About Us
About The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Founded in 1998, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is a not-for-profit research institute with a mission to improve the human condition through plant science. Research at the Danforth Center will feed the hungry and improve human health, preserve and renew the environment, and enhance the St. Louis region and Missouri as a world center for plant science. The Danforth Center’s work is funded through competitive grants and contract revenue from many sources, including the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Howard Buffett Foundation, the Monsanto Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information please visit www.danforthcenter.org, featuring interactive information on the Center’s scientists, news and research. Follow us on Twitter at @DanforthCenter.
Quotes
“What we learn in improving bioenergy grasses in many cases can also be applied to cereal crops to improve their productivity. Setaria viridis, the model species that will be used as the focus of our research, is closely related to corn and Brachypodium, another model grass of interest at the Danforth Center that has a genetic makeup similar to wheat,” said Dr. Tom Brutnell, director of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels who is serving as Principal Investigator on the grant.
“Sometimes atomic structure gives us clues on how viruses work and how to make better vaccines,” said Dr. Thomas Smith, principal investigator, at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center whose recent article, Structural Basis for Broad Detection of Genogroup II Noroviruses by a Monoclonal Antibody That Binds to a Site Occluded in the Viral Particle, in the Journal of Virology was selected by the editors as an, “Article of Significant Interest, sighting the extreme norovirus flexibility suggested by these results may allow for broad antibody recognition, a finding of potential vaccine significance.”