Research Highlights

The winners of the “Show Us Your BRAINs!” Photo and Video contest are chosen each year based on their eye-catching ability to capture the creative spirit of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.

The video took a true team effort. Nicole Provenza, a graduate student in the lab of David Borton, Brown University, Providence, RI, produced it with the project’s principal investigator Wayne Goodman, lead neurosurgeon Sameer Sheth, and research assistant Raissa Mathura, all at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. Another vital contributor was Noam Peled, MGH/HST Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA. More

Prospective kiwiberry growers in the Northeast now have a roadmap to help them grow this emerging specialty fruit crop. Researchers with the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire have produced an online guide that provides in-depth, regionally relevant information.

Comprised of a statewide market assessment, a detailed production manual, and an enterprise analysis, Growing Kiwiberries in New England: A Guide for Regional Producers reflects information gathered over five years since the experiment station initiated its kiwiberry research and breeding program in 2013 at its Woodman Horticultural Research Farm.

Developed by experiment station researcher Iago Hale, associate professor of specialty crop improvement, and graduate student Will Hastings, manager of the kiwiberry vineyard, the guide supports ongoing development of kiwiberries as a high-value fruit crop for the Northeast. Globally, kiwiberry production is on the rise. With the information presented in the guide, experiment station researchers are hopeful producers in the Northeast will be better prepared to decide whether to grow kiwiberries.

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LSU and Louisiana Tech University are proud to announce the establishment of the Center for Innovations in Structural Integrity Assurance, or CISIA, the first Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, or I/UCRC, for either institution.

CISIA will serve as a trusted source for transformative insights, predictive capabilities, and materials innovations across broad industrial sectors, focusing on structural integrity assurance for small and large structures and mechanical components.

In addition to research for establishing linkages between material properties, infrastructure performance, and structural integrity—which is beyond the scope of most industrial research and development organizations today—the academic and industrial members of CISIA will collaborate closely to produce engineers who are trained to utilize modern methods of structural health monitoring and analysis.

Students will be trained in state-of-the-art testing and evaluation facilities to become some of the most highly-qualified and productive workforce, which will contribute to enhancing the global competitiveness of U.S. industries. Through outreach and education activities that reach a diverse audience of college students at four- and two-year colleges, CISIA will raise awareness of not only the infrastructure problems facing the country, but also the career opportunities and positive impacts on the nation’s economy provided by a multidisciplinary STEM education.

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KY INBRE Steering Committee member Dr. Alexey Arkov from Murray State University received a new award from the National Science Foundation for his project entitled, “RUI: Biochemical and genetic analysis of conserved molecular scaffold Tudor complex required for germ cell specification in Drosophila” (award #2130162).

Abstract (at Time of Award)

Cellular organization is critically dependent on the self-assembly of various membraneless organelles inside the cell. However, the principles and molecular mechanisms that drive and regulate the assembly of these organelles and define their functions are poorly understood. This project integrates cutting-edge genetics and molecular quantitative approaches to provide major insights into the mechanisms responsible for the assembly and function of evolutionarily conserved membraneless organelles assembled in germ cells of model organism Drosophila (germ granules). These cells give rise to egg and sperm cells, and therefore, are responsible for continuity of life. This research will be integrated into several cell and genetics undergraduate courses and will directly engage undergraduate and graduate students in quantitative cell and molecular biology training. Germ granules show the properties of soft condensed matter and they often change their morphology during developmental transitions. Recent research identified an evolutionarily conserved germ granule multisubunit complex assembled on the large scaffold Tudor protein. Tudor scaffold has 11 protein-protein interaction modules (Tudor domains) and Tudor complex components are required for germ cell specification. The goal of this project is to provide molecular understanding of how this multisubunit Tudor scaffold complex is assembled using purified components and quantitative biochemical approaches. In addition, using super-resolution microscopy, it will be determined how different components of the complex are assembled into large germ granules in vivo. Furthermore, to understand the function of Tudor complex, enzymatic activities of its components upon the complex assembly will be characterized and the significance of the complex for germ granule formation, morphology and germ cell specification will be determined by mutational approaches. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The human small intestine, though modest in diameter and folded compactly to fit into the abdomen, is anything but small. It measures on average about 20 feet from end to end and plays a big role in the gastrointestinal tract, breaking down food and drink from the stomach to absorb the water and nutrients.

Also anything but small is the total surface area of the organ’s inner lining, where millions of U-shaped folds in the mucosal tissue triple the available space to absorb the water and nutrients that keep our bodies nourished. If these folds, packed with finger-like absorptive cells called villi, were flattened out, they would be the size of a tennis court!

That’s what makes this this microscopic image so interesting. It shows in cross section the symmetrical pattern of the villi (its cells outlined by yellow) that pack these folds. Each cell’s nucleus contains DNA (teal), and the villi themselves are fringed by thousands of tiny bristles, called microvilli (magenta), which are too small to see individually here. Collectively, microvilli make up an absorptive surface, called the brush border, where digested nutrients in the fluid passing through the intestine can enter cells via transport channels.

Amy Engevik, a researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, took this snapshot to show what a healthy intestinal cellular landscape looks like in a young mouse. The Engevik lab studies the dynamic movement of ions, water, and proteins in the intestine—a process that goes wrong in humans born with a rare disorder called microvillus inclusion disease (MVID).

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The New Mexico State University soil microbiologist uses molecular tools to understand how fungi are adapting to a warming world and what that might mean for global nutrient cycles.

“Her use of many different approaches, from culturing microbes to mining big data, makes [Mexico State University’s Adriana L.] Romero-Olivares’s work particularly strong,” says Camille Defrenne, an ecosystem ecologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “She’s a very complete scientist with a holistic view of how microbes respond to global change. She really represents the next generation of women in science.”

Romero-Olivares launched her lab at New Mexico State University last August. In addition to continuing her climate work, she’s also expanding into new territory in her own backyard. “While we know that deserts work in very different ways than other ecosystems, we don’t know what role fungi play,” she says. Beyond serving as the desert’s decomposers, “it’s an exciting challenge to figure out what else they might be up to.”

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Many of the world’s most iconic clear lakes are degrading at an alarming rate — shallow, nearshore lake bottoms are being carpeted by bright green fronds of slimy algae, especially during the summer. These filamentous algal blooms, known as FABs, need lots of light, so they occur at the same lake edges where people want to swim and play.

Researchers are unsure why FABs are suddenly showing up in remote mountain lakes — as well as in some large lakes such as Lake Tahoe in the U.S., Lake Baikal in Russia and Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand — but an international team of lake scientists is tackling the problem. In a recent paper, they explore how nutrient pollution, climate change, loss of aquatic animals that eat algae, and invasive species are contributing to the increased occurrence of green bottoms.

U.S. National Science Foundation-funded team member Sudeep Chandra of the University of Nevada, Reno said the researchers are working to develop a framework to guide the future understanding of FABs. The scientists are investigating the multiple local and global pressures that might contribute to the profusion of algae on lake bottoms.

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Seven years and 80,000 people later, Iowa State University’s FLEx program is expanding its reach even more.

Pete Evans, assistant professor of industrial design, coordinates FLEx (Forward Learning Experience), a design and STEM outreach program that launched in 2014 as a result of a graduate design studio that was tasked with creating a mobile classroom for technology outreach to Iowa’s K-12 students.

The program, which travels across the state in an ISU commercial cargo van, began with virtual and augmented reality, Oculus Rift immersive visualization, 3D printing and circuit building with Little Bits.

Thanks to a grant from the Iowa Space Grant Consortium and a new partnership with ISU Program for Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), the FLEx program is re-focusing its offerings and bringing up-and-coming students along for the road trip.

FLEx2GO Space Artemis provides activities that explore core space concepts, celebrate the NASA Artemis program and provide insight into upcoming plans for the Moon, Mars and even Earth.

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A team of University of Alaska biomedical researchers will join a federally funded effort to improve tracking of COVID-19 variants throughout the state.

The National Institutes of Health is providing a $770,000 grant to support efforts to sequence and analyze genomes of variants circulating in Alaska. The program will expand efforts in the state to include cases detected in Indigenous health networks and provide a way to share information about “variants of concern” throughout the health system.

NIH funds the Institutional Development Award program (IDeA), and a team of researchers with the Alaska IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE, will receive the grant. The INBRE program is part of a federal effort to boost research capacity in certain targeted states, including Alaska.

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The Amazon rainforest covers approximately 50% of the world’s rainforests and nearly two-thirds of the Amazon is in Brazil. The Brazilian Amazon is important for global biodiversity, hydrology, climate, and carbon cycle. Accurate and timely data on spatial-temporal dynamics of the vegetation aboveground biomass (AGB) and forest area in the region are needed to understand the carbon balance, which is affected by land-use, logging and degradation, secondary forest regrowth, and climate.

Dr. Xiangming Xiao, from the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, has led an international team of graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and research scientists (Yuanwei Qin, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, Philippe Ciais, Martin Brandt, Lei Fan, Xiaojun Li, Sean Crowell, Xiaocui Wu, Russell Doughty, Yao Zhang, Fang Liu, Stephen Sitch, and Berrien Moore III) to investigate the interannual changes in AGB and forest area by analyzing satellite-based annual AGB and forest area datasets. Specifically, the research team investigated the role of climate anomalies in the changes in forest area and AGB; whether recent changes in policies and human activities in 2019 have a detectable effect on forest area and AGB; and the relative contributions of deforestation and forest degradation (forest fragmentation, edge effects, logging, forest fire and drought) to interannual variation in AGB loss in the study period.

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