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USU Biochemists Report Breakthrough Research Toward Global Food Challenge

Little over a century ago, the Haber-Bosch process revolutionized how atmospheric nitrogen could be converted to a form to allow for industrial-scale production of fertilizer. The discovery led to a huge increase in global food production and a massive population boom. Still, certain areas of the globe, including Sub-Saharan Africa, lack the infrastructure to allow import and distribution of fertilizer, much less the capacity to produce the nutrient-essential product close to home.

Since 2019, USU biochemist Lance Seefeldt and USU Senior Scientist Zhi-Yong Yang have collaborated on a project with colleagues in Spain and the United States, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to re-engineer the biology of cereal crops, such as corn and rice, to achieve nitrogen fixation on their own, from sunlight, without applying fertilizer.

The team initially narrowed the number of genes needed to fix nitrogen to nine, and identified gene combinations they thought were essential to complete the process. To their surprise, they discovered genes they’d designated as critical middlemen could be omitted.

The possibility of freeing cereal crops from the need for added fertilizer is significant, Seefeldt says.

Future Casting with Utah State

From the start of her presidency at Utah State University, Elizabeth Cantwell wanted to start a podcast. With the help and collaboration of the University Marketing and Communications team, Utah Public Radio, and currently enrolled students, that dream is now a reality.

The “Future Casting with Utah State” podcast ties perfectly with USU’s mission to envision the future and empower all people to lead successful lives of involvement, innovation, and impact.

The podcast explores our ever-changing world, technological breakthroughs, future planning, and proactive issues both now and for the years to come.

The collaboration with Utah Public Radio extends the podcast’s reach, bringing more public awareness to the statewide impacts of Utah State’s research and can be enjoyed on UPR.org or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Dangerous Ground: USU Geoscientist Awarded NSF Grant to Study Earthquake Precursors

Despite decades of research and meticulous documentation of very small — millimeter-to-centimeter-scale — observations, Utah State University geoscientist Srisharan Shreedharan says reliable, short-term earthquake forecasting remains elusive.

To address this challenge, he proposes scaling the wealth of data collected on millimeter-scale faults to the meter scale, using a custom-built, one-meter biaxial deformation “earthquake machine,” along with machine learning techniques. Shreedharan, leading this effort in collaboration with Gregory McLaskey of Cornell University, was awarded about $300,000 in funding, roughly half of the total award, from a three-year National Science Foundation Earth Sciences grant to pursue this approach.

“If you could see the precursors to an earthquake, you’d have to be able to see maybe a meter of rock, moving at less than a millimeter per second some 10-20 kilometers under our feet,” Shreedharan says. “That isn’t possible with the naked eye.”

Scientists at Utah State University Receive Grants to Study Two Important Viruses

Two grants from the National Institutes of Health will help a Utah State University professor and his collaborators study viruses important to global health.

USU researchers led by Professor Zhongde Wang have collaborated with teams at the University of Texas Medical Branch and University of Pittsburgh to secure two grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling more than $4 million in recent months. In these research collaborations, Wang and his lab bring critical knowledge and skills in gene editing.

In both new projects, on which Wang is a principal investigator, funding supports the development and use of specialized, gene-edited golden Syrian hamsters. Wang and his USU team successfully used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to produce the first of the hamsters a decade ago, and the lab’s contributions have proven to be an important advancement in the creation of safe and effective treatments and vaccines.

Wash Your Hands: USU Biochemist Studies the Molecular Mechanisms of Food-Borne Illness

Food and water-borne illnesses are no laughing matter. Utah State University biochemist Sam Barker reports diarrheal diseases are a leading cause of death worldwide, hitting children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems particularly hard.

The Soda Springs, Idaho native is a recent doctoral graduate in USU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. In the lab of faculty mentor Nick Dickenson, Barker, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Utah State in 2018, studies a gram-negative genus of bacteria, known as Shigella. The bacterium causes a nasty gut bug in humans called shigellosis.

“In developed countries, shigellosis is not generally fatal,” he says. “But the diarrhea-causing illness, which is spread along the fecal-oral route from person to person, is responsible for more than 100 million cases worldwide and nearly 600,000 deaths annually.”

USU Awarded $500,000 in USDA Grants to Aid Native American Students Across Utah, Four Corners Region

Faculty at Utah State University’s Statewide and Logan campuses have been awarded $500,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for programs to increase retention and graduation rates among Native American students.

The grants will help provide mentorship, financial aid and experiential learning opportunities for students across multiple campuses (USU Blanding, USU Uintah Basin, USU Eastern, USU Moab and USU Logan) in collaboration with the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences and S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources.

“As Utah’s land-grant institution we serve the entire state and bring resources and expertise to the problem-solving table in a way that accelerates and supports socio-environmental solutions to today’s complex problems,” said Vice President of Statewide Campuses James Y. Taylor. “It is exciting and encouraging to see that together with our resource and granting partners we are helping communities in an interdisciplinary and sustainable way.”

Utah State University Opens New Aviation Training Facility in Brigham City

Utah State University celebrated the grand opening of its second aviation training facility in northern Utah in September, welcoming students, faculty and the public to an open house at the Brigham City Regional Airport.

The new facility will provide expanded flight training opportunities for students in USU’s growing professional pilot degree program, which has seen a significant increase in enrollment over the past year.

The new Brigham City location offers fixed-wing training and serves students from both Northern Utah and the Wasatch Front. According to the head of USU’s Aviation Technology Department Bruce Miller, approximately 25% of USU’s aviation students commute from the Wasatch Front, and this new location provides them with a more convenient training site.

“This not only helps the Logan-based students by reducing some of the demand on our facilities but also benefits students who have traveled longer distances for training,” Miller says.

Utah State Launches New NIL Exchange Through Teamworks Influencer

Utah State Athletics, in conjunction with Teamworks and Influencer Exchange, has officially launched the Utah State NIL Exchange, an online marketplace dedicated to facilitating name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities between Utah State student-athletes and commercial entities. 
 
“Utah State Athletics is committed to elevating the student-athlete experience through NIL and this partnership helps us stay at the forefront of the changing landscape of college athletics,” says USU Vice President and Director of Athletics Diana Sabau. “Partnering with Teamworks Influencer establishes a foundation through which we can foster and maintain long-lasting relationships between our student-athletes and NIL opportunities.”
 
A fee-free platform for both student-athletes and participating entities, the Utah State NIL Exchange streamlines the NIL process, beginning from initial communication to payment to automatically generating tax forms. The Exchange simplifies the NIL process while also maintaining adherence to NCAA regulations. 

Utah State Student-Athletes Among the Best in the Mountain West With 91 Percent Graduation Success Rate

In November it was announced by the NCAA national office that Utah State’s Graduation Success Rate (GSR) stands at 91% for its student-athletes. That mark ranks third-best in the Mountain West. Overall, this is USU’s eighth consecutive year at 90% or higher.
 
The GSR is based on a comparison of the number of student-athletes who entered college and the number of those who graduated within six years of initial enrollment. The GSR subtracts student-athletes who depart for allowable exclusions, as well as those who transfer but would have been academically eligible to compete had they returned to the institution.
 
“Our top priority at Utah State University is to provide our student-athletes with the best resources and opportunities for academic success, and ultimately, earning their degrees,” says USU Vice President and Director of Athletics Diana Sabau.