Katy Guthrie, a Ph.D. candidate, works in Dr. Paula McSteen’s lab in Bond LSC. | photo by Allison Scott, Bond LSC
By Allison Scott | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I want to take the knowledge I gain and teach it to other young scientists so they share in this excitement, too.”
Katy Guthrie grew up as one of five girls. All five sisters took very different paths —one ended up in hospital management, another in marketing and advertising, one became an engineer and the other works in logistics for a start up.
But Guthrie took a different route.
Her love of science started long before she enrolled in classes at Northwest Missouri State University, but there she discovered her true love of plants. Guthrie took a required botany class, and less than a week into the course she was hooked.
“All biology students had to take zoology and botany,” said Guthrie. “I had an awesome botany professor second semester of my freshman year — her enthusiasm for the subject was captivating — and she and I developed a great relationship. It was in that class I discovered that plants are what I want to study for the rest of my life.”
As part of Dr. Paula McSteen’s lab, Guthrie studies the reproductive organs of maize and how its genes allow it to produce flower-bearing structures in pairs, while other plants only produce these structures singly.
“If you count the number of rows on a corn cob, it’s always even,” Guthrie said. “That’s because maize produces two flowers at a time instead of one. My research is essentially trying to figure out which genes are responsible for that doubling trait.”
It’s not an easy process, though, so Guthrie nurtures a unique approach to finding the solutions.
“I take ears of corn that make one flower-bearing structure and work backwards to try and find what’s missing,” Guthrie said. “If I can find that, I can assume that’s what’s making the difference.”
Although her work can be painstaking, Guthrie noted that science is all about learning from mistakes.
Ultimately, Guthrie wants to duplicate the gene that causes the doubling trait in other crops, such as rice, wheat and barley. This could have a big impact on cereal crop reproduction.
“We’re hoping to apply what we learn about maize other crops,” Guthrie said.
After finishing her studies at Mizzou, Guthrie plans to return to the classroom as a professor, preferably teaching undergraduates.
“The whole reason I decided to go to graduate school was to be able to teach,” Guthrie said. “I want people who aren’t necessarily interested in science initially to get invested in it. I also want to incorporate research into the classes I’ll teach because not every college is a research campus like Mizzou.”
Eli Finkel explains not all modern marriages are getting worse. Finkel spoke about his new book, “The All-Or-Nothing Marriage”. | Photo by Samantha Kummerer, Bond LSC
By Samantha Kummerer | Bond LSC
“And they lived happily ever after. Like, what the hell?” Eli Finkel exclaimed. “That’s a foolish way of thinking. Really what you’re doing is stepping on the welcome mat of what’s actually going to be interesting, of what’s actually going to be challenging.”
Finkel set out to write a book about how the quality of American marriages have declined. But while the modern marriage is nowhere near a fairy-tale ending, it’s not as doomed as Finkel predicted.
“The initial version of the theory was the suffocation of marriage, that we’re suffocating this institution,” Finkel explained. “Now it’s a story about divergence.”
In fact, Finkel found the best marriages are getting better.
But he wasn’t completely wrong either; the average marriage is getting worse.
“We in America have changed marriage from something that can grow when neglected to something that requires constant care and affection, but if you get it right is pretty special,” the Northwestern psychology professor said.
This is the idea behind Finkel’s new book, “The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work.”
A better marriage has always been correlated with a higher quality of life. What’s new is the effect of marriage on an individuals life is increasing in importance.
To explain this change, Finkel breaks up the evolution of marriage into three stages.
The first was the pragmatic era during the preindustrial times. Life was fragile and couples married to meet basic needs to survive.
Then around the 1850’s, industrialization allows young people to be economically and geographically free. Finkel said this freedom was used to seek marriages for personal fulfillment and love.
“This marriage has a particular structure that had been the fantasy of people for generations,” Finkel elaborated.
By the 1950’s this idea of the wife as the homemaker and husband as the breadwinner was fully established. For Finkel, this is problematic because it assumes that men and women are fundamentally different and restricts them to two different roles. Data proves both genders can be assertive and nurturing.
People begin to revolt against this idea around the 1960’s. This is the third and current stage of marriage. Finkel calls it the expressive model of marriage. Now, in addition to love and personal fulfillment, people want a spouse who will help them grow.
For Finkel, these stages are mirror Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At the base of the pyramid are basic needs then the psychological needs of love and belonging are positioned in the middle. At the top of the pyramid are self-fulfillment needs, which is what he views American couples need in a marriage today.
“In my mind, the story of rising expectations is not one where we are expecting too much,” he said. “There’s something special about looking to your marriage to do things up there. There’s something special about saying ‘what if I had a marriage that was not only loving but really helped turned us into the ideal versions of ourselves.’”
Finkel continued that such lofty expectations from a marriage are hard to achieve. Thus, the all-or-nothing state.
So how can we make our marriage meet these higher demands?
The author laid out three options.
Going All In: This option involves going on date nights, but not just going on specific types of date nights. A study revealed while going on comfortable dates and exciting dates increase the quality of the relationships, only exciting dates increase sexual desire.
Love Hacking: This technique doesn’t involve making a relationship better, but is about changing how you think about a relationship in a more constructive way. Finkel said this is one that doesn’t take much time and doesn’t need both couples. One way to do this, Finkel explained, is by writing about your fights from a third party perspective. A study that asked participants to do this showed that marriage quality stopped declining and the individual reported feeling less angry.
Recalibrating: This technique involves lowering your expectations. Floyd elaborated by speaking explaining that people are relying more on their spouse to satisfy theirto how marriage has taken on more of individuals’ social social,, emotional and psychological needs. Research shows that people who have more diversified social networks are happier than those who don’t.
“It’s an interesting time to be married,” Finkel concluded. “The average marriage is a little bit worse than before but those of us who are able to flourish while asking these ambitious things are able to have a level of marital fulfillment that was out of reach previously.”
The 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium, The Science of Love, started Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7. It features six experts that research various aspects of love, relationships and connection. The event will conclude on Friday, Oct. 13 with its last speaker, Jim Obergefell, who was the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case on marriage equality.
Charlandra Bryant reveals some of her findings on what influences African Americans’ marriage quality. Bryant spoke on the effects of health on African American couples on Saturday, Oct. 7. | Photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
By Samantha Kummerer | Bond LSC
“Race matters, even in marriage,” Charlandra Bryant said to open her talk on the marital functions of African American couples.
Bryant asked the crowd that gathered for the Annual Life Sciences & Society Program Symposium on Saturday, October 7, to name successful African American couples.
After naming the Obama’s, many people’s minds come up empty, and Bryant attributes this to the tendency of the media and literature to highlight single African American households.
Few studies explore how African Americans’ marriage quality relates to interactions between the couple.
Bryant wanted to explore factors like entering marriages with kids and poverty that are unique characteristics to African American relationships. Her project dives into the connection between African American marriages and health.
Over the years, she has collected data from hundreds of newlywed African American couples. The couples’ variance in other key demographics like age, education level and income, produced a result that realistically encompassed African American marriages.
Health
Weight was one aspect of Bryant’s research that impacted the health of a relationship.
She found that heavier husbands were more likely to be depressed, but their weight did not affect their wives’ happiness. However, if a wife was heavier, the husband often showed more signs of depression.
While this effect was interesting, Bryant said the most revealing part of this research was that if couples felt very close to their partner the link between depression and weight decreased. This behavioral closeness, in sum, improved their lives.
Stepfathers
The effect of stepfathers on relationships was another theme Bryant explored. Her research explored how stepfathers affected things like commitment, trust, marital happiness and love. Not surprisingly, she found stepfathers who had positive relationships with their stepchildren reported better marriage quality.
Racial Discrimination
Bryant’s work found that wives who experienced racial discrimination also reported less physical affection and hostile husbands. She said this association stumped her for a while.
Now, she theorizes that husbands may be frustrated by their lack of ability to help their wife to deal with the discrimination, so they displace their anger towards their wives, such as perhaps raising their voice asking “Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?” The wife who could be sensitive to the experience could interpret this as a hostile behavior.
The Role of Genes
Little is known about the effect that genes play in social relationships, Bryant explained, but that didn’t stop her from asking questions.
For one study, male participants were asked to spit into a cup. Those samples were then paired with participants’ responses on hostility and warmth within their marriages along with depression and marriage satisfaction.
It found men at high-risk for depression were more responsive to positive and negative effects. In essence, husbands with a higher risk for depression can actually report higher levels of marital satisfaction when they receive high levels of warmth than the husbands who are at low-risk for depression.
While individuals can’t change their genetic makeup, Bryant said knowing if your spouse is susceptible to depression could help in your relationship.
Goals
The goal of Bryant’s ongoing research is to help improve intervention techniques. She said not all interventions work for everyone; sometimes they need to be culture-specific so she hopes her findings can help improve the techniques used for African American couples.
The 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium, The Science of Love, started Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7. It features six experts that research various aspects of love, relationships and connection. The event will conclude on Friday, Oct. 13 with its last speaker, Jim Obergefell, who was the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case on marriage equality.
Kory Floyd speaks about humans’ need for affection. Floyd spoke during the 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium on Saturday, Oct. 7. | Photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC
By Samantha Kummerer | Bond LSC
Kory Floyd was stressed and having an all-around bad day, but then a coworker offered him a hug.
“That hug didn’t change anything about what had gone in my day but it changed everything about what the way that I felt,” Floyd said. “Suddenly all that stress, suddenly all that disappointment, all that worry, it didn’t go away but it seemed to lift off my shoulders, it wasn’t weighing me down.”
Floyd studies how prosocial communication, like affection, compassion, and trust, affect individuals psychologically.
He spoke specifically on communicating affection during the Life Sciences and Society Symposium on Saturday, Oct. 7.
Affection can be communicated through verbal and non-verbal communication as well as through supportive behavior. This last category is one he discovered through his research. Supportive behavior like keeping someone’s car in good condition or helping someone with a task is sometimes the most common way of expressing affection, especially between men.
The University of Arizona communications professor said he started his research by exploring an aspect of affection that confused him in his life. Growing up in a family of huggers, Floyd said he soon found out that not everyone appreciated the same type or kind of affection.
Expressing affection can be risky. Affection can be misinterpreted or not reciprocated, censured by culture, and even transmit disease.
So why bother?
For Floyd, the answer is simple, “Affection as an emotion and behavior is a fundamental human need.”
To elaborate on his belief, he pointed to how humans are born dependent on others to survive for many years. A child needs someone to feed, protect, provide for it and often make huge financial and personal sacrifices. As Floyd points out, many parents willing to do this due to love.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a stretch to claim that an infant’s ability to get someone to love it is a matter of life or death.” He theorized. “It is a matter of that infant’s survival to get someone to feel a strong enough emotional investment that they are willing to make all the other kinds of investment that are required for that’s infant’s survival.”
As we age, affection transforms into something that feeds our need to belong.
Floyd’s studies have revealed positive associations between affection and happiness and social engagement. Other research revealed that affectionate communication is associated with mental wellness and physical health. When exposed to stressful events, highly affectionate people react with less arousal and recover faster. When compared to a less affectionate person, the more affectionate person has a better immune system, lower blood glucose levels and improved cortisol rhythm.
“It’s really difficult to thrive without some measure of affection,” Floyd concluded.
While not everyone needs the same amount of affection, it is a ubiquitous form of prosocial communication.
“None of what I described here is a prescription for you to go out and start hugging people on the sidewalk, that is not a pathway to health, that is a pathway to incarceration,” Floyd joked as he concluded his talk.
Instead, he highlighted that affection is different than other communication behaviors because it is something we reserve for only the important relationships in our lives.
“We talk to anybody, we gesture to anybody but we don’t kiss just anybody, we don’t hug just anybody,” He said. “This is a special behavior and its something that we preserve and reserve for the very special people in our lives.”
The 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium, The Science of Love, started Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7. It features six experts that research various aspects of love, relationships and connection. The event will conclude on Friday, Oct. 13 with its last speaker, Jim Obergefell, who was the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case on marriage equality.
Hare explains survival of the friendliest as component of natural selection
Dr. Brian Hare speaks about how friendliness and natural selection are connected at the 13th annual LSSP symposium, The Science of Love. | photo by Roger Meissen
By Allison Scott | Bond LSC
Dogs really are a man’s best friend if you ask Brian Hare.
Our four-legged friends are a direct result of chance coupled with domestication. And over the course of hundreds of years, that domestication has led to deep bonds between humans and dogs.
“You love your dog, physiologically, the same way as your offspring or partner,” Hare said.
Throughout his career, Hare has analyzed various animals from dogs and foxes to chimpanzees and bonobos to determine how much friendliness actually is a factor in their survival.
Recently, Hare has focused on primates. In his studies, he’s observed distinct differences between chimpanzees and bonobos, both of which are closely related species.
“Chimpanzees are like humans,” Hare said. “Bonobos have a different social system.”
Chimpanzees tend to be the more aggressive, male-dominated of the two. On the other hand, bonobos are the exact opposite and thrive on a more equal approach. Bonobos love to share with anyone and everyone, making them friendlier.
Hare has been able to support this difference through a series of experiments. They show that one bonobo will likely help a stranger in a cage get food that is just out of reach. These experiments showed that bonobos are willing to help others in most situations unless there’s a high cost or risk to self.
The evolutionary elements of friendliness and the traits behind kindness Hare identified as a possible reason homo sapiens won out over other human ancestors like Neanderthals. This is due, in part, to what Hare calls the ‘like me’ trait.
“If we as humans can categorize based on cultural or social characteristics that someone is “like us,” we’re more likely to help them out,” Hare said. “This leads to bonds.”
The opposite is also true, though. This means if we identify someon as “not like us,” we’re less likely to help them. That stark difference between humans and both chimpanzees and bonobos makes for a more complicated communication process, and contributes to humans being both the friendliest and cruelest species alive.
At the end of the day, though, Hare strongly believes the science supports friendliness as a component of natural selection.
“You can win big by being friendly in the evolutionary game,” Hare said.
The 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium, The Science of Love, started Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7. It features six experts that research various aspects of love, relationships and connection. The event will conclude on Friday, Oct. 13 with its last speaker, Jim Obergefell, who was the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case on marriage equality.
Larry Young explores chemicals behind monogamy in prairie voles, humans
Dr. Larry Young opens the second day of The Science of Love. | photo by Roger Meissen
By Allison Scott | Bond LSC
Upon first glance, it wouldn’t seem that humans and small rodents have that much in common.
However, Larry Young extensively studies the prairie vole because their desire to mate for life.
“Prairie voles mate for life,” Young said. “That’s very unusual, in fact, only three to five percent of mammals do this.”
This commonality between the small mammal and humans allows Young to relate his research on voles to humans. His goal is to understand the neurochemical bond that occurs between two voles after mating.
Neurologically, this “pair bonding” occurs largely because of oxytocin. The brain houses receptors for this hormone that create pleasure from it. The resulting feeling’s mutual, and chemical, leading a bond to form.
“The brain’s reward system houses the receptors that make oxytocin an influential chemical,” Young said. “Prairie voles activate this when they bond.”
Young manipulates the prairie vole’s brain to try an understand why exactly pair bonding exists. He then takes brain scans of them, compares them to mice that aren’t monogamous and sees what’s happening differently in their brains. In doing so, he is able to pinpoint differences in the voles and apply that knowledge to humans.
“We should think of ourselves as part of a continuum,” Young said. “The voles have a similar makeup to humans, but we don’t say that they’re in love – we say they’re bonded.”
That distinction makes a difference in Young’s studies. However, he’s still able to learn a lot about people by observing voles, and it’s those revelations that Young enjoys most.
That insight might one day lead to treatments for autism or other disorders where issues in interaction and bonding affect people.
“The Science of Love isn’t just entertaining,” Young said. “It has the potential to change lives for the better.”
The 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium, The Science of Love, started Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7. It features six experts that research various aspects of love, relationships and connection. The event will conclude on Friday, Oct. 13 with its last speaker, Jim Obergefell, who was the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case on marriage equality.
Helen Fisher delves into the relationships we choose and why in our digital age
Dr. Helen Fisher opens the 13th annual LSSP symposium, The Science of Love, on Friday, Oct. 6. | photo by Allison Scott
By Allison Scott | Bond LSC
We might not understand what drives us to establish and maintain romantic relationships, but Helen Fisher has made her living trying to figure it out.
The romantic love expert spoke Friday, October 6, in Bond LSC about the neurological reasons behind why humans behave the way they do.
“Romantic love is located right next to thirst and hunger in the brain – it’s a survival system,” Fisher said. “If we survive another million years, we will continue to fall in love.”
Fisher has worked in tandem with the dating site match.com for more than a decade to tailor sites like chemistry.com to look at how relationships actually work in our brains and in practice. Using data from match.com that represents the U.S. population, Fisher detailed how the digital age impacts the dating scene.
“Fundamentally, love isn’t changing,” Fisher said. “Courtship patterns are.”
He research indicates a tendency toward “slow love,” where partners tend to get sexually involved sooner, but are more cautious about marriage and take much longer than previous generations to pair up in that way.
Technology, meeting online and evolving social norms play huge roles in these changes, but she argued that dating sites aren’t really dating sites at all.
“They’re introducing sites,” Fisher said. “The only real algorithm is your brain.”
These changes in how people meet influence marriage, too. She highlighted how cohabitating influences the perception of marriage and its overall impact, as well as the increased tendency for more casual sexual encounters.
“What we’re seeing now is the expanding of the pre-commitment stage of romance,” Fisher said. “Marriage used to be the beginning of a relationship, but now it’s the end.”
While modern couples often postpone marriage, Fisher notes that most people do marry before they reach the age of 50 and she feels positively toward relationship trends and the direction that romantic love is headed.
“I’m extremely optimistic,” Fisher said. “We’re marrying later and moving toward relative marriage relationship stability.”
The 13th annual Life Sciences and Society Symposium, The Science of Love, started Friday, Oct. 6 and Saturday, Oct. 7. It features six experts that research various aspects of love, relationships and connection. The event will conclude on Friday, Oct. 13 with its last speaker, Jim Obergefell, who was the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case on marriage equality.
Computer scientists create applications to speed up research in the lab
Ph.D. student Ke Gao and computer scientist Filiz Bunyak collaborate with researchers at the Bond Life Sciences Center. The pair helps advance high-throughput phenotyping by developing applications and algorithms for image analysis. | Photo by Samantha Kummerer, Bond LSC
By Samantha Kummerer, Bond LSC
Three years ago, Ke Gao stood uncomfortably beside rows of biomedical students and plant scientists at the Bond Life Sciences research fair. His poster wasn’t discussing the DNA of seeds or how plants transport nutrients but rather a scientific device.
“At the beginning, the visitors didn’t understand what we were presenting, but once I explained how our application can help them accelerate their research and how we can really turn their phones into a research device, they got really excited,” Gao explained.
Gao’s presentation highlighted a mobile app that transforms images of seeds into objective, quantitative data.
It started with a simple problem. Plant scientists were manually comparing hundreds and in some cases thousands, of seed photos. The process was meticulous, slow and subjective.
The solution began with a collaboration with Michele Warmund (Plant Sciences), Tommi White (MU Electron Microscopy Core) and Filiz Bunyak (Computer Science) that led to a MU Interdisciplinary Innovations Fund grant.
Gao was part of this team that developed an algorithm to turn the photos of seeds from the field into data with the touch of the button.
Gao explained the app is very similar to Instagram.
A user takes or uploads photos of seeds. Then the app calculates measurements describing shape, color and size characteristics of the seeds. This data can be emailed or stored in a database.
Some experiments need thousands of seeds analyzed; this would be a massive feat for even a group of students. With this app, hundreds of seeds can be photographed and measured from a single photo. The app analyzes each seed individually and also computes measurement averages for groups of seeds.
There are other apps that analyze seeds, but this is the first mobile application as far as the team knows. Its ability to analyze multiple seeds at once, even if they are touching is also an outstanding ability. Bunyak’s previous experience developing applications to quantify microscopy images and videos of touching and clumping cells helped them design the algorithm to make that function possible.
This isn’t just a problem for researchers in this one lab or even at the University of Missouri.
MU Computer Science professor, Filiz Bunyak, said noninvasive methods to observe and understand biology, imaging equipment and corresponding computing devices have advanced considerably in recent years, leading scientists to produce large amounts of data. The ability for researchers to analyze and quantify this large amount of complex and unstructured data, however, was still missing. Bunyak said this app began as a project to advance scientists’ capabilities to automatically analyze image-based plant phenotyping.
Further collaboration
Bunyak and her students are advancing the field of high-throughput phenotyping beyond this mobile app.
High-throughput phenotyping (HTP) refers to the process of connecting an organism’s DNA makeup to its physical characteristics; it is also a hot topic buzzing through the science community in the last five years.
Two years ago, Bond LSC scientist David Mendoza, who studies how plants collect nutrients, said he never imagined he would be doing HTP.
“The old way of doing this is growing plants on plates and, I’m not kidding, with a ruler you measure how long the roots are,” Mendoza explained of the traditional process that now seems archaic.
Now, the lab is working with computer scientists to design a robot to code the measurements for multiple roots at a single time. For a student, it would take 15 minutes, but now it’s complete in an instant.
Speed isn’t the only reward researchers are reaping.
Bunyak said computational image analysis allows researchers to come up with new ways to quantify and study data that they were not even able to do before, leading to the design of novel experimental methods.
Ruthie Angelovici is another Bond LSC researcher who uses computer scientists to aid in her research.
She said without computer imaging there would be no way for her team to do research that measures plants physical and biochemical traits. Angelovici’s lab uses Bunyak’s mobile app system but on a computer. Eight plants are photographed at once and the application keeps track of features of plants such as shape, color and area as they develop.
What is really revolutionary to Angelovici is the ability for the data of plant growth parameters to be stored and revisited without the need to re-grow. This contrasts with past experiments where researchers would scribble some notes and never be able to return.
“It’s not lost and I think that’s a big step in this field,” Angelovici said.
The collaboration is creating more than advanced tools by fostering a new way to think and approach research.
Rather than buying pre-existing software, the groups from Bond LSC utilizes the resources on campus to build their own devices.
“I would have been in front of a black box that is doing things for me and that would not have given me the tools to teach to my students,” Mendoza reflected. “Now I know what they need to learn to be competitive. Now I know what the gaps are and how they can be filled. I think that was worth it.”
Mendoza’s team publishes all the instruction to its robot online, so the technology can aid other labs in making faster discoveries at a lower price.
Angelovici compared it to buying a cake versus making a cake — at the end of the creation process, she said she would have the knowledge to do a lot of other experiments.
This new way of thinking already began to pay off this summer when her lab expanded computer software to analyze seed size.
“We only approached it because we saw how things worked together. I just pitched a project to engineering about seed collector. Again, this opened my eyes that even undergraduates can do something not so difficult for engineers, but I have no clue how to do it,” Angelovici said.
Mendoza agreed the collaboration is exciting but challenging, “You got a Ph.D. and you got a faculty position and you think you know stuff. When I started this I realized how much I don’t know, but at the same time it reminded me that it is really cool to learn something new.”
Both teams continue to work towards maximizing the functions of their individual machines, but even after the projects reach fruition the collaboration will not be over.
“On the contrary, I think we’re going to keep building more and more and better,” Mendoza said.
Nowadays, Gao no longer feels out of place at the Life Sciences fairs. Researchers from various labs come up to him and ask how they can implement his app in their own lab.
“It seems like I’m doing something that can really help people, so that’s the best part of this process,” he said.
Ruthie Angelovici is an assistant professor in the Division of Biological Sciences and is a researcher at Bond Life Sciences Center. She received her degrees in plant science from institutions in Israel — her B.S. and M.S. from Tel Aviv University, and her Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute and at Michigan State University and has been at MU since fall of 2015.
David Mendoza is an associate professor in Plant Sciences, Life Sciences Center investigator and a member of the Interdisciplinary Plant Group. His research focuses on the mechanisms plants use to resist toxic elements or acquire nutrients. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from UNAM in Mexico City and continued on to do post-doc training at UC San Diego.
Filiz Bunyak is an assistant research professor in the Department of Computer Science. She received her bachelors and masters degree from Istanbul Technical University and her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri- Rolla. Her work focuses on computer imaging, image processing, and biomedical image analysis.
Ke Gao is a doctoral student in the University of Missouri’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He earned his bachelor’s of science from the Henan University of Science and Technology in China.
Vinit Shanbhag is a Ph.D. candidate in biochemistry and works in Michael Petris’ lab in Bond LSC. | photo by Allison Scott
By Allison Scott | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I like to discover. The excitement of uncovering things that could have an impact on millions of lives is fascinating.”
Vinit Shanbhag isn’t your typical student. His extensive background both overseas in India and at the Florida Institute of Technology serve to prove just that and prepared him for his next adventure at Mizzou.
“When I came here for the on-campus interviews, the department was impressive,” said Shanbhag, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry. “The excellent infrastructure, paradigm-shifting research and challenging educational environment influenced my decision to attend MU.”
Shanbhag intentionally joined the lab of Michael Petris at Bond LSC to further his experience.
“I was particularly interested in joining the Petris lab due to my immense interest in cancer research,” Shanbhag said. “That interest has now evolved into an aspiration to pursue a career in the field.”
There he studies how an essential dietary nutrient copper is required for the process of tumor formation and metastasis. In a specific study he has deleted a copper-transporting gene (ATP7a) in cancer cells and demonstrated a defect in their ability to grow into larger tumors and spread to other organs in animals.
“By understanding the mechanisms that regulate key processes in cells, one can distinguish between the normal and diseased,” Shanbhag said. “Uncovering these differences at the molecular level is key to the development of novel clinical interventions.”
Shanbhag’s work has been recognized as he was invited to present his research at the Gordon Research Seminar in Vermont earlier this year. While there, he shared the work he’s been doing in his lab and gave a presentation, in addition to showcasing a poster detailing his work.
“People were impressed,” Shanbhag said. “After my talk people came up and asked me questions. Our observations are very interesting and the goal is to develop a drug that could potentially block the function of ATP7A and inhibit cancer progression. The people I spoke with encouraged us to keep going.”
Although he’s presented at departmental seminars, this recognition stands out as a great experience for Shanbhag.
“This was my first invited talk,” Shanbhag said. “I applied for it and got the news of my invite pretty quickly, so I was excited.”
The hope is that Shanbhag’s research will serve as the premise for further development in understanding and eventually eliminating cancer.
“Ultimately, I hope to discover new ways to kill cancer cells and provide cost-effective treatment options for cancer patients,” Shanbhag said.
Sterling Evans is a sophomore plant sciences major conducting research in Gary Stacey’s lab in Bond LSC. | photo by Allison Scott
By Allison Scott | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I want to focus my research on problems that exist in agriculture in undeveloped and third world countries.”
Sterling Evans’ mind wasn’t focused on research when he started college, but that would soon change.
The sophomore plant sciences major uncovered his interest thanks to Freshman Research in Plant Sciences (FRIPS) — a program dedicated to introducing research to freshman students from plant-related degree programs.
“I was interested in plant sciences-related fields when I started here, but I had no intention of getting involved in undergraduate research,” Evans said. “Being selected for FRIPS was instrumental in getting me involved with research.”
Along with a handful of students selected for FRIPS each year, Evans got to interact with various professors and mentors around campus on a weekly basis. Because of that exposure, Evans found a place in the lab of Bond Life Sciences Center’s Gary Stacey.
After a year working in Stacey’s lab, Evans just joined a new project that aims to improve the nutritional value of soybeans.
“They’re used as a main source of protein for a lot of countries, so improving their nutritional content would have a huge impact,” Evans said.
The team is applies CRISPR, a gene-editing tool, to model plants called Arabidopsis as a first step.
“We are working on Arabidopsis right now as a proof of concept, because it can be done in a relatively short period of time, before investing as much as a two additional years in soybeans,” Evans said.
While he only spends 15 hours in the lab each week, Evans noticed the lab’s impact on his approach to academics in other ways.
“Research gives me more motivation to think about how to apply information I’ve learned in class to work in the lab,” Evans said. “It has made me more analytical in classes because I have more of a desire to understand things.”
Evans plans to earn a Ph.D. in a plant sciences field and wants to continue research in his career. He’s most interested in helping ensure small communities throughout the world have enough to eat, and he hopes to contribute by studying orphan crops.
“I think they’re cool because they’re really important to small people groups. No one studies them because they aren’t a big deal in the United States or other countries,” Evans said. “If we work on them we won’t have a huge impact on hundreds of millions of people, but we will have a huge impact on small communities.”
That impact all started in a lab. Had he not stepped out of his comfort zone he might never have discovered this path, and he highly encourages other students to give research a chance.
“There are labs for almost everything and there’s an area for everyone,” Evans said. “I didn’t know I wanted to do research until I did it.”
