November 2019

#IAmScience Jordyn Lucas

November 29, 2019 By Danielle Pycior in #IAmScience Tags: biochemistry

By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC

Fourteen billion years ago, the universe began expanding. Four billion years ago, the earth formed. Four million years ago, humans began to roam the Earth. Four years ago, Jordyn Lucas began her graduate degree studying the origins of life in the lab of Donald Burke at Bond LSC.

“We have this really cool grant from NASA that I’m working on,” she said. “We’re working with RNA to see if it would have been a good progenitor molecule for life, and testing the bounds of what it can do on its own.”

Her current research explores a topic that remains a mystery.

“No one else knows the answer,” she said. “So, when I find that answer, I’m the first one to know, which is really exciting to me.”

Lucas finds it fascinating how skills learned in a career can parallel into life. Her problem solving, building relationships with other scientists, being a part of a team, seeking criticism and overcoming failure have helped her become who she is. She said Burke’s diverse lab has also helped her gain new perspectives about research and about the world in general.

“A lot of scientists come at things one-dimensionally because that’s how they think, but when you’re forced to constantly interact with someone who’s coming at it from a different dimension, it helps you become multidimensional in your thinking,” Lucas said.

One of the biggest lessons Lucas has learned throughout her career so far is that criticism is a useful and healthy part of growth. It wasn’t always easy for her, especially in the beginning, but with time she came to realize that using criticism to her advantage enhanced her abilities.

“Actually, I seek it out because criticism makes you a better person, a better scientist, a better friend, and I think that a lot of people avoid criticism, but in this field, you have to cherish it,” she said. “This is a tough field and you want to get as much criticism as possible to make your research the best it can be.”

As a fourth-year biochemistry graduate student in the Burke lab, she focuses on how life evolved on Earth or could potentially evolve on other planets. Her field houses prebiotic chemists, geologists, geo biochemists, biologists and atmospheric scientists to name a few. She respects that diversity because there will always be a new answer to seek.

Though she originally went for biomedical engineering because of her interest in physics and chemistry, she realized she enjoyed science-heavy courses over math-heavy ones. By sophomore year at Purdue University, she had an internship in a microbiology industry lab and fell in love with research, eventually earning her undergraduate degree in biochemistry.

“I am always a person that wants to know why and science is a great field for that,” she said. “Not only do we kind of celebrate asking why, but it’s basically what the field is founded on – we’re always trying to figure out the next thing.”

In the past year, Lucas found a passion for communicating science to nonscientists to help them learn and find their own interest and curiosity. From Science on Wheels to meeting with a local rotary club to being on the Inside Mizzou podcast, Lucas has taken every opportunity to help people to learn. She said it’s important to build a healthier relationship with the non-scientific community.

She’s also really involved in the biochemistry graduate student organization and generally enjoys interacting with people.

“When I’m really having trouble with something I’ll bring it to a lab meeting and say, you know, guys, what do you think about this? Every single person has a great idea or thinks of a different control to use or a different approach to solve my problem,” she said.

Though her lab mates intellectually support her, she has also built lasting friendships here at MU. In October she ran a half marathon and trained for six months with a coworker. She also raved about Bond LSC, saying the open space and light allow researchers to make friends across labs and helps force them out of their spaces when they’re struggling with their research.

For Lucas, a great weekend entails being cozied up with a good book. She also loves to travel. Among traveling across the country for various conferences, she reminisced on a three-week trip to South Korea. Like most of her favorite things, she enjoys what challenges her to think differently.

She is excited about the future and its endless possibilities. Though she’s considering working at NASA or The Earth Life Science Institute in Japan, she’s staying open-minded.

A return to mentor: Gant advises on PREP for Ph.D.’s

November 25, 2019 By Roger Meissen in Events and speakers Tags: Cheryl Rosenfeld, R. Michael Roberts

By Roger Meissen | Bond LSC

Kristal Gant is a long way from the student she was when she donned a lab coat and wielded a pipette in labs at Bond Life Sciences Center nearly four years ago.

As she stood in front of a group of MU students hoping to one day follow their own routes to graduate school, Gant recounted her long and winding path to her Ph.D. program at University of Wisconsin-Madison and how MU’s Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) Scholars helped her get there.

“I’m really passionate about wanting to give back and be kind of like a mentor, but also a motivational, navigational tool for these students,” Gant said. “In undergrad, I didn’t have any idea about research and I feel like it’s my duty to come back and talk about my experience. Most of these students have not seen people that look like them in graduate school, as Ph.D. candidates or doctors. They don’t even know that’s possible for themselves.”

Gant didn’t attend Mizzou for her undergraduate degree, but as a PREP Scholar here she gained the chance to hone her skills. It gives underrepresented groups opportunities for individual academic and professional development that range from mentoring and GRE preparation to mini courses and research experience. The end goal is to prepare them for applying to Ph.D. programs. Those in PREP spend one or two years refining their skills and knowledge.

Gant greatly expanded her experience in research during that time. She spent a year alternating between the labs of Cheryl Rosenfeld and Mike Roberts in Bond LSC, learning the ins and outs of research on reproduction and environmental chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA).

“It gave me a preview of what you go through in your first year of grad school. I knew I wanted to study reproduction, reproductive deficiency and disease, and was also interested in environmental and reproductive toxicology, initially,” Gant said. “When I came here, I had the best of both worlds; I had the BPA aspect with Dr. Rosenfeld looking at mouse models and how that affected their behaviors and I had the reproduction area where Dr. Roberts looks at placental development by converting embryonic stem cells to trophoblasts, the main cells responsible for placental function. The project was essentially perfect in accommodating both of my interests.”

Gant had a unique, sometimes turbulent path to her interest in science. She grew up and went to school on the Westbank of New Orleans, until ninth grade. She remembers first getting an interest in science in junior high when her teacher showed a time-lapse video about pregnancy and the development of a baby.

“I was really interested in like how the woman’s body knew to accommodate the baby and how it adapted to having another human inside of it. That really intrigued me, so I was like, ‘I want to do reproduction,’” Gant said. “That combined with “The Cosby Show” made me want to be a neonatal nurse or obstetrician. I pursued that initially, but then I was like, oh, whoa, I didn’t know you could actually research these things, and I was introduced to research careers and grad school in college and realized this could be a thing. So, yeah, I’m a nerd like that.”

Before she got there, life got a little derailed. When Hurricane Katrina hit, the 15-year-old girl got separated from her mother who was visiting her sister in Virginia, causing her to have to relocate to Texas with a family friend to avoid the storm. What started out as a few days of inconvenience quickly turned into a bigger situation.

“We saw on the news that there was extensive flooding and people were stuck on the roads, and our apartment was flooded out, so we lost everything,” Gant said. “My mom didn’t know if I had made it out or anything because the phone lines were down and we were separated two weeks before the family I was staying with in Texas flew me to Virginia where I ended up finishing high school.”

Gant completed a year of college at Virginia Commonwealth University before she moved to North Carolina to help her mother escape a domestic violence situation. They were left living in a shelter for abused women and children for a year before getting their own apartment, and Gant worked at McDonalds until she started college again at Elizabeth City State University. She graduated in 2014 and followed up with a couple internships before ending up in a customer service job.

“And I hated it because it was, like, I have a whole degree that I’m doing nothing with and I’m in debt from it and I need to do something with,” she said.

A former adviser recommended Gant apply for PREP Scholars to improve her chances of getting into grad school.

Kristal Gant talks with students eager to gain insight into applying to Ph.D. programs at Bond LSC in fall 2019. | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC

Gant said her struggles helped her figure out what she wanted to do and shaped how she saw her future. Understanding it also aided her in writing personal statements for graduate school applications. She related that insight to those current PREP students looking to her for advice.

“It requires a lot of self-reflection to understand how your struggle got you to where you are. It doesn’t have to be family or a natural disaster or relationship troubles or whatever. It could be something within you that you yourself struggle with internally, whether it be confidence or fear or a feeling of not being good enough to do something,” Gant said. “It could be something so small that you struggled with, overcame and still, you pursued something you were deathly afraid to do. That shows that no matter what is supposed to stop you, you’re not gonna allow it.”

But her parting advice was some of the best.

“It really takes a passion, knowing what you’re trying to answer and putting in the work to figure it out. If you’re not passionate then you will be miserable and feel like you’re trapped in a prison,” she said. “But if you want the answers to your research questions and will not rest until you figure it out, then you should be in graduate school.”

Kristal Gant is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Endocrinology and Reproductive Physiology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She was an MU PREP Scholar in 2015 and plans to graduate with her doctorate in 2021.

Learn more about the PREP Scholars program at prepscholars.missouri.edu.

#IAmScience Rachel Martin

November 22, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: biology

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Rachel Martin always faced challenges head-on.

As a budding freshman who began her college career in the School of Journalism, she switched to biological sciences, tackled a double major in music, joined two research labs and kept up with clubs throughout her undergraduate career. Through it all, she has maintained an unwavering ambitious spirit.

Now in her final year, Martin has wrapped up her music degree and enjoys a more relaxed course load than she’s used to. From freshman to junior year, she often took over 18 credit hours at a time and balanced countless hours of studio practice, lessons, ensemble rehearsals, music and aural theory courses, science course labs and the academic rigor of both her degrees.

“My busy scheduled has definitely helped me with my time management skills,” Martin said. “I feel like a time management wizard now. It’s definitely prepared me for eventually going to medical school.”

While Martin is very sure of her future career path, she hasn’t always been this certain.

“When I was in high school, I was a part of my school’s newspaper and I’ve always been good at writing, so I thought I wanted to go into journalism,” Martin said. “I did the Missouri Urban Journalism Workshop and I loved it, but I remember thinking ‘wow, these other students are a lot more gung-ho about it than I am’.”

After she realized the journalism route wasn’t for her, she took some time to critically think about her career options. She recalls being inspired by her mom, who is a nurse, and at that point, decided she wanted to go to medical school.

From there, she looked into research labs her sophomore year and landed in Bing Zhang’s lab and studied Drosophila or small fruit flies. Then she found an opportunity in Cheryl Rosenfeld’s lab which allowed her to study the fetal effects of oxycodone.

“I’ve been helping out with Dr. Rosenfeld’s BPA studies on California mice as well as looking at the maternal-fetal effects of oxycodone on a different strain (CF-1),” Martin said. “[My research partner] is doing placental collections and I’ll be doing the behavioral analysis of the litters. Oxycodone is a relatively new drug that is being prescribed as a painkiller, however, people have been abusing it. There isn’t a whole of research being done into its effects as a drug of abuse.”

In addition to her scientific studies, Martin has been involved in the University Philharmonic Orchestra, the University Wind Ensemble, the Missouri Symphony Orchestra and Sigma Alpha Iota, a music fraternity.

“For the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, we do gigs around the community. Tomorrow we’re doing one for all the third graders in Columbia,” said Martin. “It’s like a get to know music and instruments. They learn about the piece in their music class and then they come hear it live.”

Martin intends to apply to medical school, but in the meantime, she will take a gap year and look into EMT or patient care technician jobs at the hospital. She plans to apply to the University of Missouri School of Medicine as her top choice, but she will also look at other places in the Midwest such as UMKC and a handful in Chicago.

Although she has dreams of becoming a pediatric or obstetrics and gynecology doctor, she plans on carrying music throughout her life.

“I’ve played French horn since middle, so it’s been almost 10 years since I started and it’s something that is stress-relieving to me,” Martin said. “It’s a totally different outlet from the science side and it has helped me with my science and research. Being in an orchestra, you have to be a team player and you have to be able to communicate with your team and step up to the plate and do the work.”

A blight-free future

November 19, 2019 By Mariah Cox in Research Tags: Bing Yang

Bond LSC scientist works with global consortium to eliminate costly rice disease

Rice terraces in Sapa, Vietnam: Rice is the world’s most important food plant, playing a vital role for nutrition in Asia and Africa in particular. In those countries, rice is generally grown by small farmers. If their fields are infected by bacterial blight, their very existence is threatened. | Photo by HHU / Sarah M. Schmidt

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Deep in the basement of the Bond Life Sciences Center is a small room emanating neon purple light. The room houses rice plants that have helped researchers develop a tool to identify different variations of rice disease and engineer disease-resistant crops.

The “Healthy Crops” research consortium, led by Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, published two studies recently in Nature Biotechnology that introduced new genetic rice variants for broad-spectrum resistance to bacterial blight of rice and a diagnostic kit to track down different types of bacteria and rightly plant blight-resistant variety. Rice blight is a bacterial crop disease that causes plant death and significantly reduces rice yields in South Asia and Africa.

Bing Yang, a joint faculty member at the University of Missouri Bond Life Sciences Center and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, studies that room full of plants in Bond LSC as it operates on a 12-hour night and day schedule using lightbulbs that are energy efficient and don’t give off a lot of heat, thus producing the neon glow. Scientists from his group were key collaborators on the project. The researchers specifically want to distribute their blight-resistant rice varieties and diagnostic tool to small farmers in the developing world.

Bing Yang joined Bond LSC as a primary investigator in Sept. 2018 as a joint hire with the Donald Danforth Plant Sciences Center. | photos by Erica Overfelt and Roger Meissen, Bond LSC

“Bacteria happen in the field naturally and they keep infecting new plant leaves. The bacteria kill the plant and once the plant dies, there is little to no yield from it,” said Yang. “Resistance gene is the only effective way to control the disease, and antibiotics are pretty expensive and ineffective to use to kill the bacteria in the field.”

Globally, rice is the most important food crop that feeds 56% of the world’s population. Rice blight is a threat to crop production and the livelihoods of small farmers with little acreage in developing countries. For example, on average, $3.6 billion is lost annually in India due to bacterial blight. Heavy rain and monsoon seasons often accelerate problems with blight as it can spread via flood water.

The five-year collaboration includes researchers from across the globe at the University of Missouri, University of Florida, Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in France, and the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.

Because of rice’s importance as a global food staple, the Healthy Crops consortium scientists sought to find a way to help farmers avoid planting crops that are susceptible to the disease. To do this, they came up with the idea of using chemicals as a dye agent that, when applied to the plant, can tell the farmer what specific form of the bacteria is in their field. From this information, the farmers can then plant a crop that is resistant to that specific strain of bacteria.

The implications for this technology mean cheaper methods of combating the effects of rice blight and allowing farmers to yield more rice annually, thus supporting their livelihoods and feeding those in developing countries.

“Bacteria blight of rice is a big challenge, but we naturally work well together and by combining multiple expertise we have been able to tackle the problem,” Yang said.

Moving forward, the researchers are working to further develop the tool and disease-resistant seeds to get them into the hands of small farmers.

Ultimately, the research has also allowed them to understand a way to block the acquisition of a nutrient by the bacteria from the host. Once the bacteria infect the rice plant, they secrete proteins into the rice cells turning on the plants’ SWEET genes. SWEETs export sugar from the rice cells and make it available to the bacteria which feed on it in the cell wall space. From there, the bacteria have enough resources to multiply and cause the plant to die.

Some rice varieties are resistant against rice blight bacteria because they contain different variants of the SWEET promoters which do not allow the bacteria’s proteins to turn on the genes. However, the bacteria can adapt and attack rice plants with different variations. In the second paper published by the consortium, the researchers developed a series of variants from two popular rice varieties that are resistant to a large number of bacterial strains.

By understanding the disease biology to develop disease-resistant plants, the researchers can help reduce the yield loss, increase the productivity of rice plants and benefit farmers.

Bing Yang is a joint faculty member of the MU Bond Life Sciences Center and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis.

Learn more about this discovery in a release from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Yang was a co-author of two publications published by Nature Biotechnology in October 2019 titled “Diagnostic kit for rice blight resistance” and “Broad-spectrum resistance to bacterial blight in rice using genome editing.”

#IAmScience Clayton Kranawetter

November 15, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience, Research Tags: Lloyd Sumner

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Taking things apart to figure out how they function was a huge part of Clayton Kranawetter’s childhood. From dismantling his parents’ old computer to disassembling a baseball pitching machine, he’s always been curious about the way things work.

Kranawetter always looked for old machines or items that weren’t being used anymore to take apart and analyze. The comical part is that he never put them back together.

Throughout his life, Kranawetter has carried a sense of curiosity about him that has led him to learn new hobbies or languages such as knitting or French. Additionally, in high school, he took part in a wide array of clubs such as service-learning, health professions and 4-H. He frequently looked for new projects to tackle and is currently tackling cooking.

“It may not be a scientific type of thing, but I still love to learn how to do new things,” Kranawetter said. “I’m really inquisitive and I wonder how things work. If I don’t know how something works, I think to myself ‘I’d like to give that a try sometime’.”

Now, as a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate of biochemistry, Kranawetter brings his broad range of interests into his research and plans for his future.

As a biochemistry undergraduate at MU, Kranawetter studied the hepatitis C virus. During lab rotations in the first year of his program, he visited labs studying protein crystallography, ribosomal functions, and transmembrane receptor function in bacterial chemotaxis. However, he decided to join the Sumner lab due to his interest in metabolomics, his love of plants, and because it gave him the opportunity to explore a field in which he had no previous experience.

He remembers being particularly drawn to cutting-edge technologies and the comradery with the lab members.

For his thesis dissertation, Kranawetter has been studying root border cells — the first line of defense against soil pathogens. The cells are tightly adhered to the tip of the root and secrete compounds that are involved in plant defense and facilitate host-microbe interactions.

He hopes to better understand this system to shed insight on how plants use metabolites to defend against pathogens and facilitate beneficial interactions with commensal microbes. Soybeans, in particular, nodulate at their roots and these innocuous bumps turn atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen usable by the plant. Kranawetter is interested in taking that natural nitrogen-fixing process and applying it to non-nodulating plants. Doing this would decrease dependency on nitrogen fertilizer and subsequently lessen its impact on the environment.

For Kranawetter, his current research focus doesn’t limit his opportunities in the future. He said his wide range of interests and background will allow him many opportunities in the future.

“One of the nice things about having a broad skill set is that you can go do a lot of different types of research. I don’t feel that I’m confined to plants since I have a background working with RNA and bacterial systems, and metabolomics can be utilized in a broad range of scientific studies, so I feel I can go many different places.”

Kranawetter enjoys analyzing things on a small level and understanding how it fits into broad contexts. For him, science is important because it can further understanding of the world around us and could lead to better research methods down the road.

“A lot of pharmaceutical drugs come from plants originally. Some of the compounds that we discover might be studied later on as potential therapies,” Kranawetter said. “Plants do a lot of things that people don’t expect. They’re a lot more complex than people give them credit.”

Exceeding the Challenge

November 12, 2019 By Mariah Cox in Events and speakers, Research Tags: Chancellor Cartwright, Grant Funding

Focus on new grants results in research funding bump

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

It’s an inconvenient truth that every scientist knows; progress in research is driven by the money they receive to pursue discoveries.

As MU’s Chancellor Alexander Cartwright addressed the Mizzou community in October, he announced positive gains in securing grants for future science.

“Not long ago, we set an ambitious goal to double research funding by 2023. I’m thrilled to report that last year, our research awards – an indicator of future expenditures – increased from around $200 million to $250 million,” Cartwright said at the 2019 State of the University Address. “This almost 25% increase in awards in one year is phenomenal.”

Bond Life Sciences Center’s 29 research faculty are slightly outpacing this system-wide achievement, with the FY2019 report displaying a year-over-year increase from $13.3 million in FY2018 to $16.8 million. That’s an increase of 26% in grant funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy and other sources.

“As a faculty member, I would say we’re always motivated to get grants, but sometimes it is a little bit cyclical and depends on how good the federal budget is in various research areas,” Bond LSC Interim Director Walter Gassmann said. “But I do think the Chancellor’s challenge of doubling our research expenditures in five years was a big motivator for researchers because they realized people are paying attention.”

That challenge started in February 2018 when Cartwright announced the renewed focus. Within the first year, research faculty across campus answered that challenge head-on, increasing grant funding from $207 million to $255 million, a 23% rise.

It’s not just researchers getting more grants or submitting more proposals, but there seems to be renewed interest in larger grants. In Bond LSC, the amount requested has risen by almost 70%.

Cartwright’s challenge also sparked a change in the grant-seeking landscape. Now, researchers across campus are encouraged to collaborate with each other more and go after larger grants together, rather than compete with each other for smaller grants.

One way Bond LSC encourages collaboration and the startup of new studies is through seed grants. These help them get proposals off the ground with up to $100,000 to get their projects up and running.

“Funding has become so competitive you can’t just have a good idea. The more data you have, the better you can convince reviewers that the project will really work,” Gassmann said. “In a way, it’s counterintuitive. You write these grants and say, ‘I really need this money to prove that it’ll work,’ but the reviewers come back and say, ‘show me that’ll work and then we’ll give you the money.’ That’s always a balancing act.”

A significant intent of seed grants is to stimulate teamwork. Applications require both collaboration and for researchers to propose something they haven’t done before. Eight proposals were funded in the last round.

“The program has been very successful when you compare how much investment we put into seed grants and how much federal funding came out of previous rounds of Bond LSC seed funding. It was almost seven to one,” Gassmann said. “To me, that makes it seem like it was a good investment.”

The UM System recently built on this concept with a series of grants to enhance the ‘well-being for Missouri, the nation and the world through transformative teaching, research, innovation, engagement and inclusion,’ investing millions in strategic projects across Missouri.

Additionally, Bond LSC sets up “hot topics” lunches where scientists build bridges for potential collaborations. They help researchers meet other people on campus who they could team up with and apply for larger grants. These monthly meetings for metabolomics, microbiology and cancer researchers across campus help identify and form collaborations.

Julia Rodriguez, lead grant writer for Bond LSC, specializes in identifying new funding opportunities and potential collaborations as well as refining the grant applications. She regularly alerts researchers across campus to new funding opportunities.

“I think our investigators are very creative and they have the support from the administration to think bigger,” Rodriguez said. “When investigators are looking for potential grants, we help them attack the situation from another angle. We teach them how to search for grants and where to search. We talk with them about outside-the-box opportunities and help them frame their question a little differently to compete for funding from different sources, so that they have a broader portfolio.”

One example of this continued grant success is Primary Investigator Jay Thelen. He was awarded a $3.4 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Plant Genome Research Program Grant to study metabolic constraints and regulatory nodes in engineered oilseeds. The grant was the fourth grant awarded to Bond LSC researchers in recent years by the NSF Plant Genome Research Program, which focuses on large collaborative projects, and all four are currently active.

But, it takes a concerted effort from faculty and staff to ensure everything is in order for federal granting agencies.

“Having knowledgeable and dedicated staff like Julia Rodriguez and Patience Okiring in close contact with our faculty is key to our high rate of grant success,” Gassmann said. “Not only are they familiar with the wide variety of funding agencies, but they also get to know the faculty well and know what funding opportunities might be of interest to them.”

The main motivation for the increase in grant funding is to strengthen Mizzou’s reputation as a leading research institution and attract talented faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows. By increasing grant funding, Mizzou can indirectly increase student enrollment, attract talented faculty and improve an already vibrant research environment.

“There are only 24 hours in a day, and you have to spend it on what you feel is important. There has always been an expectation of external funding,” Gassmann said. “Bond LSC faculty are very driven and entrepreneurial from the get-go. Chancellor Cartwright’s expectation to double research funding within 5 years was a welcome challenge for us.”

#IAmScience Maddy Creach

November 8, 2019 By Danielle Pycior in #IAmScience Tags: Walter Gassmann

“Science is concrete, but it isn’t rigid. Research is constantly new and fresh.”

By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC

For Maddy Creach, a scientific career was always the end goal, and television and books have played a part in that inspiration.

When she was a kid, her “big science nerd” of a dad watched NOVA all the time with her along with dinosaur documentaries, and she could always turn to him for support in her career aspirations.

That support has continued for her current dream — to work for NASA’s plant research team. Astronaut Scott Kelly’s memoir, which dives into his work on growing plants in space, was really influential to the sophomore who currently works with plants in Walter Gassmann’s lab at Bond LSC. The challenges Kelly faced such as carbon dioxide levels and malfunctioning filters got the gears in Creach’s mind turning.

“I just think it’s the most pressing issue, with climate change and all, to look into long term space research,” she said. “I love the idea of what we can learn in space – the possibilities it holds.”

Creach comes from the land 30 miles south – Jefferson City, and she said she was always good at math growing up, so people often put her into science classes, too.

“When I was in sixth grade, we did this genetics unit and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world,” she said. “So, I wanted to be a genetic counselor, and then eventually I realized that lots of people are suffering, and if I go into research I can help with genetic diseases.”

But her goals were constantly evolving, and landing in a lab freshman year continued to change her. She got her start in the Gassmann lab through the plant sciences freshman research group, in part because of her ambition of getting into a research lab as soon as possible. But that chance placement has grown into a love for a field she sees as the future of research.

Creach enjoys how focusing on the basics, such as a single protein, can be incredibly useful. She sees research in its purest form as a possibility to understand the nuance of science in its pursuit to understand. Science is both concrete and open-ended in her mind, and the combination of those two things brings her back to her research every day.

“In the sciences, I like that biology is much more situational; you can’t apply one concept to everything else, it’s just a little random,” she said.

Outside of research, she loves to read, mountain bike, hike, camp and generally be outdoors. Lately, she’s been reading the classics. One of her favorite books is “Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock,” which is a fiction book that touches on heavy topics such as suicide. She said it was really eye-opening for her and she still thinks about it regularly. Another book that has stuck with her is “Where Bigfoot Walks.”

“I love that book,” she said in between laughs. “I am of the school of thought that Bigfoot is 1,000 percent real and out there, but I don’t think that he should be discovered; that would ruin bigfoot.”

Now halfway through her second year, she’s working with other undergrads in the bioinformatics and plant science program. She grows the plants and collects the data, and the computer scientists analyze it. She says her eventual goal from studying biology is to get into a Ph.D. program in biology or plant sciences.

“The past two years have changed the way I think about science education,” she said. “You can hear a million lectures on something, but you can’t really understand it until you apply it. It was really hard at first; it was like trying to translate Spanish having no knowledge of Spanish.”

Like many others, she appreciates the ability to learn from and work with different labs in Bond LSC. Trying to understand it all and presenting her research — especially to the knowledgeable people in this building — is a huge challenge for her that she said can be a little intimidating.

“I’m working toward it,” she said.

#IAmScience Sharon Pike

November 1, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: Walter Gassmann

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Sharon Pike grew up in an era that didn’t encourage young girls to pursue fields predominantly occupied by men. Through trial and error in various careers, she eventually landed a spot as a lab technician at MU in 1985. Since then, she found her passion and voice in science, and at the age of 77, she doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon.

Pike felt the limitations of being a girl, growing up in the Midwest and lacking the financial means to obtain an education beyond the undergraduate level. But, she was inspired by figures such as Marian Anderson, Madame Curie and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who defied the odds to become prominent female figures in their field.

“When I graduated high school in 1960, there were an awful lot of professions that ended in man. Policeman, fireman, draftsman and postman. Some professions didn’t end in man, but it was understood that men fulfilled those roles, such as scientists and doctors,” said Pike, lab manager for the Gassmann lab in the Bond Life Sciences Center.

Positions such as teachers, social workers, nurses, secretaries or laboratory technicians were acceptable positions for women in the 60s, so Pike began her career as a teacher but quickly found it was not for her. She went through a series of positions such as a counselor for elementary school students, ran clinical studies at the Child Development Lab at MU and taught a self-contained classroom for children with learning disabilities. None were the right fit for her.

From there, Pike moved away from teaching and began drafting infrastructure maps for Telecom Engineering. Before AutoCAD and graphic design, engineer drafters had to use Leroy Lettering Sets to draw large-scale maps by hand. She appreciated the attention to detail it required and settled into a routine as a drafter for the next 10 years.

Sharon Pike demonstrates how Leroy Lettering Sets were used to draft on large posters before graphic design and AutoCAD existed. | Photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC

The position with Telecom Engineering allowed Pike the freedom to raise her daughter. She was able to be a scout leader and a 4-H leader, but after she was laid off, she craved something more.

“After they laid off the draftspeople, I went to another company that was doing surveying of municipal sewers and parking lots. I drafted with a lady name Dori Novacky who mentioned her husband was looking for a lab technician,” said Pike, “I told Dori that if I could do it all over again, I would begin with science.”

In 1985, Pike became the lab technician in Anton Novacky’s lab and, within the year, she was acknowledged at the end of one of his papers for her helpfulness and her assistance. After that, it was her goal to be a published author, and eventually, she did. But it didn’t make her as happy as she thought it would.

Pike helped Novacky by using her drafting skills to letter on posters, editing drafts of research papers and holding down the fort while he was on extended research trips.

“While I was here and he was off traveling, I was going to things that he would have normally gone to, like meetings and stuff like that, because he wasn’t here,” Pike said. “I ended up doing a lot and being an author on a lot of things, sometimes for the editing I did and sometimes for the work I did.”

When it was time for Novacky to retire, Pike came with the lab and the equipment that would be passed on to the next researcher.

“I held down the lab for two years while they were looking for someone to replace Anton. Walter started here in 2000 and, like the furniture, I went with the lab. I was part of the package,” Pike said. “It’s really neat that we got Walter because he was one of the very few people in the United States who could use my skills.”

Although Pike likes editing papers and conducting research, her real enjoyment stems from working with international students and serving as a role model for young women who want to pursue science.

“I’ve always tried to make it a home situation for our international students,” Pike said. “I’ve provided transportation and I’ve helped them furnish their apartments and sometimes they’ve stayed in my house when they needed a place to stay for a while.”

Above Sharon Pike’s work station hangs a collection of memories acquired from her years in the lab. | Photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC

Pike enjoys taking her fellow lab members to activities around Columbia and the state. When the lab had visiting scholar Amparo Sanz from Spain, Pike took her to the Missouri State Fair, the Botanical Gardens and a tour of southern Missouri. Additionally, she has attended Spooktacular, Homecoming House Decorations and the Unbound Book Festival with her lab mates as well as First Friday’s in Columbia’s Arts District. She also makes it point to celebrate everyone in the lab’s birthday and throws farewell parties for departing students, staff or scholars.

With all of her international friends who she’s met over the years, Pike has visited many of them in France, Japan, China, Germany, Switzerland and Slovakia. And she has invitations to visit Spain and India, both of which she intends to visit soon.

“Growing up I always wanted to have friends in other countries. It was a surprise for me that in science I get to have friends from all over the world now,” Pike said. “I show them here and then I go visit there. I love showing them our culture and learning about theirs.

At the age of 77, Pike doesn’t plan on leaving the lab in the near future.

“I think one reason is because of not being able to get started. I was 43 when I got into science and I feel like I haven’t had enough time with it,” Pike said.

Throughout her years in the Novacky and Gassmann labs, Pike has worked on numerous research projects. Specifically, Pike has done microinjecting of frog egg oocytes with genetic instructions to make plant transporters in order to test their functions. These transporters shuttle molecules across membranes to get things into and out of the plant cell structures, and scientists use this frog egg system to help figure out what exactly each transporter does.

Pike plans on staying with the lab for another three years if she can continue editing papers and helping members of her lab. She particularly enjoys the editing aspect and is looking for ways to be a mentor and editor for her colleagues’ papers even after she retires and moves on from the lab.

“I think I’ll be in St. Louis within the next three years because that’s where my daughter lives. I want to buy a house and live in a neighborhood and have a life. I want to enjoy the festivals and activities going on around St. Louis and continue to live my life.”