University of Missouri

March 30, 2021

Ph.D. botanist inspired to start African American scientists series

Shawn Abrahams | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Last summer was emotional for many people throughout the country. Movements like Black Lives Matter led many to reflect of the role race plays in society, and to act. Scientists like Shawn Abrahams used that as inspiration to look more closely at what career options are available for botanists, paleobotanists, and plant scientists outside of research. Abrahams felt compelled to capitalize on that energy and inspire fellow minorities. “There’s a rich history of black people being involved in botany and plant taxonomy that…

March 26, 2021

#IAmScience Jordan Brungardt

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC When one hears of a magician, they think of a man that pulls a rabbit out of a top hat or ‘cuts’ people in half. Magicians have a lot of tricks up their sleeve. People do not think of scientists as magicians, yet they still perform wonderous things. “I heard a quote one time that says science and technology is kind of like magic,” Jordan Brungardt said. “For somebody that doesn’t know what is happening, experiments look like magic if they’re performed well. Think of cell phones allowing us to talk to…

March 12, 2021

#IAmScience Lauren Jenkins

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC As someone interested in getting a Ph.D., you apply to several schools and programs hoping to get in. When Lauren Jenkins first interviewed with Mizzou, she knew it was the one. But the interview was not the first time she’s had a good impression with the school. As an undergraduate student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Jenkins’ first science conference was the Interdisciplinary Plant Group (IPG) Seminar at the Bond Life Sciences Center. “I actually had the opportunity to give a talk there,” Jenkins said. “I just remember being an undergrad…

March 10, 2021

Higher Viral Load May Lead to Less Severe Symptoms

Cynthia Tang and Henry Wan | photos by Becca Wolf and Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC You would think that the less sick you are, the less contagious you are. That’s just logic. However, science isn’t always logical. Especially with Covid-19. Henry Wan, principal investigator at Bond Life Sciences Center, recently found that when a person has mild symptoms of Covid-19 they have a higher amount of viral shedding. He also found that people with a higher amount of virus on their positive swab test are less likely to be hospitalized than those…

Feb. 26, 2021

#IAmScience Maddie Graham

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC When the pandemic hit, Maddie Graham’s lab life shifted focus. The junior biomedical engineering pre-med student suddenly started to find answers by extracting RNA out of wastewater to help detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, which reiterated how important science is in our lives. “I don’t think medicine would be anything without research,” Graham said. “I think it’s really important to see the other side of things, understand how things have come to be and how they’ve made these medical advances. It was cool to be able to do something related…

Feb. 23, 2021

ACCase: The Gatekeeper of Plant Oil

Jay Thelen sitting amongst Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometers in the lab. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Two decades ago Jay Thelen speculated an unknown protein anchored acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase), an important enzyme complex, to the chloroplast membrane. He even published a paper about it, not knowing exactly what the membrane protein was. Flash forward and Thelen, a professor of biochemistry and principal investigator at Bond Life Sciences Center, now knows exactly what it is, which is detailed in a recent paper in Nature Communications. And this finding could potentially…

Feb. 12, 2021

#IAmScience Shuai Zeng

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC It’s not a straight line between basic research and Silicon Valley, but Shuai Zeng made the dots connect. Last summer, Zeng, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, had an internship at Google headquarters in Mountain View City, California, where he worked on an applied research team. There, he helped design and develop a state-of-the-art deep learning model about video recommendations for Google Ads and YouTube. Deep learning mimics the workings of the human brain in processing data through artificial intelligence (AI). It is used in detecting objects, recognizing speech, translating languages, and…

Feb. 9, 2021

Gassmann Named Permanent Director of Bond LSC

Yesterday, Tom Spencer, MU’s interim vice chancellor for research and economic development, officially named Bond LSC Interim Director Walter Gassman to the permanent director role. Below is Spencer’s announcement.   Colleagues, Today, I am pleased to announce that Walter Gassmann, professor in the Division of Plant Sciences and a member of the Interdisciplinary Plant Group, has agreed to serve as director of the Bond Life Sciences Center (LSC) effective this month. Walter stepped into the role of interim director at Bond LSC July 1, 2017. Since then, his…

Feb. 2, 2021

BIPS: Bringing Plant Science and Engineering Together

Nick Dietz and Marianne Slaten observing a plant in the lab. | photo by Becca Wolf, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Technology advancements have always driven scientific discoveries in order to perform in depth research, but that has never been more true today. “A couple of decades ago it was perfectly fine to be an engineer and a biologist and live in your own world,” David Mendoza said. “But as science has advanced, we depend more on mathematics and computer sciences now.” Mendoza, principal investigator at Bond Life Sciences Center and associate professor of plant…

Jan. 29, 2021

#IAmScience Michael Pisias

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC Michael Pisias came to realize that he wanted to study polyploidy while sitting in an undergraduate genetics lecture class at California State University-Sacramento (CSUS) a few years ago. This unique phenomenon is when the cells of an organism have more than two paired sets of chromosomes, which intrigued Pisias. “I knew I liked to figure out how living things work, especially at the smallest, genetic level,” Pisias said. “I find it fascinating that there are some creatures that are able to survive and thrive with doubled genetic information, which would be lethal…

Jan. 22, 2021

Bond LSC Alumnus Celebrates Black Botanists Through Social Media Initiative

Morgan Halane, Bond Life Sciences Center alumnus, visits his former middle school to get students interested in botany. | photo contributed by Morgan Halane, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC It seems most people grow out of bombarding their parents with millions of questions. However, plant biologist Morgan Halane never could shake the habit. Such boundless curiosity could not be contained to just one man. Halane has reached out to other Black students and botanists through cofounding the social media initiative #BlackBotanistsWeek. However, his path didn’t begin until he was an undergraduate at the…

Jan. 15, 2021

#IAmScience Leland Cseke

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC In a cluttered basement in Dearborn, Michigan, one could find Leland Cseke conducting amateur plant tissue culture experiments on his family’s pool table as a child. These attempted experiments consisted of whatever he could find around the house, such as gelatin mix, items from his mother’s bathroom, and motors from his step-father’s work. Now Cseke is the research lab manager in the Gassmann lab at Bond Life Sciences Center and has an actual lab to work in, with all the supplies he needs. “I look back in amusement that I’m still kind…