Stories From 2015
Crystal clear
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences research related to water spans the basic to the applied. Here, Dr. Flora Meilleur of the Department of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry discusses her fundamental research using crystallography to better understand the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in enzymes and what that could mean for water conservation.
Giant opportunity
Each year during the Super Bowl, the competition on the field is matched closely by the competition among advertisers to create the most original and impressive commercials. And usually the most heart-warming (or tear-inducing) are those commercials featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales. Last summer, NC State University student Bradley Glover essentially got to inhabit that soft-glow pastoral world of the gentle giants in the ads.
Study Finds Key Molecular Mechanism Regulating Plant Translational Activity
Researchers elucidate plant cellular mechanisms associated with ethylene, an important hormone.
Business and Busy-ness
Andy VonCanon and Brittany Whitmire call their family farm near Brevard “Busy Bee” – and what a fitting name it is. The two keep bees and raise cattle, turkeys and forage crops, all the while holding busy off-farm careers in agriculture. He’s a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumnus who teaches high school agriculture, and she’s the new dairy economist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service at NC State.
Horton endowment created to fund biochemistry scholarships
The H. Robert and Roberta A. Horton Biochemistry Scholarship Endowment was created in an agreement between the Hortons and the N.C. Agricultural Foundation Inc., in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Top 5 Reasons to Garden for Native Bees
Five good reasons to take steps to make your garden welcoming to native bee species.
Fish type, body size can help predict nutrient recycling rates
NC State University associate professor Craig Layman and colleagues show that ecologists can better predict the rates of how chemical nutrients are transferred by fish if they know the various fish species living in an ecosystem, along with the body size of the fish.
High-Order Thinking
With help from a CALS scientist, students from one of the most underserved counties in the state will operate a biotech company right out of their high-school lab.
Important implications: CALS team studies the distinct inflorescence structure of the dogwood
Dr. Bob Franks of NC State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has a bone to pick with those who determined that the dogwood is the state flower of North Carolina. “It actually should be called the ‘state inflorescence,’” Franks, associate professor of plant and microbial biology, said with a laugh. And Franks would know, having spent the past five years working on a National Science Foundation-funded grant to study the inflorescence architecture, or variation in the arrangement of flowers, of the dogwood.