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News

Federica Brandizzi
April 4, 2023
Michigan State University’s renowned plant researchers are collaborating on solutions to grow more abundant, nutritious and resilient plants that will feed a growing population.
Flasks of cyanobacteria
April 3, 2023
Cyanobacteria, photosynthetic microorganisms which have widespread uses in the production of pigments, antioxidants and supplements and potential ones in biofuels and plastics, have a new way to communicate with one another to control their population, researchers from the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory Ducat lab show.
Federica Brandizzi, Felicia Wu, Bruno Basso
March 29, 2023
PRL faculty member Federica Brandizzi discusses agricultural innovation. The world’s population is growing, and climate change is continuing to impact the crops we need to feed that growing population.
Federica Brandizzi and Joanne Thomson look at some of the seedlings that returned from lunar orbit on the Orion spacecraft.
March 28, 2023
The moon holds answers, and a Michigan State University plant biologist is bringing those answers within reach. Patience, creativity and a cheerful fearlessness are turning insights buried in plant seeds into pathways to the very survival of the human race.
A top down view of a piece of lab equipment that measures photosynthesis
March 27, 2023
Found in acidic volcanic hot springs, the extremophilic alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae contains a unique process that allows them to survive in extreme environments. Researchers, led by graduate student Anne Steensma from the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, are looking at this process and its potential to change how we understand the ways photosynthetic organisms adapt to environmental challenges like high temperatures. 
Grass
March 20, 2023
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Awards
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, or GLBRC, another five years of funding to develop sustainable alternatives to gasoline, diesel and other hydrocarbon fuels as well as products currently made from petroleum. The center will receive $27.5 million for 2023 research.
Gregg Howe
February 10, 2023
Michigan State University has again been named a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Scholars — establishing MSU as the only research institution in the nation to achieve this status in the last nine consecutive years. With nine scholars, including the PRL's Gregg Howe, MSU is also notably among the top five-highest-producing institutions this year.
Mauricio Tejera-Nieves in a field of switchgrass
January 25, 2023
By explaining a photosynthetic peculiarity in switchgrass, MSU researchers from the Walker lab may have unlocked even more of the plant’s potential.
Example structure for ethane piercing benezene
January 18, 2023
Researchers from the Vermaas lab created a more efficient tool to solve the problem of ring piercings in molecular simulations. This work is published in Biomolecules.
Berkley Walker
January 9, 2023
Complicated sets of biological data can be challenging to extrapolate meaningful information from. Wanting to find a better way to look at this data led Berkley Walker, assistant professor at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, to team up with statistician and Assistant Professor Chih-Li Sung from the Department of Statistics and Probability.