News

Popular conservation campaigns featuring mammals with big eyes and fuzzy features implies that to be saved, an animal best be cute. Yet species less well known and not as visually pleasing have essential roles within our ecosystems and are sometimes left out of critical assessments of our world’s biodiversity. Several faculty members in MSU's Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program, including integrative biologist Phoebe Zarnetske, indicate that a focus on species providing ecosystem services may be the way forward to increase inclusivity for these important and lesser-known creatures.

When a plant is exposed to stressful conditions – such as drought, heat, cold stress and pathogen attack – the functionality of a key cellular organelle known as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is impeded, which can stunt the plant’s ability to grow and even lead to the death of the plant. This condition is known as ER stress, and researchers from MSU plant biologist Federica Brandizzi’s lab in the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory are looking to understand how plants respond and adapt to it. Their research, which discovered new mechanisms for plant stress mitigation, was recently published in Nature Plants.  

Shane Crandall always welcomes new challenges. It’s exploring the unknown that motivates the assistant professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Physiology and Neuroscience Program to make new discoveries about the brain. Just last month, the National Institutes of Health awarded Crandall a five-year, $1.9 million grant to study how neocortical feedback projections influence sensory processing in the brain.

A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found changes to Earth’s climate in every region of the world, noting the unprecedented scale and speed in warming of the planet’s surface over the past 200 years. To help address this problem, a report, "Microbes and Climate Change: Science, People, & Impacts," was issued by the American Society for Microbiology. It is the outcome of ASM’s November 2021 colloquium meeting, which brought together 30 experts, including MSU’s Jim Tiedje, who provided multifaceted perspectives and insights.

Michigan State University’s Seth Jacobson and colleagues in China and France have unveiled a new theory that could help solve a galactic mystery of how our solar system evolved. Specifically, how did the gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — end up where they are, orbiting the sun like they do?

Thanks to a lesser-known feature of microbiology, Michigan State University researchers have helped open a door that could lead to medicines, vitamins and more being made at lower costs and with improved efficiency. The international research team, led by Henning Kirst and Cheryl Kerfeld, have repurposed what are known as bacterial microcompartments and programmed them to produce valuable chemicals from inexpensive starting ingredients. The team recently published its work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  

Working with tiny bacteria, MSU researchers led by Lee Kroos have made a discovery that could have big implications for biology. The scientists revealed a new way that nature can inhibit or switch off important proteins known as intramembrane proteases, which the team reported April 26 in the journal eLife. The finding could help fight recalcitrant bacteria and lead to new treatment candidates for Alzheimer’s disease.

Wildlife policy and management decisions often rely on estimates of animal abundance, so inaccurate counts can have negative consequences. Aerial surveys are an efficient survey platform; however, they can yield unreliable data if not carefully executed. Despite a long history of aerial survey use in ecological research, problems common to aerial surveys have not yet been adequately resolved. MSU Ph.D. student Kayla Davis and integrative biologist Elise Zipkin recently published a paper in the journal Ecology and Evolution that outlines the three-pronged approach their team used to tackle the problem.