Research
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…
Nov. 17, 2020
Bad Boys of Biology Turned Good
Yosef Fichman, post doctorate fellow in the Mittler lab, walks through how the lab uses arabidopsis plants for certain experiments. | photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Shaking a bad rap can be hard. However, the Ron Mittler lab at Bond Life Sciences Center has shifted the scientific community’s thinking from seeing reactive oxygen species (ROS) as destructive to vital. “It’s always a challenge when you do something for the first time, and people don’t always believe you,” said Mittler, principal investigator. “They want you to prove it.” ROS are…
Nov. 9, 2020
Unknown Origins
$5 million grant awarded to study RNA’s place in start of life on Earth In his lab at Bond LSC, Donald Burke-Agüero examines his model of the RNA protein structure. | Photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC The search for life on other planets may seem quite literally out of reach, but the search actually starts here, on Earth. “Something that guides people in thinking about how life might come about on other worlds is trying to understand how life might have started here on this planet,” said Donald Burke-Agüero,…
Nov. 5, 2020
Shining Light on Plant Reaction
Arabidopsis grows in Ron Mittler’s lab. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Daylight might not seem dangerous, but for plants, too much daylight can cause hazards similar to a nasty sunburn or a human scalding themselves. When you jerk your hand back from a boiling pan or a hot faucet, in a millisecond electrical signals are sent up your arm to tell your brain to move away. Like this reaction, plants have their own protective reactions to too much light. “I think what you need to understand is that plants…
Oct. 26, 2020
Learning From History
Sung-Hwan Cho, a research scientist in the Gary Stacey lab, checks in on the arabidopsis plants that he uses in his purinergic signaling experiments. | photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Until the 1990s, the presence and significance of extracellular ATP, a nucleotide that normally provides energy to a cell, in animal cells was highly contested for decades. Now, the Gary Stacey lab at Bond Life Sciences Center is using that history lesson to explore ATP’s role in plant cells. Let’s say you have $100 in your pocket. As you’re…
Oct. 19, 2020
Four months in, Baker lab hits the ground running and won’t be stopping anytime soon
Post doctorate Harim Tavares from the Baker lab works in “the hood,” which is a space used to prevent researchers and other outside factors from contaminating cells. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Saliva is often something people take for granted. It helps break down food, maintain teeth and keep the oral cavity feeling comfortable. But head and neck cancer patients lose those benefits when chemotherapy treatments damage their salivary glands. Olga Baker set out to research tissue regeneration for these cancer patients by collaborating with the Michael Petris and Gary Weisman labs after setting up…
Oct. 7, 2020
Plant vs. Pathogen
Research scientist Jianbin Su studies the immune system in lettuce on the third floor of the Bond Life Science Center. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Scientist Jianbin Su’s research lately took him outside to look at patches of grass and cracks in sidewalks around Mizzou’s campus, searching for a subject in the wild. He found his subject in the form of wild lettuce. That search can potentially help Su — a research scientist in the Walter Gassmann lab at Bond Life Sciences Center — better understand the immune system of lettuce and therefore protect it against…
Sep. 25, 2020
Beyond the Vaccine
Lucas Woods from the Weisman lab watches lung cancer cells and oral epithelial cells grow. | photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Vaccine development remains a central goal to get the current COVID-19 pandemic under control. While vaccines are highly vital in the fight against the current pandemic, what if scientists could prevent the virus from entering cells altogether? Researchers at Bond Life Sciences Center are working to do just that and, so far, they’re the only ones at Mizzou on the case. For the Gary Weisman lab, that starts…
Sep. 2, 2020
In Search of a Bond
Clement Essien poses outside Bond LSC near the building’s garden. | photo by Lauren Hines, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Artificial intelligence (AI) can do more than just write a book given a few words. It can help make cancer treatments more effective and predict the presence of disease in cells, which doctoral student Clement Essien did through his recent project. “It’s exciting because for several years, I was a software engineer, and then I felt like I wanted to do something more with that,” Essien said. “I want to make some contribution…
May 27, 2020
Shirwan, Yolcu Bring Pedigree, ProtEx Technology to Bond LSC
Haval Shirwan and Esma Yolcu By Jerry Duggan | Bond LSC Haval Shirwan and Esma Yolcu arrive at Bond LSC as accomplished researchers. While having different expertise within the field of immunology, the married couple collaborates extensively on research and together developed ProtEx technology, an alternative to traditional methods of gene therapy for immunomodulation with applications to autoimmune diseases, transplantation, cancer immunoprevention and immunotherapy, and vaccines against infections With work published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and 19 patents to Shirwan’s name, they both arrive at Mizzou ready to build on their research background and contribute to the new…
May 25, 2020
Probing for answers
Kwaku Tawiah, Ph.D. candidate, poses on the fifth floor of Bond LSC. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Disease diagnosis takes money, time and technology — something rural communities don’t always possess. Kwaku Tawiah, a fifth-year graduate student, and researchers in the Burke lab are creating a probe that can diagnose and inhibit viral diseases cheaply, in less time and without electricity. “With some of these infections, the faster you’re able to detect it, the better,” Tawiah said. “So, one of my motivations in grad school was to come…
May 19, 2020
Shifting Focus: HIV researcher takes on COVID-19
Marc Johnson | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Marc Johnson’s research focus changed suddenly one day this February when he received a shipment. That package of synthesized SARS-COV2 spike genes — the virus that causes COVID-19 — has now taken him down a new path. “It was unusual, nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Johnson said, an MU professor of molecular microbiology and immunology and Bond LSC investigator. “I’ve never had to switch directions so abruptly before but, you know, we’re always taking on new projects and shifting,…