the stage. Two speakers will focus their talks on the period of time developing mammals spend in the womb and what factors could trigger changes in their genetics. Tracy Bale,…
March 6, 2015
Introducing the 11th Annual LSSP topic: The Epigenetic Revolution
To introduce our 11th Annual Life Sciences and Society Program, The Epigenetics Revolution: Nature, Nurture and What Lies Ahead that runs at the University of Missouri March 13-15, we figured it would be nice to define the term epigenetics. Spoiler: It’s amazing and it could change everything. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, epigenetics is “the study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence.” Let’s break that down. We can inherit something that changes what our genes do, but don’t actually change the code of our DNA. So what sort of things do genes do? It…
Feb. 12, 2015
Harm and response
Bond LSC’s Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel hold model Arabidopsis plants used in many of their experiments. Roger Meissen/Bond LSC We often think of damage on a surface level. But for plants, much of the important response to an insect bite takes place out of sight. Over minutes and hours, particular plant genes are turned on and off to fight back, translating into changes in its defenses. In one of the broadest studies of its kind, scientists at the University of Missouri Bond Life Sciences Center recently looked at all plant genes and their response to…