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This image shows a rendering of part of the protein shell of a synthetic microcompartment. These bacterial compartments house specific biochemical functions in an insulated environment, by means of protein shells that encapsulate enzymes.

December 15, 2022

Borrowing building blocks from bacteria to create a more sustainable future

With $10.65 million of support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Michigan State University is home to one of the nation’s newest Energy Frontier Research Centers. Led by MSU's Cheryl Kerfeld and her team, the center will explore how nature compartmentalizes some of its most important biochemical reactions. This understanding will allow researchers to mimic nature’s methods to develop new and more efficient ways to produce important molecules and chemicals to benefit society, including clean, sustainable fuels.

Machine learning has the promise to accelerate research in STEM fields, but this will require people with unique training and expertise. MSU has won a nearly $3 million NSF grant to help prepare that next-generation workforce. This image was created by the DALL·E 2 AI system.

December 13, 2022

Training the STEM leaders of tomorrow

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded MSU nearly $3 million to create a graduate program that will help usher in a new era of STEM discoveries using the power of machine learning. Project leader Daniel Appelö and his team are working with the NSF to ensure the United States can maintain its leadership in the machine learning space — especially in science, technology, engineering and math applications — for generations to come.

MSU scientists have landed a $2 million Department of Energy grant to improve the oilseed yield of Camelina sativa, a common plant that could provide cleaner jet fuels and teach us about other important crops.

December 9, 2022

Helping an oilseed take off as a sustainable fuel source

MSU researchers are working to clear the runway for a new source of cleaner, more sustainable biodiesel and jet fuels derived from a relative of cabbage and cauliflower. With $2 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, MSU scientists, including College of Natural Science biochemist Erich Grotewold, are helping unravel the complex genetics of a plant named Camelina sativa to better equip researchers to improve the plant’s oilseed yield and establish it as a more viable alternative to current petroleum-based fuels that meet the unique demands of air travel.

Mariah Meek collecting brook trout for assessment, a species threatened by climate change.

December 6, 2022

Guiding conservation with a local touch

As nature reels toward a hotter, drier, harsher future, new conservation tools – seed banks and frozen zoos, gene editing and assisted gene flow – hold promise to help struggling animal and plant populations. A group of biologists, including MSU researchers,make a case that innovations in understanding local adaptation now can be powerful tools to create second chances when habitats are challenged by changing climates.

Mauna Loa is a volcano located on the Big Island of Hawaii and is the largest volcano on the planet. The volcano, which has been dormant since 1984, began erupting on Nov. 27, 2022.

December 6, 2022

Ask the Expert: Why is Mauna Loa erupting now and for how long?

Jeffrey Freymueller, is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the MSU College of Natural Science. Freymueller is an Endowed Chair for Geology of the Solid Earth. He is an internationally recognized expert in geodesy, or the study of Earth’s size and shape. In this Ask the Expert article, he discusses the current Mauna Loa eruption and how it relates to his research at MSU.

Requirements for earning a place in the 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list, an annual compilation of the global leaders in scientific influence by Clarivate Analytics list include publication of multiple highly cited papers from 2010 to 2020 and ranking in the top one percent of citations in their fields.

November 30, 2022

Three NatSci faculty members ranked for their global publication power

Three scientists affiliated with the MSU College of Natural Science have been recognized as being among the world’s most influential scientists thanks to their papers’ usefulness to other researchers in their fields. Biochemist Gregg A. Howe, ecosystem scientist G. Philip Robertson, and microbial ecologist James Tiedje are among 11 MSU scientists named to the 2022 Highly Cited Researchers List compiled by Clarivate Analytics.

A component of the structure of the drug istradefylline.

November 29, 2022

Existing drug could reduce side effects of gold-standard cancer treatment

Michigan State University Geoffrey Laumet and members of his lab are part of an international team that found an existing drug that may help decrease the side effects of cisplatin, a widely used cancer treatment that was discovered at MSU in 1965. The team, consisting of scientists from MSU, the University of Lille, the University of Strausburg, the Pasteur Institute of Lille in France, and the University of Coimbra in Portugal, has found that istradefylline, a drug already approved by the FDA and used to treat Parkinson’s disease, can reduce the side effects of cisplatin, while preserving its cancer-fighting strength.

Sophia Lunt, biochemistry and molecular biology (left) and Sheba Onchiri, chemistry, were among 35 NatSci faculty, staff and students receiving awards at the college's 2022 Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony.

November 29, 2022

2022 annual awards ceremony honors NatSci faculty, staff and students

Thirty-five outstanding MSU College of Natural Science (NatSci) faculty, staff and students were recognized for their achievements and contributions at the NatSci Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony, held Nov. 18 at the STEM Teaching and Learning Facilityon campus. More than 100 faculty, staff, students, family and friends attended the event.

Experts and a unique research site at MSU are showing how the history of land being restored shapes the future and success of conservation efforts.

November 14, 2022

More biodiversity is not a silver bullet for ecosystem restoration

There's a popular saying that people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It turns out that there's another reason not to ignore history according to new research from Michigan State University published in the journal Ecology. Experts and a unique research site at MSU are showing how the history of land being restored shapes the future and success of conservation efforts. With support from the National Science Foundation, this new study focuses on one of those factors — when a plot is restored — through the lens of biodiversity.

Researchers from MSU and Ecuador have confirmed that many harlequin frogs once believed to be extinct are, in fact, persisting.

November 7, 2022

Back from the dead: Meet the frogs overcoming extinction

If there’s news about amphibians these days, odds are it’s not going to be good. A pathogenic fungus has been decimating populations around the world for about forty years and counting, pushing many species to extinction. That’s why researchers have been stunned to see one genus — Atelopus or harlequin frogs — defying the odds. Now, new research from ecologists at Michigan State University and collaborators in Ecuador is setting the stage for an unprecedented underdog story — or, if you will, an underfrog story.

As part of the IceCube Collaboration, Michigan State researchers are using neutrinos to probe the inner depths of an active galaxy. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. van der Hoeven

November 3, 2022

MSU helps make cosmic discovery

For just the second time in human history, researchers have identified a source of high-energy neutrinos — ghostly subatomic particles produced in some of the universe’s most extreme environments. The discovery was made by an international collaboration led by Michigan State University and Technical University of Munich researchers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. The team announced its findings on Nov. 3 in an online webinar and will publish its study Nov. 4 in the journal

Deepak Bhandari, a postdoc in the Brandizzi lab, uses microscopes to study Arabidopsis thaliana for his research under this grant.

October 31, 2022

DOE-BER grant seeks new imaging approaches to observe plant-microbe interactions

Michigan State University plant biologist Federica Brandizzi and her team are collaborators with Stanford University's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on a a three-year, $507,264 grant from Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program to build new microscopes that allow scientists to look into plant cells like never before. The grant aims to create optical and X-ray multimodal-hybrid microscope systems for live imaging of plant stress responses and microbial interactions.

A Spartan-led collaboration, headed by MSU chemist Kenneth Merz, is modernizing software and computational methods for next-gen hardware to help accelerate drug discovery, materials development and more. The team is working to ensure a powerful software tool known as Amber is optimized for the high-performance computers of today and tomorrow.

October 27, 2022

How MSU is working to future-proof chemical discovery

A Spartan-led collaboration, headed by MSU chemist Kenneth Merz, is modernizing software and computational methods for next-gen hardware to help accelerate drug discovery, materials development and more. The team is working to ensure a powerful software tool known as Amber is optimized for the high-performance computers of today and tomorrow.

Computational sciences have seen rapid development in recent years, creating new horizons of discovery and employment. But changing undergraduate curriculums throughout academia is in a slower lane. The Partnership for Integrating Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) Team has established a site and a process for the peer-review and dissemination of high-quality instructional materials to achieve the goal of lowering the barriers to integrating computation into physics curricula.

October 24, 2022

APS honors Caballero, team for supersizing physics teaching with computing

MSU physics education researcher Danny Caballero is being honored by the American Physical Society (APS) for building the village needed to provide physics students with crucial computing skills. Caballero is part of the Partnership for Integrating Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) Team receiving the APS Excellence in Education Award. The team rallied hundreds of physics educators focused on helping students develop valuable computational skills and giving those educators the needed support and resources to make meaningful changes in curriculum.

The College of Natural Science (NatSci) at Michigan State University is home to 27 departments and programs in the biological, physical and mathematical sciences. NatSci provides a world-class educational experience to 6,000 undergraduate students and 1,200 graduate and postdoc students. There are 800+ faculty and academic staff associated with NatSci and more than 63,000 living alumni worldwide.

October 20, 2022

Two NatSci faculty members honored as APS Fellows

Two faculty members in the Michigan State University College of Natural Science (NatSci)—Danny Caballero and Huey-Wen Lin—have been selected as 2022 Fellows of the American Physical Society (APS). This distinction recognizes researchers for significant and innovative contributions to physics. Each year, less than one-half of one percent of the APS membership earns fellowship status.

Abstract ground texture image representing microbial ecology.

October 3, 2022

MSU’s James Tiedje receives prestigious lifetime achievement award

MSU microbial ecologist James Tiedje has been awarded the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Microbiology to honor his sustained contributions to the microbiological sciences. Tiedje’s major contributions include his foundational discovery of the microbial ecology of the nitrogen cycle; a paradigm-shifting discovery of microbes that dechlorinate pollutants; and his findings surrounding the use of genomics and metagenomics to understand microbial speciation, community structure and ecological functions.

September 29, 2022

Marcos Dantus receives prestigious American Chemical Society Ahmed Zewail Award

Michigan State University chemist Marcos Dantus is the 2023 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Ahmed Zewail Award in Ultrafast Science and Technology. This prestigious award recognizes outstanding and creative contributions to fundamental discoveries or inventions in ultrafast science and technology in the areas of physics, chemistry, biology or related fields.

September 28, 2022

New 'living' wood could be an environmental superhero

MSU and Purdue University researchers are teaming up to create a new building material. It’ll be stronger than steel and have the power to heal itself while pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. The U.S. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, has awarded the research team, which includes MSU College of Natural Science microbiologist Gemma Reguera, nearly $1 million to develop “living” wood, a first-of-its-kind concept using the natural activity of microbes implanted in wood.

Iota Sigma Pi is a national honor society for women in chemistry that promotes the advancement of women in chemistry by recognizing women who have demonstrated superior scholastic achievement and high professional competence. The society, which as was founded in 1902, has more than 11,000 members and 46 local chapters in various colleges, universities, and metropolitan areas.

September 16, 2022

Angela K. Wilson receives top award from national honor society for women in chemistry

Angela K. Wilson, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at MSU, is recipient of the 2022 National Honorary Member Award from Iota Sigma Pi, a national honor society for women in chemistry. The award is the organization’s highest honor, bestowed triennially on an outstanding woman chemist. Wilson, a professor in the Department of Chemistry in the MSU College of Natural Science, is also NatSci associate dean for strategic initiatives and current president of the American Chemical Society.

An illustration of phycobilisomes.These structures work as antennae that cyanobacteria use in photosynthesis.

August 31, 2022

MSU researchers help reveal a 'blueprint' for photosynthesis

MSU researchers and colleagues at the University of California Berkeley, the University of South Bohemia and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have helped reveal the most detailed picture to date of important biological “antennae.” The findings, published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature, shed new light on microbial photosynthesis, and could also help researchers remediate harmful bacteria in the environment, develop artificial photosynthetic systems for renewable energy and enlist microbes in sustainable manufacturing that starts with the raw materials of carbon dioxide and sunlight.

satellite view of Michigan

August 29, 2022

Where and when does water flow into the Great Lakes Basin?

Michigan State University researchers, led by earth and environmental scientist Jeffrey Freymueller and his team, could help predict seasonal changes in the Great Lakes Basin by developing a new groundwater model to monitor surface and groundwater flow with a $960K grant from the National Science Foundation.

cow eating in the woods

August 25, 2022

Getting data to do more for biodiversity

MSU ecologists in Elise Zipkin's Qualitative Ecology lab in the College of Natural Science have developed a mathematical framework that could help monitor and preserve biodiversity without breaking the bank. This framework or model takes low-cost data about relatively abundant species in a community and uses it to generate valuable insights on their harder-to-find neighbors. The journal Conservation Biology published the research as an Early View article on Aug. 25

Artemis I on launch pad

August 23, 2022

Michigan State science is returning to space with NASA

The Brandizzi lab at MSU is sending seeds to space aboard NASA’s Artemis I mission to explore how humanity can sustain itself outside of Earth. In previous experiments, scientists have learned that plants grown in space make lower levels of amino acids that keep their seedlings strong on Earth. The same amino acids would also be nutritious for people who eat the plants. Brandizzi’s lab has selected seeds that are enriched with those amino acids and is sending those into space along with regular seeds, allowing them to see if fortifying the seeds on Earth could create a more sustainable path to growing healthier plants — and food — in space.

August 19, 2022

Forecasting the future to protect monarchs

August 15, 2022

MSU's first-ever W. M. Keck Foundation award will show life in a new light

August 12, 2022

MSU's Mark Reimers receives NIH grant to characterize interactions in the brain's core circuits

A gut reaction: MSU's Robert Quinn lands gut health grant for novel research

MSU biochemist Robert Quinn’s recent discovery related to bile acids produced by gut microbes represents a paradigm shift of 170 years of research in the field. Quinn, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the College of Natural Science, received a one-year, $100,000 grant from the Global Grants for Gut Health to dig deeper into this discovery and how it changes scientists’ understanding of the human gut microbiome.

Research illuminates how plants react under light conditions

Plant gene regulation dictates how plants grow under differing environmental conditions, and Michigan State University researchers from the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) are looking at how different genes control light-dependent processes in Arabidopsis thaliana. Their research was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

Zika evades early pregnancy protections, MSU research shows

Michigan State University researchers have found that the Zika virus can halt an embryo’s development in the earliest stages of pregnancy, signaling that the risks posed by the virus are greater than previously appreciated. The team from MSU also hopes its work, which was performed with mouse models, will inspire more studies examining how other diseases, such as cytomegalovirus — the leading infectious cause of birth defects — affect early pregnancy. Their findings were recently published in the journal Development.

How a little prairie can help farms and nature

New research from Michigan State University is showing that bringing a little prairie back to farms in Michigan and other parts of the Midwest could help preserve both biodiversity and crop yields. When combined with the right field management practices, the array of benefits gained by adding a prairie strip essentially offset the loss of cropland. That is, prairie strips could be implemented without compromising crop yield. The findings were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Bacteria versus viruses

As antibiotic resistance challenges scientists to find new ways to treat bacterial infections, researchers at Michigan State University, led by microbiologist Chris Waters, have discovered a new way for bacteria to defend themselves against viral infection, known as phage, which could lead to better treatments in the future. The research was recently published in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Halos and dark matter: A recipe for discovery

About three years ago, Wolfgang Mittig and Yassid Ayyad went looking for the universe’s missing mass, better known as dark matter, in the heart of an atom.Their expedition didn’t lead them to dark matter, but they found something that had never been seen before, something that defied explanation. So the team got back to work to make their discovery make sense. Working at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at MSU, they found a new path to their unexpected destination, which they recently detailed in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Evaluating the best method for monitoring wildlife to understand biodiversity changes

While studying for his Ph.D. at Michigan State University and working in Elise Zipkin’s Quantitative Ecology Lab, Alex Wright and his Ph.D. advisors set out to determine the best way to monitor wildlife to understand how biodiversity changes through time and space. A paper with their findings was recently published in Ecological Applications. The results will help conservationists optimize data collection to answer complex biodiversity questions at large scales.

Aman Yadav named Lappan-Phillips Professor of Computing Education

MSU Professor Aman Yadav, known for his research and outreach on computer science education and computational thinking, has been named a Lappan-Phillips Professor of Computing Education. Yadav, who holds joint appointments in the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering and the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education, commenced his professorship on July 1, and will be formally recognized at an investiture ceremony this fall.

MSU researchers create method for breaking down plant materials for earth-friendly energy

With energy costs rising and the increasing effects of burning fossil fuels on the global climate, researchers are looking for ways to produce products and fuels that are truly renewable. To address this issue, MSU organic chemist Ned Jackson and his former graduate student Yuting Zhou, have developed a new tool that breaks the strong chemical bonds in biomass or plant matter down into building blocks for fuels. This new tool also has the potential to destroy environmental pollutants. The research was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

Evolution-in-a-flask experiment moves, but not the science

MSU’s renowned Long-Term Evolution Experiment – a remarkable 34-year biological drama in flasks, with bacteria competing for resources and fighting for dominance – is itself evolving. The bacteria’s main stage – frozen vials containing some 75,000 generations of E. coli – has been moved from MSU to University of Texas at Austin to be cared for by a former postdoctoral researcher in Richard Lenski's lab. While the daily propagation of the LTEE is moving, copies of all of the samples remain at MSU. Lenski, who started the experiment in 1988, has lots of plans and ideas for studying them, both in his lab and with collaborators around the world.

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