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Anthony Kendall, a research assistant professor in the MSU Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Natural Science, found a surprise as he was studying contaminants in Lake Michigan and discovered a slow but steady increase in the level of chloride found in the water.

Michigan State University’s Thomas D. Sharkey has a gift for exploring the intricate biochemical mechanisms of photosynthesis, the life-sustaining reactions that plants use to grow literally from thin air. The University Distinguished Professor also has a gift for explaining those complex processes with metaphors and much simpler, more familiar machinery.Both skills are on display when Sharkey talks about his team’s new paper, published on March 8 in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, describing what they call a pilot light for photosynthesis.

Don’t underestimate the diminutive and doe-eyed Rio pearlfish, for looks can be deceiving. This fish has evolved over the eons into one tough little customer producing eggs that can survive being completely dry for months at a time. That’s one of the reasons that MSU integrative biologist Ingo Braasch and members of his Fish Evo Devo Geno Lab have sequenced the first complete genome of the fish. With that genome, researchers can better understand the biology and evolution of the species’ survival skills. The study was recently published in the journal G3: Genes I Genomes I Genetics. Andrew Thompson, a postdoctoral research associate in Braasch's lab, was lead author of the report.

A new study from the Michigan State University-DOE Plant Research Laboratory brings fresh insight on the source/sink balance of cyanobacteria and paves the way for further advancements in photosynthetic microbes for potential applications. The research, conducted in the lab of biochemist Danny Ducat, was recently published in Plant Physiology.

A team of Spartan researchers, led by MSU Foundation Professor Guowei Wei, report that omicron and other variants are evolving increased infectivity and antibody resistance according to an artificial intelligence model. Therefore, new vaccines and antibody therapies are needed.

Michigan State University researchers in the Christoph Benning lab at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory have been looking into the signals for activating different states of the cell cycle in microalga, which has potential applications for future biofuel production and cancer research. MSU graduate student, Yang-Tsung Lin is first author on a study that builds on this research, which was recently published in the journal G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. Lin studies how microalga know when to start and stop growing and dividing by looking at cell cycle states.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is enlisting experts and resources at Michigan State University to bolster the state’s fight against COVID, foodborne illnesses and more. With three grants totaling more than $5 million, MSU and health care partners will help build up Michigan’s capacity to respond to the current pandemic and future pathogens through the newly created Michigan Sequencing Academic Partnership for Public Health Innovation and Response, or MI-SAPPHIRE. 

In a new paper published in Ecology Letters, Michigan State University professor and evolutionary biologist Janette Boughman shows that the process of choosing a mate could be very important to the survival of the species. To do this, she and her co-author Maria Servedio introduce a new theoretical model they coin “The Ecological Stage.” Whether sexual selection is helpful or hurtful to speciation is still controversial, yet the model can provide some new answers; it shows how sexual selection can be helpful to speciation and diversification.