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Federica Brandizzi
Sustainable cropping systems

Federica Brandizzi named MSU Innovator of the Year

The Michigan State University (MSU) Innovation Center has named Federica Brandizzi, MSU Foundation Professor of Plant Biology, as the MSU Innovator of the Year for her groundbreaking work in plant biology. The Brandizzi lab is investigating the technology needed to help plant cells soften their cell walls to allow them to expand and grow bigger in the field.

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| Hannah Harms

Each year, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) hosts a group of undergraduate students to participate in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, designed to immerse students in research. This summer, 11 undergraduate students joined laboratories at Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

| Justin Whitmore

Michigan State University (MSU) researcher Alexandra Kravchenko and several of her colleagues recently discovered a new mechanism determining how carbon is stored in soils that could improve the climate resilience of cropping systems and also reduce their carbon footprints.

| Jill Sakai

With a new method to synthesize a popular pain-relieving medication from plants rather than fossil fuels, researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have found a way to relieve two headaches at once.

| Anne-Sophie Bohrer
Senior postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University and GLBRC researcher Anne-Sophie Bohrer recaps her experience at this year's Fascination of Plants Day at MSU, an annual event she has been coordinating for the past three years.
| Mark Griffin
Daniel Amador-Noguez is learning how living organisms transform nutrients into energy and other useful chemicals. Among a cadre of scientists looking at the biological underpinnings of metabolism, Amador-Noguez knows firsthand the links between the fuel that makes our bodies go and the biofuels that propel our machines. Because he studies both.
| Mark E. Griffin

Switchgrass is attractive as a potential bioenergy crop because it can grow for years without having to be replanted. Requiring less fertilizer than typical annual crops like corn, switchgrass can keep more nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon in the soil and out of our air and waterways. But, unlike corn, breeding of switchgrass for optimal traits is still in its early stages.

| Michigan State University
At the conclusion of a pilot study for Michigan State University’s Plant Resilience Institute (PRI), microbial ecologist Ashley Shade had a hunch that started a chain reaction of exciting interdisciplinary and international collaboration and landed Shade and her team a three-year, $750,000 USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant to investigate the seed microbiome of the common bean.
| Jill Sakai

The April 2019 issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology features a series of papers focused on plant biotechnology and lignin bioengineering, including several familiar faces at Great Lakes Bioenergy.

| Jill Sakai

Developing renewable, plant-based alternatives for petroleum-derived chemicals is a major piece of the effort to transition away from a fossil-fuel based economy toward a more sustainable and environmentally friendly bio-based economy.

| Sam Million-Weaver

Petrochemicals, the oil- and gas-derived compounds that serve as the molecular backbones for much of modern commerce, commanded a $539.3 billion market value in 2018.

Replacing just a few of those petroleum products with chemicals made from plants or microbes could put a substantial dent in the world’s fossil fuel consumption.

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