When Carolyn Robinson was a kid, she was fascinated by the world around her. She remembers putting scabs under magnifying glasses and squishing bugs to try and understand the oddities of the world.
“Science continuously blows my mind,” Robinson said. “There’s always something where you almost don’t believe it at first, and there is so much we still don’t know, even about something as simple as a virus.”
As a now 3rd-year graduate student working on her Ph.D. in molecular pathogenesis and therapeutics in Marc Johnson’s lab, she is still attempting to make sense of the puzzling things around her. She screens potential compounds that might block VPU, a protein that helps HIV escape the host.
Robinson grew up with parents who taught her the value of solving a puzzle on her own. She said this influenced her and gave her curiosity more direction throughout her life.
“My dad’s favorite quote was there’s more than one way to do anything, so if I was frustrated about something he’d encourage me to find a new way, or if I didn’t know how to spell a word he’d give me the first letter and make me find it in the dictionary,” she said.
Though she enjoys the small victories of solving puzzles, she said it can be easy to get lost in the day-to-day of research and lose sight of the big picture. When she faces a challenge or needs to clear her mind, she takes a 15-minute walk around campus to gain perspective, and the possibility of learning something new keeps her interested and excited throughout her research.
“You don’t expect to want to come in at 9 p.m. to check on some cells,” she said laughing.
During her undergraduate degree in cellular and molecular biology at Depaul University in Chicago, a mentor helped her realize her interest in doing research. After interviewing with different graduate programs, the experience she had with MU drew her in. She loves the atmosphere of not only her lab but of the community inside Bond LSC.
Though she isn’t certain where her studies will take her, she hopes to continue learning and participating in the community that science generates.
“I hope to be able to get science out into the community and explain science in a way that makes people who don’t have a degree in it to find it as interesting as I do,” she said.
Every year we all tend to pay a visit to the doctor to get ahead of cold and flu season. Nothing could be worse than being in the midst of a hectic time at work or school and being out of commission.
Many don’t think twice about the annual flu shot, it just becomes a part of their autumnal routine. But for Henry Wan, a new primary investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center, a significant portion of his life revolves around understanding how flu viruses get transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa as well as tracking down more effective influenza vaccination strains.
Flu viruses caused more than 959,000 hospitalizations and 79,400 deaths during the 2017-2018 flu season in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And influenza A virus (IAV), also known as the avian flu, has caused pandemics that resulted in millions of deaths in poultry, and fear of widespread transmission to humans and other mammals.
Wan’s interest in influenza started in 1996 after an outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1 virus) in South China. In 1997, this same virus caused another outbreak in Hong Kong that killed 40 percent of geese infected and crossed over to infect 18 humans, causing six of them to die.
While extremely noteworthy because the strain seemed to jump from poultry to humans, researchers weren’t able to pinpoint how these viruses were circulating in wild birds and predict which avian flu could transmit from wild birds to human and from human to human.
“Over the past decade, we’ve been trying to study how influenza emerged in the animal-human interface,” said Wan. “Influenza transmission among humans and different wild and domestic animals have been well documented for decades, however, the detailed mechanism is far from being understood. We still cannot predict emerging risks and provide precise alerts for influenza emergence for domestic animals and humans.”
Wan grew up in a small town in central China on the Yangtze River. After earning an undergraduate degree at Jiangxi Agricultural University in Nanchang, China, Wan decided to pursue an advanced degree in Avian Medicine at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, China. Afterward, he moved to the United States to obtain his Ph.D. in veterinary medicine and a master’s in computer science at Mississippi State University where he studied mycoplasmas in poultry rather than influenza.
While mycoplasmas weren’t the peak of his research interest, he still enjoyed studying them.
“I was a poor student from China and didn’t have the opportunities that are available now. The student assistantship at Mississippi State University provided by mycoplasmas study was a good opportunity,” he said. “While at MSU I also had an opportunity to study computer science while finishing my Ph.D. and that really helped me build a foundation in systems biology.”
Wan spent a short period at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee before finishing his post-doc at the University of Missouri in the lab of Dong Xu.
From there, he started his teaching and research career at Miami University of Ohio, however, he didn’t get back to studying influenza until he moved to Atlanta to work at the Centers for Disease Control as a senior scientist fellow in 2007. Wan dived back into academics as a veterinary medicine professor to graduate students at Mississippi State University in 2009 and remained there until coming to MU this fall.
His focus on influenza will be helped by a recent $2.8 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop and implement high-throughput technology to study and characterize influenza viruses’ antigenic properties and understand antigenic evolution of influenza A viruses. This technical-sounding purpose truly means his lab will work to advance the technology behind vaccine strain selection, especially for children, elderly and pregnant women, to provide a more universal flu vaccine strain for the general population.
Additionally, the project will explore the mechanisms that cause variation in influenza virus quasi-species and establish a history of prior human exposure to influenza viruses in an effort to improve strain selection.
“The mechanisms that cause variation in quasi-species will help us understand how influenza variants emerge in humans and help develop a better-targeted surveillance and prevention strategy through vaccination,” Wan said.
While Wan has only been at Mizzou since this summer, he’s jumped feet first into research collaborations here. He’s also involved in a cross-campus project funded by a University of Missouri System Tier-2 grant to build more research capacity for data-driven discoveries and a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a broadly protective E. coli vaccine, among others.
When not in the lab, Wan enjoys spending time outdoors, running and biking along the Katy trail, as well as playing Ping-Pong with his friends. He believes in exercise as an outlet for brainstorming new ideas, rather than just sitting in a lab or his office.
“I think that’s critical, especially in science and research. A lot of the time I get a sparkling idea from exercise, not from sitting in this office. It’s from when you do something else another idea comes,” Wan said.
This research is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Wan is a Bond LSC primary investigator and joint professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine, the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Ke Gao and Sam McInturf reveal Sun Bear to presidents and administrators of UWC and MU.
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
Fourteen days. That’s how long it took Sam McInturf and Ke Gao to put together a root imaging machine named ‘Sun Bear’ at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa this past June.
The pair, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Bond LSC’s David Mendoza and a computer science Ph.D. candidate, brought the automated approach to capturing data on root growth abroad as part of a technology transfer collaboration under the University of Missouri African Education Program (UMSAEP) established by the board of curators in 1985.
The machine, which optimizes data collection of root growth and provides more intuitive data about the factors that stunt or spur growth, allows researchers to focus more time on larger and diverse projects. In many research labs, automation is the way of the future.
“It changes the game. Being able to do everything in a high throughput fashion and being able to test lots of things at once allows us to consider the type of experiments we might conduct differently,” said McInturf. “All of a sudden we have access to the physical capacity to ask new types of questions.”
After touching down in Cape Town, the duo was immediately met with their first obstacle — the tools and building materials they shipped over were tied up in customs. Although McInturf and Gao prepared for obstacles with power conversions and tool availability, they weren’t anticipating broken equipment or problems with electrical wiring and motors.
Over 14 days, the pair spent 10-12 hours in the lab constructing the machine in preparation for its unveiling with presidents and administrators of both UWC and MU. The construction of the machine coincided with a visit by the University of Missouri System President Mun Choi.
“We went over there with a hard deadline of presenting the machine to the presidents of both universities and we needed to be ready then,” said McInturf. “The sum total of all of our efforts resulted in 15 minutes with the presidents where we got to meet with them, and we got to show off what we had built and the plans that we have come up with for further collaboration.”
Sam McInturf escorts Mun Choi and UWC administrators to view Sun Bear.
McInturf has been instrumental in the project since its beginning.
In 2014, the project idea was brought to McInturf by his adviser David Mendoza. Since then, the project has morphed through four major prototypes and has been worked on by students and researchers across multiple disciplines including bioengineering, computer science and computer engineering. In all, students and researchers from the Division of Plant Sciences and the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department spent five years developing the blueprint for the interface and the algorithm for the machine.
UM System President Mun Choi observes Sun Bear, a root imaging machine installed at UWC by two MU researchers.
In its beginning stages, the project was part of a bioengineering senior capstone class, and McInturf was the only person working on it in 2017 as he finished his doctoral work.
“We made serious progress starting about two years ago, but we really hit our stride about one year ago in the fall of 2018,” he said.
Gao joined the team about a year ago to help refine an algorithm to process the data. His algorithm recognizes the seed and the root and measures the root growth over time in conjunction with a time stamp.
However, the robot is still undergoing minor tweaks and finishing touches.
“We’re definitely going to be working on the root tracing algorithm for the fall semester. For now, it’s still a prototype. It’s not very optimized and it’s still a little bit slow,” said Gao. “I’ve been working with Sam to make the interface better to show more information like a graph or a table. Right now, we are only measuring the primary root, but there are also a lot of branches on the root. We don’t have an algorithm yet that’s working well for that scenario.”
The robot is currently being used at both UWC and MU to capture detailed information about root growth under a variety of different stresses, conditions and genetic backgrounds. This method of data collection as compared to the traditional methods of manually measuring and recording information is allowing researchers to better understand how different factors affect root growth.
The Sun Bear root imaging machine is housed in the Mendoza lab of the Bond LSC. The machine was part of a technology transfer between the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town South Africa and MU in June 2019. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
“We are interested in characterizing genes by first breaking them and seeing what happens,” said McInturf. “Once we understand what these genes are doing and how they interact together, then we can go on to engineer crops and conduct targeted breeding strategies to allow plants to survive harsh environments.”
The project is part of a cross-campus collaborative named “The Foundry” funded by CAFNR and housed in the LSC which brings together scientists and engineers from varying disciplines to mechanize biology. Other projects currently being worked on by The Foundry include a hyperspectral camera and a leaf imaging robot.
As for McInturf, this project has opened his eyes to a new realm of possibility in his future career path.
“I didn’t think that I could do this kind of work before this project. Not only did it show me that I have the capacity to do it and that it wasn’t so impossible, but it showed me that I could,” said McInturf. “As I move forward to industry or academia my goal is to be working on the interface between mechanization and plant biology, that is kind of my bread and butter at this point.”
UMSAEP was established in 1985 by the University of Missouri Board of Curators to aid South Africans who were disadvantaged by the then-government’s apartheid policies. In June 1986, a formal memorandum of academic cooperation was signed by then UM President C. Peter Magrath and then UWC Rector Jakes Gerwel. This agreement has the distinction of being the first-ever developed between a nonwhite South African university and an American university.
It’s the little things we take for granted, and for science experiments, one of those are enzymes.
French chemist Anselme Payen discovered the first enzyme, diastase, in 1833, but it wasn’t until 1877 that the word enzyme was used. While it’s a compact name, it’s really a category of proteins produced by living organisms that speed up chemical reactions regardless of whether it’s in the body or the test tube. The way these proteins are folded make their chemical interaction very specific, but when they bind with the right molecules, they speed up reactions hundreds or thousands of times. Since their first discovery, researchers have found thousands more enzymes that play an integral role in even more scientific discoveries.
A program on the second floor of Bond Life Sciences Center gives scientists the small something they need to make those discoveries. The Enzyme Freezer Program — part of the MU Genomics Technology Core— began in the 1990s and has grown to provide enzymes for 120 different labs across the University of Missouri campus.
Though it has become a staple in the science community, allowing researchers to walk down the stairs or make a call across campus to find what they need, this convenience helps quickly and quietly move science forward.
“Modern research requires a lot of expensive things,” said Kate Shipova, freezer program specialist. “For end-users, it’s convenient because they can come and buy something immediately.”
Shipova spends her days talking with sales representatives and vendors, fixing problems and finding researchers the substances they need to continue searching for answers. The lab is lined with refrigerators and freezers, all stocked full of substances used every day in labs around campus and around the world for anything from genome sequencing to nucleic acid purification.
Nowadays, it’s normal to have fairly easy access to any substance scientists may need for their research, but generations ago this would have been difficult to imagine. Walter Gassmann, Bond LSC interim director and professor of plant sciences, recalled visiting a colleague in Morocco who works for its government. She has to order everything she needs for her lab an entire year in advance, while MU researchers can get what they need on a whim if needed.
“I think it’s too easy to take things for granted that was more work before, and this really accelerates your research,” Gassmann said. “It helps not having to plan far in advance.”
The program has numerous chemicals in stock and the ability special order almost any enzyme a researcher may need, shipping it for free and at a discounted price. Nathan Bivens, assistant director of the MU Genomics Technology Core, said most of the chemicals are used for molecular biology or proteomics research, so the common reagents they keep in stock work with RNA and DNA.
“It’s really an advantage to a researcher who wants to make that grant dollar stretch since it’s a much more affordable option,” Bivens said. “Plus, it’s here and readily available. You have the ability to come here and get the reagent quickly.”
In many parts of the world, researchers aren’t so lucky to work in a place with resources this readily available, with a staff dedicated to helping. Shipova and Bivens work to make researchers’ lives easier by providing the chemicals they need at an affordable price, and scientists such as Gassmann appreciate all of the hard work they do.
“In other countries, an enzyme has to be shipped, and it can get stuck in customs and it doesn’t get treated right. Here things are so much easier.”
What was once only a dream for scientists who couldn’t so readily access the tools they need is now a common and easily accessible program. While new technologies and methods continue to take the spotlight, freezer programs and those who run them will continue working in buildings like Bond LSC to quickly make reactions happen.
As Rosenfeld’s students graduate, awards and future plans celebrate excellence
Brittney Marshall, a graduating Biological Sciences major, and mentor Cheryl Rosenfeld. Marshall has done undergraduate research in Rosenfeld’s lab for three years. | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
Brittney Marshall, a soon-to-be-graduating senior from MU’s College of Arts and Sciences with a degree in biological sciences, received one of 15 University of Missouri Awards for Academic Distinction as well as the 2019 Outstanding Senior in Biological Sciences Award.
Marshall started research three years ago in Bond Life Science Center as a sophomore in Cheryl Rosenfeld’s lab. Rosenfeld, her mentor, nominated her for the award along with Thomas Phillips, one of her professors, that celebrates “evidence of extraordinary intellectual curiosity, actively seeking knowledge beyond the classroom and striving to share that knowledge with public audiences for a broader impact, and significantly contributing to the academic atmosphere at the University of Missouri.”
And Marshall has done just that.
Marshall worked with Rosenfeld to examine how prenatal exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) and genistein, a phytoestrogen found in soy, affect behavior in California mice and the gut microbiome and metabolome.
“We already knew BPA was bad because it was an estrogen mimic that was causing certain effects, so we wanted to see if more natural versions of similar compounds like genistein from soy would compare,” Marshall said. “Some of the behavior that we are seeing with Genistein actually differs from BPA, which we were surprised.”
Working off of the knowledge that BPA can cause autism-like behaviors such as decreased socialization and cognition, the researchers were able to compare those behaviors with mice exposed to genistein.
In order to quantify the results, they measured the mice’s sociability and their willingness to interact with stranger mice. They also utilized the Barnes maze test, to measure their spatial cognition and memory, and the elevated plus maze test, to measure their anxiety when placed on top of a tall platform.
Outside of the lab, Marshall spent her time volunteering at various organizations in Columbia and Boonville, such as a center for at-risk youth, a therapeutic horse riding facility and a hospital.
“Balancing everything can be really challenging between my academics, research and volunteering,” Marshall said. “I know in the end, it’s all going to be worth it because I’m just trying to make the most of my four years here and I feel like I have.”
However, Marshall isn’t quite done with Columbia yet.
In the fall, she will be attending the MU School of Medicine in hopes of one day becoming a primary care physician or an OB-GYN. She enjoys the idea of having long-term relationships with her patients and recognizes the growing need for primary care, especially in rural areas.
“I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was a little kid, so I’ve been doing everything in my power to get there,” Marshall said. “I just remember learning about cells for the first time in middle school and it just blew my mind that you have all of these teeny tiny structures doing all these super complicated mechanisms in your body and there are millions of cells doing that.”
Marshall has made the most of her time at MU, and she encourages others to do the same.
“College flies by really quickly, so if there’s an opportunity that you think you might want to take advantage of, now is definitely the time to do it,” Marshall said. “I think you’ll be glad that you did. You might be a little busy but I think that the experience and the memories are worth it.”
Madison Ortega, a senior Biological Sciences major, spent three years in the lab of Bond LSC’s Cheryl Rosenfeld. | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
Another one of Rosenfeld’s undergraduate researchers, Madison Ortega, will also graduate and be moving on to bigger things. The Biological Sciences senior recently was accepted into a two-year National Institutes of Health post-baccalaureate program at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.
Similar to Marshall, Ortega has been researching in Rosenfeld’s lab for three years now. Unlike Marshall, Ortega is unsure of her future career path. She sees her post-baccalaureate program with the NIH as an opportunity to get more research underneath her belt while she figures out what the future has in store.
“I think it’s going to be nice taking, not a break, but a little time to explore research further, because I’ve been doing research for three-and-a-half years, but it’s always been part-time,” Ortega said. “I’ve never worked 40-hour weeks doing in-depth research, so I think this is going to be a good opportunity.”
When looking back, both students attribute their time in Rosenfeld’s lab as a key experience with their time at MU.
“Cheryl is really ambitious. She really pushes us to push ourselves and try to make the most of our experiences,” Marshall said. “Sometimes that’s obviously challenging but I’ve really appreciated it because I’ve had a lot of good opportunities come out it. She’s been more than willing to help us undergrads get a lot out of our experience.”
Figuring out how a virus takes over cells could help with gene therapy
Kinjal Majumder and David Pintel | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
When we catch a cold or contract the flu, we usually attribute it to picking up a virus from a friend or someone we know. Our bodies’ built-up immune systems have a way of attacking viruses to help us stay healthy, but sometimes viruses can hide.
A study published in eLife by lead researcher Kinjal Majumder, a postdoctoral fellow in the Bond LSC lab of David Pintel, sought to understand where a virus goes when it hijacks a host cell. This basic science may one day help researchers use viruses to better treat human diseases.
In general, when cancer-causing viruses infect a host cell, they translocate their genetic material into the DNA of healthy cells, taking over and causing disease in the host organism.
Majumder and his collaborators developed an experimental system to identify the ‘zip codes’ within the nucleus where the virus localizes.
“When looking at the mouse DNA in infected cells we noticed that the virus seems to associate with particular sites,” Majumder said. “When we mapped where those sites were, we found that the virus localizes to regions of the genome that are prone to DNA breaks. If you unravel all the DNA, which comes out to be about six meters in length, there are very distinct sites where the virus seems to associate.”
Through this research, Majumder was able to figure out where the virus goes when it infects a host cell and why it is attracted to those certain locations. These DNA sequence sites are prone to having breaks which is indicated by the presence of DNA repair machinery, making them more vulnerable to viruses. His current research focuses on how viruses hijack these break sites and take over the repair machinery to replicate.
“Viruses are very intelligent,” Majumder said. “What we’re now trying to do is to understand how they move about in the nucleus. We found out the where, we think we know the why, now we want to know how they know to attach to these sites.”
In order to conduct his research, Majumder is using a simple ‘test-tube’ model virus called minute virus of mice (MVM), which is a rodent parvovirus, to look at host-virus interactions. This model is particularly easy to work with in a lab setting and results are easily transferable to other viruses in animals and humans.
Other cancer-causing viruses that function similarly to parvovirus, such as human papillomavirus (HPV) and hepatitis B, have also been found to integrate into breaks in DNA chains and drive cancer progression.
“There is a close relationship between a replicating virus and the cell’s DNA repair machinery which normally protects us from cancer. Now we are starting to see that MVM localizes to the sites in the nucleus which contain a lot of these repair proteins,” Majumder said. “It’s an interesting phenomenon and we are starting to study the mechanism of how this might be happening.”
Majumder adapted an experimental system called chromosome conformation capture assay by chemically cross-linking virus DNA and the cellular DNA that are close together and generating hybrid DNA fragments in a test tube. After sequencing these fragments, Majumder and his team could determine the exact sites that the viruses associated with.
In order to confirm the location of these sites, they used powerful confocal microscopes in MU’s Advanced Light Microscopy Core. By using a laser to make a DNA break in a cell, Majumder could also show that virus localized near the induced breaks.
Kinjal Majumder uses a laser to make breaks in a DNA sequence using the confocal microscopes in MU’s Advanced Light Microscopy Core. | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
“If we can figure out how the virus is going to those regions, it opens up the possibility of finding whether other viruses, such as HPV or hepatitis B, utilize similar mechanisms to go to those sites,” Majumder said. “Knowing that may help study how oncogenic viruses cause cancer.”
Understanding how viruses hijack host cells and utilize cellular DNA breaks may allow future researchers to design improved cancer therapies.
Parvoviruses, in a broader sense, are used in oncolytic therapies to treat cancers using viruses. Cancer cells can arise due to dysregulation of DNA repair machinery in cells. They can also occur due to mutations in DNA breaks that can cause translocations. Parvoviruses have the ability to replicate in cancer cells, which is why they are being used as gene therapy vectors in clinical trials to target cancer.
“Knowing where gene therapy vectors stay long-term and how they interact with DNA repair proteins is important because they can express throughout their lifetime,” Majumder said. “For example, if you have cystic fibrosis, you have a mutation in one particular gene, so you don’t make specific proteins and as a result, you get a lot of health problems. Gene therapy adds a wild-type piece of DNA to express the correct version of the protein.”
For his Ph.D., Majumder looked at how the genome folds upon itself, gets packaged into the nucleus, and how this packaging regulates immune system development. His previous research on the genome is currently helping him advance his work with viruses.
“When I started working with viruses, I realized I could easily utilize those techniques to map how viral DNA interacts with the host’s DNA,” Majumder said.
Majumder hopes a better understanding of how viruses interact with DNA damage responses will move forward gene therapy.
“If you know how these viruses interact with the host’s proteins in the nucleus, you can design more effective gene therapy vectors.”
This research was published in the Journal “eLife” in July 2018 and was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the National Institutes of Health.
Ethan Myers is a senior biochemistry major studying oil production in soybeans. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
Preparing home-cooked meals regularly and maintaining houseplants can oftentimes be too time-consuming for stressed-out college students, but not for Ethan Myers.
At Myers’ student apartment you can find a bonsai tree and a plethora of herbs such as catnip, basil, mint and even some pepper plants. This love of plants comes from his childhood when he spent his summers helping his grandma plant shrubs, flowers and trees in her garden.
Using the herbs she grew in her garden, Myers would help his grandma cook Thanksgiving dinner and appetizers for her game club called ‘the game girls.’ Working alongside her in the garden and the kitchen, all while sharing a common passion for nature, formed the strong relationship they still have today.
“Me and my grandma are tight,” said the biochemistry undergrad.
His knack for gardening as well as his interest in plants from a scientific perspective led him to pursue a degree in biochemistry and pick up an independent research project in the Jay Thelen lab in Bond LSC.
“My grandpa was a nuclear physicist and so having that science background from him has been interesting and fulfilling to see why things in the wild are the way they are and how they can be altered in a science setting,” Myers said.
Working with post-doctoral fellow Eric Fedosejevs, Myers pursues two hypotheses to increase the amount of oil production in soybeans.
The first looks to overexpress a subunit of Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase, a biotin-dependent enzyme that provides the malonyl-CoA substrate for the biosynthesis of fatty acids. By overexpressing this subunit, Myers anticipates finding an increased amount of oil production in the test plants.
Another hypothesis looks to under-express a family of proteins that are negative regulators of acetyl-Coa carboxylase. By under-expressing biotin associated domain-containing proteins (BADCs) and inhibiting the gene that encodes BADCs, the protein can’t bind, and the plant will be able to produce more fatty acids.
Ethan Myers is a senior biochemistry major studying oil production in soybeans. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
Ethan Myers prepares crude protein samples for isolation and purification for his research with soybeans. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC [/caption]
Soybean oil is an environmentally friendly, renewable alternative to petroleum diesel. According to the United Soybean Board, biodiesel reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 86 percent.
By fortifying soybeans to produce more oil, less landmass, labor and other environmental resources, such as water and minerals, are needed.
“It’s important to be able to use resources to their fullest potential,” Myers said. “Soybeans are used for protein in the form of tofu and edamame as well as biofuels and industrial lubricants. Because of the increase in the world’s population, there has been a throttle on resources. By modifying plants to be more efficient, we can mitigate some of the stress on the planet.”
In other words, if we can get more out of one plant while using fewer resources, it creates a more sustainable supply while lessening the impacts on the environment.
In his spare time, Myers enjoys cooking as another passion. His interest in food really grew when he began working in restaurants almost 10 years ago.
“I really enjoy cooking for myself and my friends,” Myers said. “I use the herbs that I grow in my backyard. I made a homemade chicken alfredo pizza this past Sunday for a Game of Thrones watch party.”
The next step in Myers’ life likely leads to a doctoral program elsewhere. He is currently applying to Ph.D. programs at the University of California, Davis, University of Texas, Austin, University of Colorado, Denver and Michigan State University. In the future, he hopes to be a biochemistry professor and instill in his students the same sense of wonder that he has in his research.
“In this day and age, there are so many things that you can just Google and have an answer in seconds,” Myers said. “But there are so many questions out there where there is no answer on Google and you have to make your own understanding of things. It’s become so easy to have an answer at your fingertips, but it’s so much more valuable to actually figure something out on your own.”
Through Chris Pires’ eyes, science isn’t an unconnected ideology in which scientists hold the proper way of understanding the world, it is an answer-seeking process in which humans strive to understand existence and the things around and within it.
“I don’t think science is a thing, it’s a way of thinking” Pires said. “I like to think I live the life of the mind.”
As a kid in a rural northern California town, he dreamt of exploring the universe and alien landscapes, but enthusiastically settled for the unobserved below the surface. He often hung out with bees, wasps and other insects, fascinated by their nature. Yet, one fateful day, he was stung by a bee, rendering them off limits for a future career. This led him to look beyond bees to flowers and plant life.
“Plants are amazingly alien and interesting because they cannot run away from a hostile environment, they have to figure out how to survive and reproduce where they are,” he said.
In high school, an inspirational teacher taught him more than just human biology, introducing him to a world of plant and environmental biology. Over the lunch hour, his teacher would teach an advanced placement course that created a space for Pires and others to learn more than they otherwise could, in an open and accepting way. Now as a professor, Pires is able to do the same for his students.
“Growing up in a small town, you have to learn how to create your own world,” he said.
As an undergraduate at the University of California – Berkeley, he studied genetics and philosophy, always fascinated by the interconnectedness of ranging topics. After graduation, he held a few positions doing things he enjoyed but soon realized his desire to return to school. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, then working as a postdoctoral associate until he made his way to MU in 2005. Since that time, he has been promoted to full professor, principal investigator at Bond LSC, associate dean for research and won numerous awards for leadership and research.
“A constant for me is living the life of the mind and creating spaces where I can think and I can engage other people in cool things,” he said. “And I think I’ve been successful because I’ve been able to build these large interdisciplinary teams that do cool science.”
Pires, though quite successful, said the real success lies within his lab and among the researchers he has worked with. He appreciates the ability to face the “gray spaces” that challenge concepts of what a species is or the “gray spaces” of interdisciplinary fields that connect along and within science and humanities. He understands the world through a lens of interconnectedness and dependence, which leads him to appreciate what a team has to offer.
Though many see him as an extrovert, he has a quiet, reflective nature to his character. Whether he is walking his dog in the morning, swimming laps in the pool or gardening in his yard, he values the time to recharge and renew his spirit, allowing for his unwavering enthusiasm.
Apart from the enthusiasm that is often appreciated on his teacher evaluations, he is a connector. He sees his value in connecting students to information, researchers to ideas and collaborating on interdisciplinary work that paves the way to new opportunities.
Regardless of what the future holds, Pires plans to continue collaborating, learning and thinking of new ways to do research and to connect more people together. He values the opportunity to continue training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists.
A time to celebrate the thing that makes us who we are
By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC
In 1865, after a decade long search into patterns of inheritance, Gregor Mendel discovered how individuals receive traits from their parents. Through working with pea plants, he found that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units. He tracked those genes through dominant and recessive traits. Like many vital scientists throughout history, Mendel wasn’t appreciated in his own time due to his unpopular ideas. Now seen as the “father of genetics,” Mendel is recognized as the scientist who began the genetics revolution.
Gregor Mendel
“There’s been an immense amount of progress even in the last two decades,” Warren said.
While one cell’s DNA unraveled is around 1.2 miles in length, the entire DNA strand in a human body is equivalent to 120 billion miles, twice the diameter of the solar system.
“What fascinates me is decoding the genetic blueprint of life, comparing it to other closely related species and trying to understand how that species is unique and different,” Warren said.
Throughout his career, Warren has been able to work closely with what he calls the ‘blueprint for life.’ Through incredible scientific advancements, he’s been able to decode the genomic code of various species, paving the way for understanding and discovery.
“Certainly, we know the biology is different — physically they’re different, morphologically they’re different, but at some genetic level we know they’re very similar,” Warren said. “So how does that change in the variation of the genetic blueprint result in that individual species having a very different phenotypic profile than a closely related species?”
But this rapid advance in the modern era moved much slower after Mendel’s initial discoveries. It wasn’t until the 1900s that Mendel’s work was rediscovered and taken seriously, and by the 1940s, Oswald Avery, an immunochemist, discovered DNA to be the transforming factor of genes. A paper he published outlining this assessment then inspired Erwin Chargaff, who discovered that DNA composition is species specific.
Rosalind Franklin
A few years later, James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. By 1962, the three men won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for the discovery. Though the high-resolution X-rays Franklin took of DNA fibers led to the discovery of the double-helix structure, she was not awarded along with the three men, having died of cancer a few years earlier. Over the next six decades, scientists discovered rapid DNA sequencing techniques, various diseases associated with certain genetic markers, ways of cloning animals, how to decode chromosomes and many other revolutionary advancements.
DNA is something that connects every species on the planet. On the outside, it might look like we are extremely different, but on the inside, biological systems allow for each of our existence in a way that is relatively similar throughout any species. Warren enjoys understanding and dissecting the micro levels of that existence to understand how it influences who we and other species are.
“I absolutely think it’s important to look back into the past to understand where we’ve come from and also to learn from mistakes that we’ve made,” Warren said. “The forward-thinking process has to happen today, and we have to learn from what we’ve done in the past to strategize for the future,” Warren said.
In the future, Warren predicts personalized medical experiences where each person’s genomes are on file for doctors to see, helping to anticipate needs and revolutionize the way doctors are able to treat diseases. A century ago, it would have been unfathomable for scientists to image the profound advancements the field has seen, and yet they have only begun to see what is possible.
The Science, Health and Environmental Journalism club at MU hosted a fake news panel on April 3. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox
What do CBD, climate change, flat earthers, and anti-vaxxers have in common? All are prevalent in the propagation of ‘fake news’ in science.
Truthful and accurate reporting is crucial in the field of journalism to create a well-informed society. You may have heard the term ‘fake news’ a time or two, but what does fake news really mean, what does it look like and how does it arise?
“It’s important for everybody, all journalists, and really all human beings to kind of have a better understanding of where some of this information went wrong to be able to identify stories that might sound real that are probably not,” said Sarah Shipley-Hiles, an MU journalism professor who chaired the fake news panel hosted by the Science Health and Environmental Journalism (SHEJ) club on Wed., April 3.
In short, fake news is pseudo-news that contains disinformation or falsities that deceive the public. This false information sparks distrust of the media and causes strong debate among members of opposing ideologies.
SHEJ president Madelyne Maag opened the discussion Wednesday with the flat earth conspiracy theory.
“Flat earth theory is one of the most popular and talked about conspiracy since the 1990s when it first surfaced and then it nearly died out,” Maag said.
The flat earth theory is the belief that instead of the earth being spherical, it is on a plane with a wall surrounding it. It nearly died out in the 1990s when its creator died. However, the theory resurfaced with the rise of the internet and social media.
Facebook provided a platform for those still believing in the theory to connect and spread their ideology. To put it into perspective, the group of 3,500 original believers has expanded to a Facebook following of roughly 200,000 people now.
“Social media has magnified the problem, but it is not the sole source of the problem,” Maag said.
Other platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have brought the flat earth theory to light through videos and documentaries, and further spread its doctrine globally.
To get an understanding of why conspiracy believers thrive, two cognitive researchers from Texas Tech attended the first flat earth conference in Raleigh, NC in 2017. Landrum and Olshansky conducted interviews with 50 attendees to better understand their motivations for believing the theory. They found that people who believe one conspiracy theory are more susceptible to believing other conspiracy theories.
They also found of the people they interviewed, most of them became aware of the theory through YouTube. They reported watching 9/11 conspiracy videos and being led to flat earth conspiracy theory through YouTube’s autoplay function and recommended videos.
And there is no shortage of user-generated content with the rise of the internet. The problem lies in unchecked information and deceptive claims being perceived as fact.
“Because of that, it shows that journalists have an important duty to get the story right the first time,” Maag said. “Those who are in charge of social media have a responsibility to make sure fake news and fake information is not given the light of day.”
The same problem presents in many science news topics, including rapid acceptance of Cannabidiol (CBD) oil as a natural ‘cure all’ despite not being approved by the FDA, anti-vaccination claims and misconceptions of climate change.
Anti-vaccination claims arose after British doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet suggesting a connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination to behavioral and developmental disorders in children. The study was later retracted as the study was not replicable by other researchers, thus invalidating its claims. Additionally, the study was funded by private interest groups who were against vaccine-producing companies.
“Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah, the Today Show and the View and talked about her own anecdotal experience of her son having autism so she claims that the vaccine for MMR led to that,” said Ashton Day, a graduate student at MU.
Because of the reach of these television shows as well as McCarthy’s following, among other causes, this belief was able to spread into public thought and encourage support for this stance.
The panel concluded that current journalistic reporting is doing a disservice to public perceptions of these issues.
“Unfortunately, the media played a big part in spreading the problem,” Shipley-Hiles said. “Journalists, in an attempt to be fair, cover these issues like a football game or a political battle. They just say these people say climate change is happening or not happening, you figure it out.”
