Uncategorized
Oct. 5, 2020
Influenza: How it Transmits from Birds to Pigs
Henry Wan | Photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf Geese will soon fill the skies as they migrate south in V-formation as the weather gets colder and the leaves start changing color. For a month or so, migrating birds take over, crossing roads, sitting in parks and stopping to eat leftover seeds in farm fields or swim in ponds as they travel south for the winter. What people may not realize is that some of these birds are carrying something harmful, yet invisible to the naked eye. That something is influenza A viruses that can…
Sep. 21, 2020
Four Cell Lines, One Great Discovery
Using cell lines to better understand copper homeostasis Nikita Gudekar working at her lab table. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC When one thinks of copper, they often think of a shiny new penny. A striking engravement of Abraham Lincoln’s side profile with the words, ‘In God we trust’ engraved over his head. This, however, is not the case for Nikita Gudekar. Gudekar, a genetics area program Ph.D. candidate in the Petris lab, thinks of copper and gets inspired. Copper is an essential element in the body that has many roles…
Sep. 11, 2020
A Big Load: Using Wastewater to Test For COVID-19
Marc Johnson collecting pellets in his lab. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC There is not much thought that goes into using the bathroom. You do your business, flush, and wash your hands. It is just a part of the daily routine. Recently though, human waste has become a golden nugget to researchers. In fact, waste from toilets throughout the community are contributing to figuring out where the next COVID-19 outbreak could happen. And Marc Johnson, Bond Life Sciences Center principal investigator and MU professor of molecular microbiology and immunology, is…
Sep. 4, 2020
Killing Cancer with Code
These maps show the receptors’ locations, density and count in a cancer cell. | photo contributed by Alexander Jurkevich, Donald Burke-Agüero, David Porciani and Skyler Kramer. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC With two laptops in front of him and a supercomputer on the edge of campus, graduate student Skyler Kramer runs through code daily in the Dong Xu lab with a purpose far beyond deciphering lines of data. He helps his colleagues defeat cancer. Working in Bond LSC with senior post doctorate David Porciani from the Donald…
July 16, 2020
New analysis points to danger in FDA’s allowed levels of BPA in food
Jiude Mao works on BPA testing in the lab of Cheryl Rosenfeld. By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC Bisphenol A, more commonly known as BPA, has been a source of scientific dispute for the past decade. With a lack of consensus among scientists, consumers are left unaware of the potential harms of the chemicals in plastic. In response to a recent report by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that claims BPA is safe at the current levels occurring in foods, Bond Life Sciences Center principal investigator Cheryl Rosenfeld and a group of researchers across the country…
June 3, 2020
IMSD awarded grant to continue training diverse scientists
New funding changes some structure to program Olivia Warner By Jerry Duggan | Bond LSC Mizzou was always near the top of Olivia Warner’s list for Ph.D. programs. Its renowned psychological sciences program, sound training in Warner’s specialty of addiction and supportive, collaborative atmosphere that she didn’t see at other places made it a top choice on paper. But she was not introduced to her most formative program in terms of professional development until she had already moved across the country from Arizona to mid-Missouri. Within her first month, Warner learned of the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development…
June 1, 2020
Studying Drug Resistance, One Connection at a Time
Kinjal Majumder | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Where you are creates opportunities. The structure and placement of labs encourages researchers to collaborate and talk to each other and often, connections and friendships are formed. For Kinjal Majumder, a virologist and postdoctoral fellow in the David Pintel lab at Bond Life Sciences Center, that has meant bouncing many ideas off friends and colleagues from neighboring labs. Little did he know that one connection would lead him to interesting findings in a field outside of virology. Those results may help make progress…
April 30, 2020
Treating COVID-19: Bond LSC lab explores effectiveness of remdesivir and other potential drugs
By Jerry Duggan | Bond LSC As countries hang their hopes on the drug remdesivir for battling COVID-19, recent modeling and computer-aided drug evaluation at the University of Missouri caution to keep an open mind and consider other drug treatments. Kamlendra Singh at MU’s Bond Life Sciences Center evaluated remdesivir — an antiviral originally developed to treat Ebola — and several other drugs for long-term success in treating coronavirus causing the pandemic across the world. His results were published April 26 in the journal Pathogens. “Remdesivir is working against COVID-19, but the other drugs may also be as…
March 18, 2020
Turning Winter into Summer: How Greenhouses Work in the Winter
The Sears Greenhouse Complex at the University of Missouri. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Picture this. It’s 25 degrees Fahrenheit outside and snow is falling in Columbia. The weathermen have projected 4 inches of snow in the next 24 hours. As wind whips the snow around, students hope the schools call a snow day the next day. Snow starts to accumulate as the sun sets and people all throughout town are staying inside, some eating soup with their families, others curled up with a…
March 13, 2020
#IAmScience Hsin-Yeh Hsieh
By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Some scientists go into research for basic science, such as finding an enzyme and figuring out its functions and properties. Others like Hsin-Yeh Hsieh, gravitate toward applied sciences where they use what they know to develop technology. “Because I can use everything I learned in science as building blocks to create a technology that actually can do something and make impacts in real life, that’s what I like about science,” said Hsieh, a research scientist in the George Stewart lab at Bond LSC. Hsieh began her science journey in Taiwan, where she…
March 4, 2020
Movement is the Key
Anand Chandrasekhar It’s an asset to be able to visualize and think about the nervous system from the perspective of an electrical engineer. Cell biologist Anand Chandrasekhar — whose work focuses on the movement of neurons within the brainstem of mice and zebrafish, as well as on the consequences of that movement or lack of movement for the animal’s behavior— brings that angle to his work all the way from his undergraduate…
March 2, 2020
A NEET Connection
Arabidopsis growing in Ron Mittler’s lab. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC Protein important in balancing iron and reactive oxygen in plant and cancer cells By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC You might tend to think durability is more of an issue in building a car or engineering a building, but environmental stress makes resilience vital for plants, too. In the world of understanding and engineering more durable crops, scientists recently identified a protein that’s key to some of that resilience in a neat way. Actually, it’s literally a NEET protein. Ron Mittler, a Bond Life…