News

Michigan State University has joined Purdue University and the University of Michigan to form a Midwest-based alliance that will push the frontiers of quantum science and engineering research, education and training. The Midwest Quantum Collaboratory, or MQC, will foster new cutting-edge projects across the universities, creating new opportunities for leading researchers in quantum computing and information science.

A new study from the Michigan State University-Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory shows how some algae can protect themselves when the oxygen they produce impairs their photosynthetic activity. The discovery also answers a long-standing question about how algae survive when CO2 levels are low. The results of this research from the David Kramer lab was recently published in eLife.

Using innovative methodologies that combine biology and statistics, researchers from the David Kramer lab in the Michigan State University-Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory observe the ways plants respond to their natural environments. The team used innovative open science platform and instruments developed at MSU called PhotosynQ and MultispeQ to reveal how photosynthesis in one species (mint) responds to complex environmental changes. The study is published in Royal Society Open Science.

Addy Pletcher, an MSU senior majoring in environmental geosciences in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences within the College of Natural Science, received a grand prize in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Freilich Visualization Competition for her innovative project to improve decision making for lake management related to harmful algal blooms.

An international team of scientists, including MSU researchers, believe they may have found a molecular mechanism behind the extremely rare blood clots linked to adenovirus COVID-19 vaccines. Their findings, which were recently published in the international journal Science Advances, suggest it is the viral vector and the way it binds to platelet factor 4 (PF4) once injected that could be the potential mechanism that triggers blood clots in a very small number of people after the vaccine is administered.

MSU integrative biologists have added an important piece to nature’s ecological and evolutionary puzzle with an assist from Trinidadian guppies. Assistant Professor Sarah Fitzpatrick and graduate student Isabela Lima Borges helmed an extensive study of Trinidadian guppies to gather elusive data on relatively short swims. This information can help explain the larger mystery of why some individuals leave the safety of home to pursue life elsewhere. Their findings were recently published in the journal Ecology Letters.

Improving the photosynthetic power-plants in crops could mean using less fossil fuel derived energy supplements in crop cultivation and lead to a second Green Revolution according to a new life-cycle assessment from the lab of Michigan State University plant biologist Berkley Walker. The study was recently published in the journal Food and Energy Security.

Over the past century, physicists have pieced together the basic building blocks of the universe like a giant jigsaw puzzle, one experiment at a time, inventing highly advanced instruments such as MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and Facility for Rare Isotope Beams to test their theories. Research conducted by MSU high-energy particle theorist Huey-Wen Lin has just provided a major piece of the puzzle. For the first time, Lin used advanced calculations in lattice quantum chromodynamics to directly measure the momentum of quarks inside the center of an atom and to generate 3-D images of the proton’s structure. Her results were recently published in the journal  Physical Review Letters.

A team of researchers, including scientists Ryan Ringle and Alec Hamaker from the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University (MSU), have solved the case of zirconium-80s missing mass. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Physics.

In a partnership between MSU and Spectrum Health called the Cystic Fibrosis Translational Research program, a team of researchers including MSU biochemist Robert Quinn, is studying the effectiveness of a promising FDA approved treatment called Trikafta that is a combination of the drugs Elexacaftor, Tezacaftor and Ivacaftor. The new treatment is proving to be life-changing for people with cystic fibrosis. The research was published Nov. 24 in the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis.

When physicist Tyler Cocker joined MSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy in 2018, he had a clear goal: build a powerful microscope that would be the first of its kind in the United States. Having accomplished that, it was time to put the microscope to work. With the novel microscope, Cocker’s team is using light and electrons to study materials with an unparalleled intimacy and resolution. The researchers can see atoms and measure quantum features within samples that could become the building blocks of quantum computers and next-generation solar cells. Their research was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.  

On December 10, Netflix will debut the movie “Don’t Look Up,” a fictional comedy about MSU scientists who try to warn the government about a giant asteroid’s impending collision with Earth. In the story, no one from the government or press is paying attention, but in real life, NASA and MSU are very much engaged in the serious and important science of planetary defense. MSU planetary scientist Seth Jacobson is part of a multi-disciplinary research team working on this project.

MSU Academic Specialist Nathan Emery and collaborators recently published a study in BioScience in which they surveyed college/university educators from around the globe on teaching practices related to data science as well as how scientists use data science in their own research. Their work offers a window into how data science is currently taught and how to best empower instructors to incorporate data science into future biology and environmental science courses.

Journal articles of particular note in chemistry are occasionally honored through supplementary journal covers to promote the research content. Chemistry Professor Piotr Piecuch’s recent publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters was selected for such an honor. The journal awards supplementary covers to authors of articles it recognizes as having contributed significantly to advancing important principles in physical chemistry, and is an honor given to only a maximum of three articles per journal issue.

Plants are master chemists, producing a dazzling array of molecules that are valuable to humans, including vitamins, pharmaceuticals and flavorings. In a paper published in Science Advances, a team of MSU scientists from the College of Natural Science followed up on their observation that the common black nightshade (Solanum nigrum) makes an unusually large number of different acylsugar protective compounds in their trichome hairs. A surprise finding from this study is that black nightshade acylsugars have distinct types of compounds not found together in other plants.

Long ago in Earth’s history, individual cells began to communicate and coordinate with one another. Thanks to this and a few billion years of evolution, humans can now gather in lecture halls to share ideas about how to study this communication and its wide-ranging implications.MSU scientists Lee Kroos and Yann Dufour now have a paper, published online Nov. 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which they took a deep look at how single cells work together to choreograph collective behavior. In particular, the team looked at a bacterial species known as Myxococcus xanthus to tease out the basic rules of the dances bacteria do to survive, thrive and impact humanity, for better or worse.

About 20 years ago, MSU's B. Alex Brown had an idea to reveal insights about a fundamental but enigmatic force at work in some of the most extreme environments in the universe. Brown’s theory laid the blueprints for connecting the properties of nuclei to neutron stars, but building that bridge with experiments continued to be challenging. That is until 2017 when he said he started thinking about the precision experiments run by his colleague Kei Minamisono's group at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, or NSCL, and in the near-future at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB. The goal of this new idea, which was recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters, was the same as his earlier theory, but it could be tested using what are known as “mirror nuclei” to provide a faster and simpler path to that destination.

The NASA Astrobiology Institute funded Michigan State University geomicrobiologist Matt Schrenk’s lab to study life in the extreme environment of an aquifer near Lower Lake, Calif. Because similar environments occur in space—in the subsurface of Mars and in the oceans of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus—the microorganisms found in this aquifer, and their behavior, may provide insight into potential extraterrestrial life. Two former MSU earth and environmental sciences graduate students, Lindsay Putman and Mary Sabuda, have just published papers on this research.

MSU ecosystems scientist Bruno Basso has received a $3.4 million grant from the USDA’s Farm Service Agency to help determine how much carbon is in unproductive agricultural lands now and how much carbon the soil can hold. The answers found by Basso and his team will contribute to a carbon storage initiative known as the Conservation Reserve Program, which allows unproductive land to return to native vegetation and hopefully to increase the amount of carbon to be stored in the soil while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agrochemical applications to mitigate climate change.

On Oct. 13, MSU’s Artemis Spyrou was selected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a distinction recognizing researchers for significant and innovative contributions to physics. Each year, less than one-half of a percent of the APS membership earns fellowship status. Fellows are elected by the APS Council based on nominations from a candidate’s peers. In the materials nominating Spyrou, her colleagues described her as an “unstoppable force” in nuclear physics research and outreach.

Researchers at MSU have made a surprising discovery about the human gut’s enteric nervous system. This system contains several specialized nervous system cells, including glial cells. In research published online on Oct. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brian Gulbransen and his team revealed that glia act in a very precise way to influence the signals carried by neuronal circuits in the gut. This discovery could help pave the way for new treatments for intestinal illness that affects as much as 15 percent of the U.S. population.

Scientists in the Michigan State University-Department of Energy (DOE) Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) have published a new study that furthers our understanding of how plants make membranes in chloroplasts, the photosynthesis powerhouse. The study, which was recently published in The Plant Journal, focuses on RBL10, a rhomboid-like protein found in plant chloroplast membranes. The researchers found that RBL10 interacts with other chloroplast proteins and teases how it might perform some of its functions.

The source of troublesome lake algae is not always clear, but an interdisciplinary research project with two MSU researchers found an answer may include colder groundwater that feeds some inland lakes. This finding could help predict the formation of harmful algal blooms (HABs) to mitigate their impact on drinking water, tourism, fishing and fish toxicity. Their research was published Sept. 1 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

With help from plants, Spartan biologists are unraveling forces at work today shaping life and health.MSU plant biologist Emily Josephs and her team are shedding light on a mystery of evolution with support from a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health: How is it that within the same species, individual responses to stimuli can dramatically differ? Their hope is that these findings will provide a solid foundation to develop connections to human health in the future.

Regulation, monitoring and enforcement of sustainable seafood harvest is difficult and hinges on the ability to correctly identify species that, on the surface, look extremely similar. Some species are almost impossible to distinguish based on appearance, while at other times customs officials may only have a fin to go on. That’s about to change. Starting this September, scientists from Michigan State University, and collaborating institutions will harness the power of genomics and an AI powered smartphone app to develop low-cost, rapid field-deployable species identification tools that will give fishers, fisheries, agency biologists, customs officials and seafood vendors the power to become their own piscatorial gumshoes.

MSU plant molecular biologist Michael Thomashow, along with colleagues Brad Day and Yongsig Kim, will use a $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant to better understand the connection between how plants navigate temperature changes and fight off pathogens. By understanding the biology behind how plants respond to a variety of stresses, scientists will be better equipped to help farmers and their crops adapt to a changing planet.

It takes one to know one—a community that is. With that in mind, a community of pioneering scientists from MSU’s College of Natural Science and the University of California, Los Angeles, came together to design a multifaceted approach to investigating one of the most complex and abundant communities on Earth—microbiomes. The first-of-its-kind ecological investigation into the complexity of gut microbiological communities is funded by the NSF and will provide new insights into microbial community interaction from mechanistic models and network theory and lead the way for numerous applications in health and human and natural systems.

A multidisciplinary, multi-institutional program that is co-led by Michigan State University's Center for Quantum Computing, Science and Engineering, or MSU-Q, is taking the next step in its aim to revolutionize quantum science education. QuSTEAM, an NSF Convergence Accelerator 2020 cohort Phase II awardee, brings together scientists and educators from more than 20 universities, national laboratories, community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to establish a revolutionary, modular template for an undergraduate minor and associate certificate program in Quantum Information Systems with the aim of developing a diverse, effective, and contemporary quantum-ready workforce.

Scientists from MSU and the University of California, Berkeley are developing a first-of-its-kind risk model for sustainable farm practices. The sophisticated statistical model will show that complex crop rotations are the best strategy for building ecological and economic resiliency, literally from the ground up. MSU statistician Frederi Viens is a member of the risk model working group, brought together by the non-profit Land Core, that will use remote-sensed data, soil samples, farmer surveys and statistical analyses to convince lenders to prioritize financing farmers that adopt practices such as cover crops, no-till, low-till and diverse crop rotations including hay and pasture for livestock.

As we live and breathe, ancient-looking fish known as bowfin are guarding genetic secrets that that can help unravel humanity’s evolutionary history and better understand its health. Michigan State researchers Ingo Braasch and Andrew Thompson are now decoding some of those secrets. Leading a project that included more than two dozen researchers spanning three continents, the Spartans have assembled the most complete picture of the bowfin genome to date. Their research findings were published Aug. 30 in the journal Nature Genetics.

Lake trout is an iconic native species to the Great Lakes. MSU integrative biology doctoral student Seth Smith is leading an effort along with his professor and an international team of researchers from the U.S. and Canada to create a reference genome for lake trout to support state and federal agencies with reintroduction and conservation efforts. The research from the team was published on Aug. 5 in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources.

With the help of a $500,000 grant from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and 30 years of data, MSU quantitative ecologist Elise Zipkin and her multi-institution team will shed new light on the “Insect Apocalypse.” In a recent study, Zipkin developed a modeling strategy to analyze climate effects on monarch butterflies and found a strong correlation between temperature and precipitation in spring and summer breeding ranges and the subsequent size of the overall population. Motivated by these findings, her team is extending the models to other species.

MSU seismologist Songqiao “Shawn” Wei is the recipient of a $501,597 National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award to conduct a series of seismic attenuation studies on regional and global scales. These systematic investigations will potentially advance our understanding of seismic interpretation, upper-mantle dynamics, and material recycling in the Earth’s interior.

Missing metadata — data that provides information about other data — might not sound like a big deal, but it’s a costly problem that’s hindering humanity’s plans to protect the planet’s biodiversity. A Spartan-led research team reveals surprising gaps in ecological genetic data that could otherwise help global conservation efforts. MSU's Rachel Toczydlowski is the lead author of a new study  in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which features researchers from 14 institutions in three countries.The team audited the largest global repository for storing genetic sequence data to see if the entries included basic metadata needed to make them useful for monitoring genetic diversity.