#IAmScience because science allows people to find their own creativity through the art of research.
Every Friday afternoon, the Pires lab can be found in the greenhouse washing pots and cleaning up, and while this could easily be seen as a mundane part of the week, Liz Countee sees it as an opportunity to joke around and enjoy the company of her awesome team.
“I love being surrounded by so many other people that are extremely intelligent and passionate,” she said. “It’s such a great group of people and it’s more than a place to work and do research, it’s a community in itself.”
Countee, an undergrad studying biochemistry, has been in the Pires lab for a year and a half now and has really cherished the experience. Recently, she has been working on coding genome-wide association studies. She said what used to be a foreign concept to her has become an opportunity to grow and progress in new areas. Her mentor and labmates have helped push her in a positive direction throughout her time in the lab, and she loves that there’s always someone looking out for her.
“I’ve gained confidence in being a researcher and my abilities to learn new things even though they may be out of the realm of what I’m used to,” she said.
Though some projects she’s worked on in the lab have been an intellectual reach for her, she’s learned that taking that leap into something new, even if she fails at first, is one of the most beneficial things one can do in life. In research, a lot of things don’t work out, so getting used to multiple tries has been one of the biggest and most beneficial challenges she’s experienced in the lab.
“I enjoy the wider applications of research,” she said. “Of course what I’m doing seems like such a small part, but it can help general plant breeding programs or crop development, and so it becomes bigger. It makes me feel like my little part is making a difference because in the end when it comes together it’ll be one successful product that can benefit a lot of people.”
In May, Countee will receive her undergraduate degree and move on to a master’s program in the fall. After a summer of travel and enjoying those she loves, she plans to dive into a two-year program to become a genetic counselor. Her hope is to one day educate and counsel people on testing, treatment, genetic history and so on. Though she’s excited about her future career, she isn’t quite ready to move on just yet.
“If I had gone to a different university I would not have had such a great experience, and here I’ve really come into myself, and I realize now what I care about and what type of person I am. I’m really grateful to have been here.”
More than anything, she’s grateful for her time at Mizzou and in the Pires lab. She said it’s become more than just a job to her and she values the community she gets to experience.
Hong An is a postdoctoral fellow in the Pires lab. | Photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
Broccoli, cauliflower, kale and cabbage all make up an important part of the food system and provide the nutrients we need to stay healthy—yet, there is still much that researchers don’t know about the genetic structure and the ancestral history of Brassicaceae, the mustard and cabbage family.
Hong An, a postdoctoral fellow in Chris Pires lab, has spent the past three years mapping the genetic history of canola seeds, which are in the Brassicaceae family, to find when and where different variations of the vegetables have occurred. Through this research, An can find the timeline of the formation of the vegetables and estimate how they got from one part of the earth to another.
“Canola oil is ranked the second in the world in oil production following soybean oil which makes it a very important agricultural crop,” said An. “Through my research, I’m trying to find specific genes that will help breeders make batter canola oil. “
An can use this research to understand the genes that make up the different breeds of canola seeds around the world. These findings can help researchers modify plants to improve the quality of the oil and optimize the growing of the plant altogether.
Additionally, An studies two subspecies of the canola species, which are rutabaga and Siberian kale, to improve worldwide breeding of these crops.
“I want to find a gene that can improve rutabaga and kale to make them more nutritious and tastier. Rutabaga already tastes good, but kale is bitter, so we want to find the genes in rutabaga that make it tasty and add those to kale to make it taste less bitter,” said An.
An grew up in the north part of China and never saw canola fields until he moved to the south part of China to attend college.
“As soon as I got to college, I remember thinking that [the canola fields] were so beautiful and that I wanted to study them,” said An.
For his Ph.D., An attended Huazhong Agricultural University and obtained his degree in crop genetic breeding. Although he has been working on his post-doc for three years, this isn’t his first time researching at MU. While he was getting his degree, he spent two years as a joint student in the Pires lab.
After his post-doc, An hopes to carry his knowledge of genetic crop breeding to a career at a seed breeding or biotechnology company.
“Many Brassicaceae are very important for us which is why it’s significant to find a way to make them more nutritious,” said An. “It’s important for people to know where our food comes from.”
Sara Zandalinas is a post-doc researcher in Ron Mittler’s lab | Photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
International flights usually require months of planning to score the best deals and to ensure minimal layovers, so Sara Izquierdo Zandalinas, a post-doc in the Ron Mittler lab, was faced with a challenge as she flew to Spain twice within a month’s span this summer.
But the reason for those flights was a pleasant surprise. Zandalinas recently received the 2019 Sabater award given every two years at the Meeting of the Spanish Society of Plant Physiology held in Pamplona Spain from June 26-28. This award is a tribute to Francisco Sabater, a widely recognized plant physiologist of Spain, and is the most prestigious award given to early-career Spanish researchers in plant science.
“I couldn’t believe it because they told me I won one month before the conference,” said Zandalinas. “At that time, I was in Spain at another conference for 10 days, so I had to come back to Missouri and then I had one-and-a-half weeks to prepare a keynote presentation before I had to go back to Spain.”
Nonetheless, she was thrilled.
Zandalinas was recognized for her research on the role of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), a fancy term for reactive chemical species such as peroxides, in regulating plants responses to stresses and combined stresses, such as heat or drought.
“Studying combined stress is very important because with climate change, as temperatures are increasing, plants are facing not only one single stress in the field but also other additional stresses,” said Zandalinas. “Previous reports in this lab have shown that plants response to a single stress is completely different from the response of plants to multiple stresses.”
As a result, Zandalinas has spent the past two-and-a-half years identifying which genes are involved in acclimating plants to combined stresses. By selecting the genes that hold up well against certain stresses, scientists can begin to develop plants that are more tolerant.
When she was completing her undergraduate degree at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Zandalinas recalls many of her friends and colleagues being drawn to the medical aspect of science. However, not many people were interested in studying plants.
Zandalinas, too, thought she was heading toward a career in the medical field until her final undergraduate project producing human antibodies in tobacco plants changed her mind.
“I remember thinking, ‘how is it possible that we can produce human antibodies in plants and in the future apply it to humans?’ I was fascinated by the powerful tools we have of using plants as bio-factories,” said Zandalinas.
From there, she received two master’s degrees in chromatographic techniques and analytical techniques used in clinical labs and a Ph.D. in plant biotechnology from Jaume I University in Castellon, Spain. Afterward, she began her post-doc with Ron Mittler at the University of North Texas before the lab moved to MU last fall.
While she enjoys having the resources for her research such as MU’s Genomics Technology Core and the Proteomics Center, Zandalinas dreams of the sunny skies and warmth back home in Spain.
Following the completion of her post-doc, Zandalinas hopes to establish her own lab back in Spain. She explains that it won’t be as easy to find a research position in Spain because so many people are completing their post-docs in the U.S. and Europe and are wanting to return to Spain.
“In one to three years I hope to receive a research grant from the Spanish government to begin my own research investigations,” Zandalinas said.
As a result of being awarded the 2019 Sabater Award, Zandalinas is now the Spanish candidate for the award for young European researchers in the biannual conferences of the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology which will take place in Turin, Italy from June 29-July 2, 2020.
Nathan Bivens, Director of the Genomics Technology Core, and Wesley Warren, Bond LSC primary investigator. | Photos by Mariah Cox & Erica Overfelt | Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
The discoveries from research capture the public’s and other scientist’s attention, but what about the tools, instruments and data management systems that provide more efficient means of getting there?
A new genome sequencing instrument is on its way to the Bond Life Sciences Center thanks to a Tier 1 grant from the UM system’s mission to enhance the ‘well-being for Missouri, the nation and the world through transformative teaching, research, innovation, engagement and inclusion’.
Wes Warren, primary investigator in the Bond LSC, led the effort to speed up the turnaround time for genome sequencing and lower the overall cost. The proposal for NovaSeq instrumentation additionally includes purchasing more data storage to keep up with researchers’ demand for the technology.
“This is an issue that has been noticed in the last three or four years around being able to generate the data in a high throughput fashion. A lot of our genomics researchers were required to seek these services off-campus,” said Nathan Bivens, Director of the Genomics Technology Core. “As part of this strategic initiative, we saw an opportunity for campus to invest in this instrument, make it available and then continue to build our own genomics resources here on this campus.”
With his experience with the McDonnell Genomic Institute at Washington University in Saint Louis for the past 17 years, Warren was the person to lead the charge in bringing this technology to MU.
“I was involved in some of the later stages of curating the human genome and I’ve been involved in many genome sequencing efforts at the McDonnell Genomic Institute, not only that but high-throughput sequencing in populations,” said Warren. “My work mostly revolved around comparative genomics. The experience factor that I brought to this proposal is knowledge of how to do high throughput sequencing and how to curate the data.”
Since the first human draft genome in the 90’s, there have been constant developments in sequencing technology to speed up the process and to do so at a lower cost. Sequencing figures out the order of A’s, C’s,G’s, and T’s that make up the DNA nucleotides, or bases, that define a genome that codes to build an organism.
Genomic and single-cell sequencing machines are ‘disruptive technologies’ which allow scientists to essentially have a blueprint of all of the genes that make up any given organism. These blueprints can be used for a variety of scientific purposes to study issues ranging from cancerous mutations to drought resistance in plants.
The data being generated from such technologies is allowing researchers to better understand scientific complexities such as cancers.
“We have an Illumina instrument that’s a different type of format in terms of its capability. It produces fewer bases per flow cell and as a result of that it’s more expensive,” said Warren. “It’s simply a question of cost here; the technology of the NovaSeq has improved in terms of the base accuracy but the main reason is that with more bases per flow cell, the more experiments you can do.”
The current technology in MU’s Genomics Technology Core costs about 30 percent more to complete similar sequencing and takes longer. The new technology can complete thousands of sequences at once, which means it will generate the data needed for publishing discoveries in a more timely fashion.
This cost-effective high throughput technology will allow researchers across the UM System to increase the number of samples they can test and to find genes of significance and traits of interest at a much faster rate.
“Since 2008, we’ve continued to see an increase in the amount of data that’s being generated on campus and the number of publications that are resulting from genomics research and data and I don’t think that’s going to slow down anytime soon,” said Bivens. “In five to 10 years I think we will still be generating more sequencing data especially with the new NextGen Precision Health Institute here at MU. We’re seeing more and more growth in areas which are going to use this type of technology.”
Inevitably, housing this technology at MU will create a higher demand for sequencing through the Genomics Technology Core Facility. To keep up with the demand for this data, Bivens said the facility is purchasing more data storage, restructuring the lab and potentially looking for an additional hire to help process the workload.
As for when the technology will be installed on campus and the DNACF personnel trained to use it, Bivens hopes to be ready to receive samples at the end of September, beginning of October.
This instrumentation is funded by the UM System’s and all four campuses strategic investment for research and creative works.
Cross-collaborative research team looks to refine delivery of cancer treatments
David Porciani, Josiah Smith, Leah Cardwell, Mark Daniels, Bret Ulery and Donald Burke | Photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC
“When you want to use a tool to do something in the house, you have to use the right size tool. It does no good to use a large screwdriver to fix the tiny screw on your glasses.”
That’s Donald Burke, Bond Life Sciences Center lead primary investigator, as he begins to explain a project looking to optimize the targeting of cancer cells as part of a large cross-collaborative research team.
And the tools Burke is referring to are aptamers, single-chained synthetic DNA or RNA molecules. Aptamers are tricky molecules. Stemming from the Latin word “aptus,” meaning to fit, and “meros,” meaning part, aptamers must be complementary in size and shape to a certain cell-surface receptor in order to be useful as targeting tools, just like having the right size tool.
Last fall, Burke’s lab was able to identify aptamers as a specialized delivery method that have the potential to carry chemotherapy drugs and imaging agents, or cargo, as little backpacks to diseased sites. An important feature of aptamers is their three-dimensional structures which allow them to bind to target sites with high selectivity. That conceivably means they could deliver a drug to a particular part of the body, like a tumor, and not harm nearby tissues.
Now, the team, comprised of MU experts and researchers who specialize in surgery, radiology, molecular biology and immunology and chemical engineering, is hitting the ground running with a two-year research plan to refine the delivery of cancer treatments. The group was one of 19 innovative research projects across all four UM System campuses to receive a grant from a $20.5 million investment for research and creative works.
“Chemotherapeutics are not very specific and most of them act to block DNA replication or other functions of the cell in both healthy and cancerous cells,” said David Porciani a post-doc who started in the Burke lab in the spring of 2016 after finishing his Ph.D. in molecular biophysics in Italy. “Cells that are dividing are more susceptible to the chemotherapeutic effect, that’s why chemotherapy patients start losing hair.”
In general, therapeutic drugs don’t know to go only to tumors, and they don’t differentiate between cancer cells from healthy cells. The obstacle in only targeting cancer cells is to find specific indicative markers that are unique to tumors. Sometimes researchers have to make do with markers that are overexpressed on tumors cells, but those same markers can also be present in low levels on healthy cells.
The team is working simultaneously towards four major objectives – to identify a comprehensive panel of aptamers that target the majority of tumors, develop molecular tools to enhance the delivery of cargo specifically to cancerous cells, improve imaging for targeted delivery of radiopharmaceuticals, and enhance the efficacy of killing solid tumors through immunotherapy.
Each researcher bringing their unique expertise to the table play an important role in ensuring the project stay on track. Mark Daniels, an associate professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and Surgery from the School of Medicine; Bret Ulery, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical, Biological & Chemical Engineering; and Donald Burke, a professor of Molecular Biology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and joint professor of Biochemistry, have been instrumental in the project since its beginning stages.
A collaboration years in the making
“Daniels, Ulery and Burke labs have been collaborating for a number of years, each of us excited about what the other could bring to the collaboration,” said Burke. “[Over the years] we’ve explored several ways of making things move forward, we’ve figured out some productive ways to work together and we’ve identified the key questions that we could pool our respective expertise toward answering,” said Burke.
Daniels’ subgroup of the project has been using flow cytometry, a technique used to detect and measure biochemical and molecular characteristics of tumor cells to see which ones are recognized by a set of different aptamers.
Additionally, Ulery has provided extensive insight into the different ways to package molecules together so that they can move around the body and get to where they need to go.
The grant comes as part of the combined UM system’s and all four campuses mission to supply funding for opportunities that will enhance the ‘well-being for Missouri, the nation and the world through transformative teaching, research, innovation, engagement and inclusion.’
For Burke, the grant couldn’t have come at a better time.
“This team has existed before the announcements were made that there would be these opportunities and so when they announced we said that this was tailor-made for us,” said Burke. “It was just the right time for us. Had they had the same competition three years ago, we weren’t ready for it. Had they had it three years from now hopefully we wouldn’t have needed it anymore and we would’ve already gotten the project to the next level.”
Another key player in the development of this discovery is David Porciani. He has spent three years trying to create ‘smart’ molecules that know exactly where to bind without damaging healthy cells, and he has been working on the project since its beginning.
David Porciani, a post-doc in Donald Burke’s lab at Bond LSC, sets up a reaction to obtain fluorescently labeled aptamer samples. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC
“There are several ways to target cancer cells. Even on campus, there are different groups that are trying to target cancer cells differently and, in my experience, every strategy has advantages and limitations,” said Porciani. “What I see for this aptamer strategy is that it can provide new molecules that can bind to receptors, and it can also identify new tumor biomarkers.”
Porciani’s portion of the project includes using the advanced microscopy capabilities of the MU Advanced Light Microscopy Core to visualize the kinds of receptors on the surface of cancer cells. This information can be very telling in identifying receptors that are specific only to cancerous cells.
A dividing HeLa cell captured using the MU Advanced Light Microscopy Core. The many green dots indicate single copies of receptors. Because these cells are from a cancer cell line, there is an abundance of green dots. | Photo by Alexander Jurkevich, Bond LSC
What the future holds
The project now starts down this ambitious road. In the first year, the collaborators are working on discovering their panels of aptamers, developing lung cancer-specific T cells which provide artificial cell receptors for the use of immunotherapy, and beginning testing of the specificity of aptamer-cargo constructs in samples acquired from the American Tissue Cancer Collection. By year two the group hopes to begin testing in biopsy tissues acquired from MU hospital patients acquired under informed consent and in lab mice.
“After we test a specific drug in cell culture samples and see an anti-cancer effect, killing only the cancer cells and leaving the healthy cells, we expect to see the same effect in biopsy tissue samples,” said Porciani. “Having a reduction of the tumor mass and not having side-effects is what we hope to see in biopsy tissues and mice.”
After the end of year two, the team is looking forward to expanding this research to other types of tumors to see if their tumor-targeting method can apply in different cancer types.
“Our team has been trying to piece this together for a long time and it’s been surviving on goodwill up to this point. This is the most substantial funding we’ve had for it to date and we’re really excited that the University of Missouri has chosen to support us on this,” said Burke. “We’re very hopeful that we can use it as the starting point for building a much larger enterprise centered around tumor targeting in general, whether it’s for therapeutics, diagnostics or other purposes.”
Donald Burke is a primary investigator in the Bond Life Science Center and is a professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology in the School of Medicine and a joint professor of Biochemistry and Bioengineering. David Porciani is a post-doctoral researcher in the Burke lab. Mark Daniels is an associate professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and Surgery in the School of Medicine. Bret Ulery is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical, Biological and Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering. Other key collaborators on the project include Diego Avella Patino and Jusuf Kaifi in the Department of Surgery and Jeff Smith in the Department of Radiology.
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.”
