Bioplastics made of bacteria to reduce plastic waste in oceans

The Nereid Biomaterials team, including Rochester biologist Anne S. Meyer, has created the first ocean instrument made with 3D-printed internal parts composed of bioplastics. The instrument will be replicated and deployed in swarms to enable distributed measurements of the ocean carbon cycle. But because they will be made of bioplastic designed to degrade in oceans, the instruments will not add to the growing problem of (nondegradable) plastic marine pollution. Future applications may extend well beyond ocean instrumentation.
Credit: Melissa Omand / University of Rhode Island

A team of scientists, including Rochester biologist Anne S. Meyer, is developing bioplastics to degrade in oceans.

Plastic waste poses an urgent problem for our planet’s ecosystems, especially our waterways. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter Earth’s oceans every year, and plastic has been found in every part of the ocean, including at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches.

Although some biodegradable plastics, or bioplastics, have recently been developed, these plastics were intended to break down in industrial compost facilities. In cold, dark ocean environments, they break down very slowly.

What if there were a way to avoid the problem of plastic pollution while still reaping the benefits of plastic’s durability, versatility, and low cost?

In order to tackle this problem, Anne S. Meyer, an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester, worked with marine microbiologist Alyson Santoro at the University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Rhode Island oceanographer Melissa Omand; ecologist Ryan Freedman from the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary; and industry partner Mango Materials. Together, the team is developing bioplastics—environmentally friendly plastic materials engineered to degrade in ocean environments.

Boron Nitride with a Twist Could Lead to New Way to Make Qubits

Shaul Aloni, Cong Su, Alex Zettl, and Steven Louie at the Molecular Foundry. The researchers synthesized a device made from twisted layers of hexagonal boron nitride with color centers that can be switched on and off with a simple switch.
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab

Achieving scalability in quantum processors, sensors, and networks requires novel devices that are easily manipulated between two quantum states. A team led by researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has now developed a method, using a solid-state “twisted” crystalline layered material, which gives rise to tiny light-emitting points called color centers. These color centers can be switched on and off with the simple application of an external voltage.

“This is a first step toward a color center device that engineers could build or adapt into real quantum systems,” said Shaul Aloni, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, who co-led the study. The work is detailed in the journal Nature Materials.

For example, the research could lead to a new way to make quantum bits, or qubits, which encode information in quantum computers.

Color centers are microscopic defects in a crystal, such as diamond, that usually emit bright and stable light of specific color when struck with laser or other energy source such as an electron beam. Their integration with waveguides, devices that guide light, can connect operations across a quantum processor. Several years ago, researchers discovered that color centers in a synthesized material called hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), which is commonly used as a lubricant or additive for paints and cosmetics, emitted even brighter colors than color centers in diamond. But engineers have struggled to use the material in applications because producing the defects at a determined location is difficult, and they lacked a reliable way to switch the color centers on and off.

Study Shows Gravitational Forces Deep Within the Earth Have Great Impact on Landscape Evolution

These visuals from the modeling illustrate metamorphic core complex development showing crustal stresses and strain rates, faults, uplift of deeper rocks, and sedimentation from surface erosion. These processes of core complex development occur after a thickened crustal root supporting topography is weakened through the introduction of heat, fluids, and partial melt.
Credit: Alireza Bahadori and William E. Holt

Stony Brook University is leading a research project that focuses on the interplay between the evolution of the landscape, climate and fossil record of mammal evolution and diversification in the Western United States. A little explored aspect of this geosciences research is the connection between gravitational forces deep in the Earth and landscape evolution. Now in a newly published paper in Nature Communications, the researchers show by way of computer modeling that deep roots under mountain belts (analogous to the massive ice below the tip of an iceberg) trigger dramatic movements along faults that result in collapse of the mountain belt and exposure of rocks that were once some 15 miles below the surface.

The origin of these enigmatic exposures, called ‘metamorphic core complexes,’ has been hotly debated within the scientific community. This study finding may alter the way scientists attempt to uncover the history of Earth as an evolving planet.

Lead principal investigator William E. Holt, PhD, a Professor of Geophysics the Department of Geosciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University, first author Alireza Bahadori, a former PhD student under Holt and now at Columbia University, and colleagues found that these core complexes are a fossil signature of past mountain belts in the Western United States that occupied regions around Phoenix and Las Vegas. These mountain areas left traces in the form of gravel deposits from ancient northward and eastward flowing rivers, found today south and west of Flagstaff, Arizona.

Discovering New Cancer Treatments in the “Dark Matter” of the Human Genome

Microscopy pictures of three-dimensional lung cancer spheroids transfected with green fluorescent-labelled ASOs.
Credit: UniBE / NCCR RNA & Disease

Researchers of the University of Bern and the Insel Hospital, University Hospital Bern, have developed a screening method to discover new drug targets for cancer treatment in the so-called “Dark Matter” of the genome. They applied their method to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the greatest cancer killer for which effective therapies are urgently sought. They could show that inhibiting identified targets could greatly slow down cancer growth, and their method is adaptable to other cancers.

Cancer is in Switzerland the second leading cause of death. Among the different types of cancers, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) kills most patients and remains largely incurable. Unfortunately, even newly approved therapies can extend the life of patients by only a few months and only a few survive the metastatic stadium long-term. Thus, new treatments which attack cancer in novel ways are sought. In a recently published study in the Journal Cell Genomics, researchers of the University of Bern and the Insel Hospital determined new targets for drug development for this cancer type.

Mouthwashes may suppress SARS-CoV-2

Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), the chemical tested in the study
Photo credit: Ryo Takeda

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is an airborne disease transmitted via aerosols, which are spread from the oral and nasal cavities—the mouth and the nose. In addition to the well-known division and spread of the virus in the cells of the respiratory tract, SARS-CoV-2 is also known to infect the cells of the lining of the mouth and the salivary glands.

A team of researchers led by Professor Kyoko Hida at Hokkaido University have shown that low concentrations of the chemical cetylpyridinium chloride, a component of some mouthwashes, has an antiviral effect on SARS-CoV-2. Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Commercially available mouthwashes contain a number of antibiotic and antiviral components that act against microorganisms in the mouth. One of these, cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), has been shown to reduce the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in the mouth, primarily by disrupting the lipid membrane surrounding the virus. While there are other chemicals with similar effects, CPC has the advantage of being tasteless and odorless.

The researchers were interested in studying the effects of CPC in Japanese mouthwashes. Mouthwashes in Japan typically contain a fraction of the CPC compared to previously tested mouthwashes. They tested the effects of CPC on cell cultures that express trans-membrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2), which is required for SARS-CoV-2 entry into the cell.

Seaweed-based battery powers confidence in sustainable energy storage

Bristol-led team uses nanomaterials made from seaweed to create a strong battery separator, paving the way for greener and more efficient energy storage.

Sodium-metal batteries (SMBs) are one of the most promising high-energy and low-cost energy storage systems for the next-generation of large-scale applications. However, one of the major impediments to the development of SMBs is uncontrolled dendrite growth, which penetrates the battery’s separator and results in short-circuiting.

Building on previous work at the University of Bristol and in collaboration with Imperial College and University College London, the team has succeeded in making a separator from cellulose nanomaterials derived from brown seaweed.

The research, published in Advanced Materials, describes how fibers containing these seaweed-derived nanomaterials not only stop crystals from the sodium electrodes penetrating the separator, they also improve the performance of the batteries.

Resistance to Stress and Anxiety Can Be Trained Like a Muscle

According to Rustam Muslumov, anxiety and stress are emotions aimed at assessing the future.
Photo credit: Anna Marinovich

Humans, unlike the animal world, are oriented toward finding problems. The human being is constantly looking at his environment and discovering imperfections that make him think about what could be changed and improved. This is how the emotions of anxiety and stress emerge. Without moderate stress it is impossible for a person to develop, yet the constant presence in these situations has a negative impact on his mental and physical health. That is why it is necessary to cultivate resilience - the ability not to increase anxiety, but to cope with it correctly and in time.

Stress, like any other emotion, is important for humans. It helps to solve non-standard problems aimed at protecting oneself in the face of change and instability. The nature of anxiety, on the other hand, is such that one looks to the future with two ideas in mind: something bad might happen, and I cannot cope with it and keep myself safe if it does. Being constantly anxious can lead a person to a state of distress. Rustam Muslumov, Associate Professor of the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology of Education at Ural Federal University, spoke about this on the Komsomolskaya Pravda broadcast.

Group size enhancement explains cooperation in fishes

Attack of a breeding male on a threatening predator. The small fish in the picture are brood care helpers, which benefit from this defense - this illustrates the (genetic) fitness benefit helpers get by the protection through other group members.
Credit: Courtesy of M. Taborsky

The survival chances of group members are often greater in large than in small groups. In some species, non-reproducing group members therefore help raise offspring, even if they are unrelated. In an experimental study, researchers at the University of Bern investigated this seemingly altruistic behavior in cooperatively breeding fish. Their results indicate that helping can evolve by natural selection through increased survival chances of brood care helpers by selectively increasing group size.

Cooperation is widespread in nature, most prominently exemplified by social insects like ants and honey bees, apart from humans. In social insects, cooperative brood care can be easily explained from an evolutionary perspective because helpers are related to the young and, therefore, brood care helpers are successfully passing on the genes coding for their altruistic behavior via siblings sharing a common genetic makeup. “This is different in cooperatively breeding fishes, where many of the helpers are unrelated to the dominant pair they aid in raising their offspring”, says Michael Taborsky, senior author and supervisor of the new study. So why do unrelated group members help to raise “foreign” young? A paper published in Biology Letters by Irene García Ruiz and Michael Taborsky from the Institute for Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, reveals how such altruistic care of young can evolve by natural selection.

How the secrets of the ‘water bear’ could improve lifesaving drugs like insulin

A tardigrade, or water bear, floating in water. The tiny organism can endure some of the most extreme conditions on Earth — and even space.
Credit: Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

UCLA chemist Heather Maynard had to wonder: How do organisms like the tardigrade do it?

This stocky microscopic animal, also known as a water bear, can survive in environments where survival seems impossible. Tardigrades have been shown to endure extremes of heat, cold and pressure — and even the vacuum of space — by entering a state of suspended animation and revitalizing, sometimes decades later, under more hospitable conditions. 

If she could understand the mechanism behind this extraordinary preservation, Maynard reckoned, she might be able to use the knowledge to improve medicines so that they remain potent longer and are less vulnerable to typical environmental challenges, ultimately broadening access and benefiting human health.

It turns out that one of the processes protecting tardigrades is spurred by a sugar molecule called trehalose, commonly found in living things from plants to microbes to insects, some of which use it as blood sugar. For a few select organisms, such as the water bear and the spiky resurrection plant, that can revive after years of near-zero metabolism and complete dehydration, trehalose’s stabilizing power is the secret to their unearthly fortitude.

Researchers advance efforts to develop a protein-based treatment therapy for individuals with ALS

Photo Credit: Michal Jarmoluk

Researchers at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, located at the University of South Florida, successfully tested a protein that has the potential to aid in the development of a protein-based therapy for patients with ALS, a progressive nervous system disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Published in eNeuro, the study examines the effects of apolipoprotein A1, a “good cholesterol” on endothelial cells, the lining in blood vessels that provides a barrier between the brain, spinal cord tissues and blood circulation.

In a petri dish under an environmental condition reminiscent of ALS, the team found that the protein activates a unique pathway inside cells that increases survival and protects endothelial cells from toxic substances in the blood. This pathway can enhance the survival of cells and prevent further vascular damage by ALS.

“With a functional barrier, the hope is that the environment in the central nervous system will become less toxic and disease progression can be slowed,” said Svitlana Garbuzova-Davis, professor at the Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair and lead investigator.

While the protein has been proven to protect endothelial cells in diseases such as diabetes and atherosclerosis, the effects on ALS-damaged endothelial cells were previously unknown.