plant science
Aug. 29, 2024
Plant biochemist puts down new roots at Bond LSC
By Sarah Rubinstein | Bond LSC Joe Lynch, Bond LSC principal investigator and assistant professor of Plant Science & Technology poses inside Bond LSC. | Photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC Whether growing plants in his garden or experimenting with moon dust, Joe Lynch is on the lookout for his next DIY project. As one of the newest principal investigators at Bond LSC and a MizzouForward hire, the plant biochemist brings a curiosity as he embarks on a new chapter at Mizzou. He is eager to dive deep into understanding how plants use aromatic amino acids to survive…
July 1, 2022
#IAmScience: Ajay Gupta
By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC Photo by Cara Penquite | Bond LSC Ajay Gupta learned biology basics as a first year undergraduate on the bumpy bus ride from his small hometown to Punjab Agricultural University. Just a few hours’ ride, he made the most of his time before he returned home to help his family’s agricultural goods business. Working extra hours in the margins of his time has become a habit for Gupta. Now a plant science first year Ph.D. student in the Bing Yang lab and Department of Plant Science and Technology Millikan Endowment…
June 17, 2022
#IAmScience: Sam Yanders
By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC When Samantha Yanders stepped to the front of Monsanto Auditorium, she followed presentations from two researchers with three degrees each. Yanders only had three years of undergraduate research experience. Nevertheless, she pinned the microphone to her tie, ran her fingers through her short curly hair, and explained her research with a calm certainty to her voice. Having just finished her junior year as a plant science undergraduate, Yanders spent the first week of her summer sharing her passion for plants with fellow researchers during the 2022 Interdisciplinary Plant Group Symposium.
April 29, 2022
#IAmScience: Mengran Yang
By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC Mengran Yang sat perched on a stool too tall for the cart of lush green tobacco plants in front of her. Behind towering shelves of lab equipment, she hunched over the plants and steadily pricked each leaf with a syringe. Yang works with Arabidopsis and tobacco plants to learn about plant immune systems as a postdoctoral fellow in the Gary Stacey lab. Her research focuses on signals plant cells send to coordinate a fight against pathogens. “I think it’s very interesting to see how plants can defend against the pathogens,”…
April 20, 2022
Protein or Poison? Research into seed composition shows potential uses as protein source or insecticide
Hari Krishnan holds a handful of A. pavonina seeds. Known for their bright color, the seeds are known among many Asian and African communities as coming from the red bead tree. Photo by Cara Penquite | Bond LSC By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC An energetic and fulfilling day starts with a spread of healthy meals, and many people rely on nutrition labels to meet their daily quota of vitamins and nutrients. But how did scientists measure the Vitamin C in an orange or the protein content in peanuts for the label? Finding out…
Oct. 4, 2017
The future of lab technology
Ph.D. student Ke Gao and computer scientist Filiz Bunyak collaborate with researchers at the Bond Life Sciences Center. The pair helps advance high-throughput phenotyping by developing applications and algorithms for image analysis. | Photo by Samantha Kummerer, Bond LSC Computer scientists create applications to speed up research in the lab By Samantha Kummerer, Bond LSC Three years ago, Ke Gao stood uncomfortably beside rows of biomedical students and plant scientists at the Bond Life Sciences research fair. His poster wasn’t discussing the DNA of seeds or how plants transport nutrients but rather a scientific device.
July 18, 2017
Christopher Garner #IAmScience
Christopher Garner, Ph.D moments before his successful dissertation defense. | Photo by Mary Jane Rogers, Bond LSC By Mary Jane Rogers | Bond LSC “#IAmScience because I believe that the collective pursuit of scientific knowledge is what moves us forward as a species.” In the time leading up to Christopher Garner’s dissertation defense, you never would have known if he was nervous. He was confident and composed, and the conference room at Bond LSC was completely filled with his professors, friends and well-wishers. Dr. Walter Gassmann gave a complimentary introduction to the dissertation, saying, “I don’t know…
July 10, 2017
The gall of it
How bossy insects make submissive plants create curious growths By Samantha Kummerer | Bond LSC They are bumps on leaves, bulges in stems and almost flower-like growths from plant tissue with a striking amount of variety. They are galls. These unnatural growths garnered the curiosity of Jack Schulz for years. While he’s spent 40 years studying topics from Insect elicitors to habitat specialization by plants in Amazonian forests, what he’s really wanted to study was galls. “It’s so weird,” said Schultz, director of the Bond Life Sciences Center. “I’ve always been really curious about how these strange structures form on plants.”…
March 8, 2017
Scott Peck #IAmScience
Scott Peck, a biochemistry professor at Bond LSC. | photo by Morgan McOlash, Bond LSC By Mary Jane Rogers | Bond LSC “#IAmScience because I want to discover. I want to ‘see’ – by understanding – things that others haven’t ‘seen’ before.” Every day we make decisions based off on what we encounter in the environment. Plants do the same thing. Scott Peck, a Chicago-area native, is a biochemist who studies how plants translate information they receive about the environment (such as changes in light and temperature) into their own chemical “decisions”, also known as signal transduction.
March 1, 2016
Unmasking the unknown
Scientists explore genetic similarities between plants and mice University of Missouri PhD Candidate Daniel L. Leuchtman peers through an Arabidopsis plant. Leuchtman has been experimenting with replacing a gene in the plants immune system with a similar gene from mice. | Photograph by Justin L. Stewart/MU Bond Life Sciences Center By Justin L. Stewart | MU Bond Life Sciences Center Almost two-thirds of what makes a human a human and a fly a fly are the same, according to the NIH genome research institute. If recent research at the University of Missouri’s Bond…
Oct. 21, 2015
Putting down roots
Plant scientist Ruthie Angelovici joins the Bond Life Sciences Center By Jennifer Lu | MU Bond Life Sciences Center Ruthie Angelovici Ruthie Angelovici clearly remembers her big eureka moment in science thus far. It didn’t happen in a laboratory. It wasn’t even her experiment. At the time, Angelovici was in college studying marine biology. She had spent a year going on diving trips to figure out whether two visibly different corals were polymorphs of the same species, or two separate species. A simple DNA test told her the answer in one afternoon. “That’s the day I decided…
June 22, 2015
Scientists uncover how caterpillars created condiments
The next time you slather mustard on your hotdog or horseradish on your bun, thank caterpillars and brassica for that extra flavor. While these condiments might be tasty to you, the mustard oils that create their flavors are the result of millions of years of plants playing defense against pests. But at the same time, clever insects like cabbage butterflies worked to counter these defenses, which then started an arms race between the plants and insects. An international research team led by University of Missouri Bond Life Sciences Center researchers recently gained insight into a genetic basis for this co-evolution…