The University Senate was established in 1958 by the Board of Control of Michigan College of Mining and Technology, now known as Michigan Technological University.
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| 2011 Research Award Details Cellulose, a natural polymer of glucose, has recently been acknowledged as a sustainable, renewable, and abundant biomass for bioenergy production. For the last 13 years, Chandrashekhar Joshi, winner of the 2011 Research award has been unraveling the process of cellulose synthesis that occurs during wood formation in forest trees. The enclosed figure shows that co-suppression of a cellulose synthase gene in transgenic aspen resulted in weeping tree growth habit. Transgenic wood samples had massive reduction in cellulose contents (top right) compared to controls (top left). The transgenic stems also formed collapsed wood vessels (bottom, indicated by asterisks) that were weaker than normal wood vessels (middle). This work demonstrates that the evolution of tree habit, some 400 million years ago, might have been a consequence of a highly efficient cellulose synthesis process occurring during wood formation. This discovery has many direct applications in forest biotechnology to enable economically viable but ecologically sustainable use of bioenergy in the future. |
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