Good wine and great ideas were shared at the first Grape and Wine Symposium at the Bond Life Sciences Center last Thursday. More than 120 people gathered to learn about Missouri’s growing wine industry and the innovative research from the molecular genetics of grapevine disease resistance to the health benefits of grapes and wine. The event provided a forum for researchers to connect and explore collaborative projects.
Biochemistry ⋅ Page 13
Toning Down the Smell
New computer models help concentrated
animal producers improve air quality
Teng Teeh Lim recently received a $50,000 Mizzou Advantage grant to develop a computer model that allows large producers to use the size and other simple information about their swine or dairy farm to give them a better idea of the amount of emissions and what they can do to address odor or emission issues.
Giving to CAFNR
Please join us in honoring retiring Teaching Professor Virginia Peterson and retiring Executive Assistant Donna Vaught by contributing to retirement gifts for them: scholarship funds in their names.
A Lifetime of Helping Students
Virginia Peterson Leaves Biochemistry with Gifts of Student Success
After a 31–year career at MU, Virginia Peterson, teaching professor of biochemistry, can see the fruits of her work to excite students about science and help them enter careers well suited to their talents and aspirations. Her students are found all over the world in positions with industry and business, government, higher education, research, medicine and medical arts.
An Up-And-Coming Two-Fer
Thelen Honored by Two Faculty Awards
Jay Thelen, associate professor of Biochemistry at the University of Missouri, recently was presented two important awards recognizing promising researchers.
From Trash Tree to Disease Fighter
A nuisance tree in Missouri may yield a new MRSA treatment
A team of scientists from disparate disciplines at the University of Missouri have found preliminary evidence that a compound from a nuisance tree that hinders farming could be a new anti-microbial agent effective against a dangerous infection plaguing hospitals.
A Closer Look at Plant Genetics
MU plant scientists receive a $3 million boost from National Science Foundation
Plant genetics research at the University of Missouri got a boost In November with the receipt of three new Plant Genome Research Program awards totaling $3 million from the National Science Foundation.
Post-Nuclear Adaptation
Plants grown near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster have adjusted to the radiation there
Scientists studying the ecological legacy of the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power station have found surprising evidence that some plants can adapt and even flourish in a highly radioactive environment. An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Missouri, grew flax plants in a high radiation environment near the abandoned Chernobyl site and compared the seeds produced to those from plants grown in non-radioactive control plots.
A Promising Plant Looks Even Better
Reputed to delay the wasting effects of HIV/AIDS, a medicinal plant goes into the next part of a clinical examination
A herbal remedy used by South African traditional healers to enhance immunity and slow the wasting of HIV/AIDS has passed the first part of a multi-part clinical study in that country. The next piece of the study, now beginning, will determine if anecdotal evidence of the plant’s benefits can be scientifically demonstrated.
Stinky little uranium traps
Sulfate-reducing bacteria smell terrible but can make radioactive toxins less harmful
Judy Wall, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is working on an alternative way to clean up such sites. Her laboratory, in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., is looking at eventually using bacteria to reduce toxic metals to inert substances.