Teaching and research have been at the forefront of J. Perry Gustafson’s distinguished 40-plus-year career. It makes perfect sense, then, that the J. Perry Gustafson Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in the Life Sciences would be awarded to a stellar Ph.D. student whose quality research deserves wide recognition. Jon Cody, a graduate student in the Division of Biological Sciences, earned…
DNA ⋅ Page 1
A DNA Insight
Better analysis may result in new medicines and improved crops
Analyzing massive amounts of data, a multi-disciplinary team of University of Missouri researchers used a groundbreaking computer algorithm to find identical DNA sequences in different plant and animal species.
Building Better Soybeans
MU center to map genomes of 1,008 soybean varieties
The National Center for Soybean Biotechnology (NCSB) at the University of Missouri has begun a project to sequence the DNA of 1,008 commercially important soybean varieties. The effort is designed to provide a multifold increase in genetic data to breeders to create improved soybeans that are more productive, more disease tolerant and have improved nutritional quality.
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.
Tastier meat and profits?
A new chip identifies important bovine genomic traits
With help from a new genetic device recently unveiled by a team of animal science researchers, animal breeders may soon be building betters cows that produce more and better beef and tastier profits.
Off-hours crime fighter
By day, he studies reproductive efficiency of farm animals, by night, he invents ways to link felons with their victims
In his daytime job as part of the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Animal Sciences faculty, Peter Sutovsky studies mammalian spermatogenesis, fertilization and pre-implantation embryonic development. In his off-hours, he helps detectives solve criminal cases. The associate professor is a member of a joint venture between the University of Missouri and the Paternity Testing Corp. (PTC) that seeks to revolutionize forensic work relating to rape cases.