10:00 am
Thursday, March 10, 2016
209 French Hall
Dissertation title: The Role of the Formin Protein Family in Membrane Dynamics
Advisor: Magdalena Bezanilla

Just one of the surprises for five UMass students who visited Cuba with Dr. Frank Mangan in January for a winter session course on food systems was learning that 80 percent of farm and agricultural work handled by tractors and other motorized equipment in the United States is done by teams of oxen in Cuba. Read more

Researcher Dong Wang (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), along with postdoctoral researcher and lead author Minsoo Kim and former undergraduate student Chris Waters and colleagues at the Noble Foundation in Oklahoma, report in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences their discovery of a peptide found in alfalfa that holds the potential to improve crop yields without increasing fertilizer use.  This peptide, DNF4 (also known as NCR211), is a “double agent,” having the ability to support nitrogen-fixing bacteria present inside the plant, while also killing free-living bacteria outside.  Wang’s comments about his research in this area: “Next we want to find out why this peptide helps the bacteria inside the plant, but it can kill free-living bacteria outside the plant. Why does one molecule function as a double agent?”  Read More

Caroline Wise (MS, Hashemi Lab) is collaborating on a SARE grant ($177,442) entitled  ‘Developing Best Management Practices for Growing Grain Suitable for Malt in the Northeast’ as Co-PI with Masoud Hashemi of UMass and Heather Darby of UVM.  Wise received a SARE graduate student grant ($13,967) to study "Management practices for production of local malting barley in Northeast". Caroline also participated in a UMass Field Day Presentation: "Impacts of Planting Date, Nitrogen, Cultivar and Zinc on Barley Malt Quality"  where she presented a rationale and summary of her research projects to over 120 participants comprising local growers, and maltsters.