Nov. 1, 2024
The University of Missouri's Bond Life Sciences Center (LSC) is comprised of researchers from five colleges and schools who partner across disciplines to solve problems in human and animal health, the environment and agriculture.
Enjoy the following video snapshots that illustrate the depth and breadth of what it means to be a Bond LSC investigator.
Animations and illustrations created by Jack Copeland in honor of the center's 20th anniversary.
Ruthie Angelovici joined Bond LSC in 2015. The associate professor of biological sciences studies how plants handle nutrients. Staple crops like corn, rice, and wheat form the basis of diets around the world but lack enough of many essential amino acids humans need. In Angelovici's lab, her team seeks to identify specific genes that influence a plant’s nutritional composition to gain the genetic understanding necessary to engineer better crops.
John Driver joined Bond LSC in 2022. The immunologist and associate professor of animal sciences is driven to understand influenza and how the virus evolves to move between animal species and humans. Using swine as a model animal, he hopes to uncover how the flu evades cellular defenses as he and his team develop potential treatments or vaccines. Driver hopes this expanded knowledge base will help scientists prevent future pandemics.
David Mendoza, a Bond LSC investigator and associate professor of plant science and technology, works to understand how plants take up nutrients in order to manipulate and increase the essential nutrients of those used for human and animal food. Since 2011, Mendoza has studied this uptake of nutrients — from researching heavy metals absorption as a bioremediation technique to looking at how to balance plant processes to build a better plant with more nutritious leaves and seeds.
Since arriving at Bond LSC in 2022, Wendy and William Picking, both professors of veterinary pathobiology, have tackled the underpinnings of bacteria and vaccine development in tandem. With an expertise in pathogenic microbiology, the pair have research areas that complement each other. Bill seeks to understand the structure of bacterium like Shigella flexneri, which causes diarrhea and poses threats to life in third world country. Wendy uses proteins from the same bacterium to develop potential vaccines.