News

The fellowship provides opportunities for international exchange programs in drug discovery, agriculture and medicine.

Gutter Ball returned on June 12, with Tony Schilmiller claiming his fourth championship.

NASA awarded its Silver Achievement Medal to a multi-institution team that includes researchers from the College of Natural Science

Spartan researchers have developed a way to get poplar trees to produce valuable molecules usually derived from shark livers

Award will support the Vermaas lab’s work in drug discovery through molecular dynamics research in plants. 

This analysis and review suggests that the different families of the OCP use similar structural determinants for non-photochemical quenching.

Maxwell Harman shares his insights on his acceptance to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Alumni and friends of the college gathered to peer into the future of sustainability with Spartan student and faculty experts

Joshua Kaste and Xinyu Fu have been awarded the 2024 Anton Lang Memorial Award. The lecture was given by Robert Last.

A group of graduate and undergraduate students participated in the 2024 EnergyTech University Prize, making it to the regionals portion of the competition. The contest is organized by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions and challenges students to create and present a business plan in the energy sector.

For the past fifteen years, Ryan Mosley has been providing IT support for both the Plant Research Laboratory and the Department of Plant Biology. Now, after accepting a new position on the Research Cyberinfrastructure team at MSU, he will be working with researchers all over campus.

Researchers from across the Michigan State University plant science community, including from eight PRL labs, participated in this year’s Science Festival on campus.

Graduate students Xiaotong Jiang and Bailey Kleven are the 2024 recipients of the Keegstra and Thomashow Travel Awards.

Using molecular dynamics, researchers from the Kramer and Vermaas labs showed how electrons move through a crystal, jumping from heme to heme. The researchers found that the rate at which the electrons jump from one heme to another highly depended on the temperature of the crystal.

Cheryl Kerfeld was a panelist at an event in Washington, DC commemorating US innovation at the nanoscale.

Spartan researchers join a nationwide team to create a new way to design cell-sized microfactories that could help make medicines, biofuels and more.

Max Harman, graduate student in the PRL Walker lab, was awarded a 2024 Michigan Soybean Association Scholarship.

Researchers from the PRL Vermaas lab participated in Girls' Math and Science Day, an event designed to encourage young girls to pursue scientific interests.

With a Traveling Fellowship from The Company of Biologists, PhD student Manuel Bellucci came to the PRL Sharkey lab from the University of Rome to study the protective role of isoprene.

In a recent study in Plant Physiology, Michigan State University researchers revealed a misconception that had been growing in plant science about one of the fundamental puzzle pieces of photosynthesis. In correcting the record, researchers can now think about using this knowledge to improve plant function and grow more efficient crops.

Liana Acevedo-Siaca came to Michigan State University-Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory, or MSU DOE-PRL in October 2022 as a postdoctoral researcher in David Kramer’s lab. She is now preparing to move across the Atlantic to the Netherlands to start as an Assistant Professor in the Horticulture and Product Physiology Group at Wageningen University in April 2024.

MSU is a pioneer in plant science, and the renewal of important programs such as the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory and the DOE-supported Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center helped bolster DOE-funded expenditures.

Fixed-term Assistant Professor Jinjie Liu discusses her work with CURE, the Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience, at Michigan State University.

A recent publication in Metabolic Engineering looks at how cyanobacteria balance cellular energy between “source and sink,” which may have downstream applications in bioproduction. 

How are astronauts going to grow their food when they’re in space? It’s a question that Michigan State University scientists are asking, and one that they’re growing closer to answering.

Lisa Yun, a graduate student in the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory Ducat lab, has worked at national laboratories and universities since beginning her professional career. When considering an internship, she wanted to experience industry work to better understand the differences between the workload and organization compared to academia. She wanted to work at a startup, more specifically, she wanted to be in a smaller environment with a goal for sustainability.

Donghee Hoh, a postdoctoral researcher of the Kramer Lab, was awarded the 2023 American Society of Plant Biologists, or ASPB, Women’s Young Investigator Travel Award. The award paid for travel to the ASPB conference held this August in Savannah, Georgia. Women members of ASPB who are early in their career are eligible for this award.

A recap of 2023 in pictures from the PRL.

In a study published in The Plant Journal, researchers looked at the complex regulation of the storage of cell wall mixed-linkage glucan, or MLG, in sorghum, a crop that’s a promising biofuel feedstock. MLG is a component of the cell wall that is believed to have several biological functions, but its precise role during the vegetative growth of plants is not understood well.

Can seeds sent into space grow better plants on Earth? Federica Brandizzi is a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and an MSU Research Foundation Professor who wanted to find out.

Leah Johnson is the 2023 recipient of the Kende Award, which acknowledges the best doctoral dissertation in plant sciences at Michigan State University over the last two years.

For a small field like computational biology, joining an international workshop is a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from, collaborate with and talk to professionals and students from around the world. This is how Duncan Boren of the Vermaas Lab felt when he learned about the CompBioAsia program.

Gregg Howe and James Tiedje were included in this year’s annual list of Highly Cited Researchers, showing they are among the world’s most influential scientists.

Researchers from Michigan State University have shed light on the biological puzzle of how plants launch immune responses. Reporting in Nature Communications, the team revealed one protein that plays a key role in mobilizing a plant’s antimicrobial defenses