Microbes' sense of community, cooperation could improve biofuels

Stephen Lindemann, associate professor of food science at
Purdue University, sits at a microscope.
(Purdue University photo/Tom Campbell)

Microorganisms can be neighborly – when breaking down complex plant fibers they divide the labor and are able to sustain a diverse community, as each member gets its share of food. Understanding how they are able to adapt in this way could lead to improved biofuels processes and is the focus of a new $2 million project at Purdue University.

“One would expect microorganisms to compete against each other as they do for simple resources, with one eventually crowding out the others, but in communities consuming complex substrates, like sorghum fibers, we see microbial diversity maintained,” said Steve Lindemann, associate professor of food science at Purdue University, who leads the project. “We’ve seen that microorganisms change the enzymes they produce depending on their neighbors and the food source they are consuming. Understanding this behavior could lead to a way to engineer more stable and productive systems for processes that rely on microbes to convert plant material into useful products, like biofuels production and other types of food and industrial fermentation.”

The National Science Foundation funded the project, which aims to uncover the mechanisms behind the division of labor among microorganisms, single-celled living organisms, including bacteria and fungi, which are too small to be seen without a microscope and naturally live in communities. The team also will develop a theory that describes how microbial interactions maintain diversity and influence the productivity and stability of a community.

Creating solar cells and glass from wood – or a billion tons of biowaste

Professor Kati Miettunen, Assistant Professor Jaana Vapaavuori
and doctoral student Yazan al Haj study nanocellulose films.
Photo: Mikael Nyberg/Aalto University

A digital, urbanized world consumes huge amounts of raw materials that could hardly be called environmentally friendly. One promising solution may be found in renewable raw materials, according to research published in Advanced Materials. In their paper, the international research group has taken a close look at how lignocellulose — or plant biomass — can be used for optical applications, potentially replacing commonly used materials like sand and plastics.

‘We wanted to map out as comprehensively as possible how lignocellulose could replace the unrenewable resources found in widely used technology, like smart devices or solar cells,’ says Jaana Vapaavuori, assistant professor of functional materials at Aalto University, who carried out the analysis with colleagues at the University of Turku, RISE – Research Institute of Sweden, and University of British Columbia.

Lignocellulose, the term that encompasses cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, is found in nearly every plant on Earth. When scientists break it down into very small parts and put it back together, they can create totally new, usable materials.

In their extensive review of the field, the researchers assessed the various manufacturing processes and characteristics needed for optical applications, for example, transparency, reflectiveness, UV-light filtering, as well as structural colors.

Whole genome sequencing increases diagnosis of rare disorders by nearly a third

Belova59 via Pixabay

Mitochondrial disorders affect around 1 in 4,300 people and cause progressive, incurable diseases. They are amongst the most common inherited diseases but are difficult for clinicians to diagnose, not least because they can affect many different organs and resemble many other conditions.

Current genetic testing regimes fail to diagnose around 40% of patients, with major implications for patients, their families and the health services they use.

A new study, published in the BMJ, offers hope to families with no diagnosis, and endorses plans for the UK to establish a national diagnostic program based on whole genome sequencing (WGS) to make more diagnoses faster.

While previous studies based on small, highly selected cohorts have suggested that WGS can identify mitochondrial disorders, this is the first to examine its effectiveness in a national healthcare system – the NHS.

The study, led by researchers from the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit and Departments of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Genetics at the University of Cambridge, involved 319 families with suspected mitochondrial disease recruited through the 100,000 Genomes Project which was set up to embed genomic testing in the NHS, discover new disease genes and make genetic diagnosis available for more patients.

Astronomers make most distant detection yet of fluorine in star-forming galaxy

This artist’s impression shows NGP–190387, a star-forming, dusty galaxy that is so far away its light has taken over 12 billion years to reach us.Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Full Caption and Hi-Res Zoomable Image

A new discovery is shedding light on how fluorine — an element found in our bones and teeth as fluoride — is forged in the Universe. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, a team of astronomers have detected this element in a galaxy that is so far away its light has taken over 12 billion years to reach us. This is the first time fluorine has been spotted in such a distant star-forming galaxy.

“We all know about fluorine because the toothpaste we use every day contains it in the form of fluoride,” says Maximilien Franco from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, who led the new study, published today in Nature Astronomy. Like most elements around us, fluorine is created inside stars but, until now, we did not know exactly how this element was produced. “We did not even know which type of stars produced the majority of fluorine in the Universe!”

Franco and his collaborators spotted fluorine (in the form of hydrogen fluoride) in the large clouds of gas of the distant galaxy NGP–190387, which we see as it was when the Universe was only 1.4 billion years old, about 10% of its current age. Since stars expel the elements they form in their cores as they reach the end of their lives, this detection implies that the stars that created fluorine must have lived and died quickly.

As-needed pesticide use brings wild bees

A team of researchers at Purdue University found as-needed pesticide use
increased pollination from wild bees and increased watermelon yield.
 (Purdue University photo/Tom Campbell)

Many farmers rent bee hives to pollinate crops, but they could tap into the free labor of wild bees by adopting an as-needed approach to pesticides, a new proof-of-concept study shows.

A multiyear study of commercial-scale fields in the Midwest found this approach led to a 95% reduction in pesticide applications, while maintaining or increasing crop yield for corn and watermelon. The findings are detailed in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“An as-needed approach to pesticide treatment can benefit farmers,” said Ian Kaplan, professor of entomology at Purdue University, who led the project. “With reduced pesticide use, we saw within the first year wild bees returned to the fields, and our findings showed an average 26% increase in watermelon yield.”

The team of researchers from Purdue’s College of Agriculture studied fields at five different locations in Indiana and the Midwest over a period of four years to compare conventional pest management with an integrated pest management, or IPM, approach. The IPM approach relied on scouting the fields and applying pesticides only when pest levels reached previously established thresholds for damage that would lead to economic losses.

In the last few decades, pesticides have been used preemptively, beginning with treated seed and followed by applications on a set schedule, said Christian Krupke, professor of entomology and member of the research team.

Worm study finds molecule crucial for fertility

Worm germ cells: chromosomes stained in magenta
 and S-phase germ cells in green

A Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) study using roundworms has identified the vital role MOG-7, a protein also found in yeast in humans, plays in fertility.

The worms (Caenorhabditis elegans), used because many of their genes are also found conserved in humans, allowing insights into human cells, have both sperm and oocytes (eggs) and produce around 300 progeny (offspring) over three days.

The study screened through molecules to identify their function in the germ line, knocking down hundreds of genes one by one to see if there were defects in the number of progeny being produced or in the germ line itself.

It found that by removing MOG-7, the worm produced no progeny, rendering it sterile.

Remarkably, they found that re-supplying MOG-7 after a period of time meant the germline became fertile again.

Led by Professor Roger Pocock the study found that MOG-7 was involved in RNA splicing, the process by which intervening sequences within genes are necessarily removed before the gene can make a protein.

The germ lines sense when they’re defective and through the process of apoptosis or programmed cell death, kill and clear up defective germ cells, Professor Pocock said.

Deer may be reservoir for SARS-CoV-2

Researchers found that more than 80% of the white-tailed deer sampled in different parts of Iowa between December 2020 and January 2021 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

Image Credit: Heidi-Ann Fourkiller

More than 80% percent of the white-tailed deer sampled in different parts of Iowa between December 2020 and January 2021 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The percentage of SARS-CoV-2 positive deer increased throughout the study, with 33% of all deer testing positive. The findings suggest that white-tailed deer may be a reservoir for the virus to continually circulate and raise concerns of emergence of new strains that may prove a threat to wildlife and, possibly, to humans.

“This is the first direct evidence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in any free-living species, and our findings have important implications for the ecology and long-term persistence of the virus,” said Suresh Kuchipudi, Huck Chair in Emerging Infectious Diseases, clinical professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, and associate director of the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory, Penn State. “These include spillover to other free-living or captive animals and potential spillback to human hosts. Of course, this highlights that many urgent steps are needed to monitor the spread of the virus in deer and prevent spillback to humans.”

According to Vivek Kapur, Huck Distinguished Chair in Global Health and professor of microbiology and infectious diseases, Penn State, while no evidence exists that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted from deer to humans, he believes hunters and those living in close proximity to deer may want to take precautions, including during contact with or handling the animals, by wearing appropriate personal protective equipment and getting vaccinated against COVID-19,” said Kapur.

Hungry caterpillars an underappreciated driver of carbon emissions

Outbreak of leaf-eating caterpillars

Outbreaks of caterpillars of invasive gypsy moths, Lymantria dispar dispar, and forest tent caterpillar moths, Malacasoma disstria occur at least every five years in temperate forests. The insects munch through so many leaves that the resulting decrease in leaf-fall and increase in insect excrement has been found to alter the cycling of nutrients, particularly carbon and nitrogen, between land and nearby lakes on a huge scale.

Nitrogen-rich insect excrement, called frass, can wash into lake water and act as fertilizer for microbes, which then release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as they metabolize. The researchers suggest that in outbreak years the large quantities of frass will favor the growth of greenhouse gas-producing bacteria in lakes at the expense of algae that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

“These insects are basically little machines that convert carbon-rich leaves into nitrogen-rich poo. The poo drops into lakes instead of the leaves, and this significantly changes the water chemistry - we think it will increase the extent to which lakes are sources of greenhouse gases,” said Professor Andrew Tanentzap in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, senior author of the paper.

Expansion of universe directly impacts black hole growth

First rendered image of a black hole, illuminated by infalling matter
(Image credit: Jean-Pierre Luminet)

Over the past 6 years, gravitational wave observatories have been detecting black hole mergers, verifying a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. But there is a problem—many of these black holes are unexpectedly large. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, have proposed a novel solution to this problem: black holes grow along with the expansion of the universe.

Since the first observation of merging black holes by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015, astronomers have been repeatedly surprised by their large masses. Though they emit no light, black hole mergers are observed through their emission of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Physicists originally expected that black holes would have masses less than about 40 times that of the Sun, because merging black holes arise from massive stars, which can’t hold themselves together if they get too big.

Comparison of black hole merger observations with predictions from the new model. The horizontal axis shows the total mass of both black holes in any individual merger, relative to the Sun’s mass.

The LIGO and Virgo observatories, however, have found many black holes with masses greater than that of 50 suns, with some as massive as 100 suns. Numerous formation scenarios have been proposed to produce such large black holes, but no single scenario has been able to explain the diversity of black hole mergers observed so far, and there is no agreement on which combination of formation scenarios is physically viable. This new study, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is the first to show that both large and small black hole masses can result from a single pathway, wherein the black holes gain mass from the expansion of the universe itself.

1,800-plus ‘young’ volcanoes in the U.S. Southwest

The peaks of monogenetic volcanoes,
viewed across Lunar Lake in Nevada.
Credit: Greg Valentine

They’re born. They live once, erupting for a period that might last for days, years or decades. Then, they go dark and die.

This narrative describes the life of a monogenetic volcano, a type of volcanic hazard that can pose important dangers despite an ephemeral existence.

The landscape of the southwestern U.S. is heavily scarred by past eruptions of such volcanoes, and a new study marks a step toward understanding future risks for the region.

The research, which will be published on Nov. 2 in the journal Geosphere, provides a broad overview of what we know — and don’t know — about this type of volcanism in the U.S. Southwest over the past 2.58 million years, a geologic period known as the Quaternary.

During this time, more than 1,800 monogenetic volcanoes erupted in the region, according to a count covering Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and parts of California’s eastern edge. Add in the Pinacate volcanic field, located mostly in the Mexican state of Sonora, bordering Arizona, and the number goes up to over 2,200, scientists say. (The volcanoes included are ones whose ages are estimated to be in the range of the Quaternary, but many have not been precisely dated.)

“Monogenetic means ‘one life,’” says lead author Greg Valentine, a University at Buffalo volcanologist. “So a monogenetic volcano will erupt once, and that eruption may last for several days to several decades, but after that, the volcano is basically dead.

“In the United States, most volcanic hazards-related attention has rightly gone to places like Hawaii, and to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, where we have big stratovolcanoes like Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens, which will have many eruptive episodes over a long life, with widespread hazardous effects. In the past, these smaller monogenetic volcanoes really haven’t been looked at from a focus on hazards; they have been instead studied mainly for what they tell us about the deep earth. Recently, however, there has been more buzz in the research community about how we need to take a look at the kinds of hazards these volcanoes might pose.