In a previous study researchers in Caetano-Anoll s's group used SCOP and genomic information to reconstruct phylogenomic trees that describe the history of the protein world.
The current research is based on these types of trees. They are not the standard trees that people see in phylogenetic analysis he said.
In phylogenetic analysis usually the tips of the trees the leaves are organisms or microbes.
In these they are entire biological systems. In contrast the leaves of these new trees are protein domains
which are compact evolutionary units of structure and function. Proteins are usually complex combinations of several domains.
and Degradation+scheme require rainforest stability in effect locking carbon within the trees. The research team comprised climate scientists
and tree incursions in several locations all over the circumpolar Arctic says co-author Terry Callaghan Professor Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the University of Sheffield UK.
#Bees get a buzz from flower nectar containing caffeineyou may need a cup of coffee to kick start the day
which occurs naturally in the nectar of coffee and citrus flowers were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than those feeding on just sugar.
In turn bees that have fed on caffeine-laced nectar are laden with coffee pollen and these bees search for other coffee plants to find more nectar leading to better pollination.
So caffeine in nectar is likely to improve the bee's foraging prowess while providing the plant with a more faithful pollinator.
They included'robusta'coffee species mainly used to produce freeze-dried coffee and'arabica'used for espresso and filter coffee.
Grapefruit lemons pomelo and oranges were sampled also and all contained caffeine. Co-author Professor Phil Stevenson from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Typically the nectar in the flower of a coffee plant contains almost as much caffeine as a cup of instant coffee.
Just as black coffee has a strong bitter taste to us high concentrations of caffeine are repellent to honeybees.
What we see in bees could explain why people prefer to drink coffee when studying.
The new line of pigs is called the Cassie line and it is known for passing genes on more reliably.
Scientists at the University of Guelph created the Cassie line to address these problems. In their paper for the Journal of Animal Science they explain that the Cassie line has the same ability to digest high levels of phosphorus in plant matter.
Phosphorus is crucial for healthy growth in pigs. Unfortunately 50 to 70 percent of the phosphorus in grain is in the form of phytic acid a compound indigestible by pigs.
Research on the Cassie line stopped in June 2012 but researchers collected semen from the pigs and they have the option to breed new Enviropigs.
They have been collected occasionally in agroecosystems specifically from the canopies of orchard crops in South africa (avocadoes macadamias and pistachios)
A physiological model for sap exudation in maple treesfor many of us maple syrup is an essential part of breakfast--a staple accompaniment to pancakes
Each spring maple growers in temperate regions around the world collect sap from sugar maple trees
However the mechanisms behind sap exudation--processes that trigger pressure differences causing sap to flow--in maple trees are a topic of much debate.
Sugars are produced in the leaves of the maple tree by photosynthesis with the help of absorbed water carbon dioxide
The root causes of sap exudation before the onset of the growing season which allow trees like maple to be tapped for sap in commercially exploitable quantities have been debated in the biology community for decades explains co-author John Stockie.
and volume changes that result from passive physical effects in the tree's vascular tissue: expansion and contraction of gas as well as freezing
and the current understanding is trapped that gas in vascular tissue is compressed by growth of ice crystals and water uptake when the tree freezes in colder months;
The model in the paper is based on this currently understood mechanism for internal pressure build up in maple trees.
and effects of thawing sap dissolving gas bubbles and an osmotic pressure gradient between two components (vessels and fibers) in the tree's nonliving vascular tissue.
To capture the build up of pressure observed in actual maple stems we must also include the freezing process as well as multiple freeze/thaw cycles.
On the commercial side we plan to ultimately develop a complete model of sap flow in a maple tree that can be used in sugarbush management
A full-tree model for sap flow will be useful in optimization studies. We are studying how to'scale up'these cell-level freeze/thaw processes into a tree-level model.
The authors have and appreciate the opportunity to interact regularly with maple syrup producers. These are people that come from a surprising variety of backgrounds ranging from farmers to retired teachers to construction company owners including very few scientists
The researchers conducted the study in an area of Sequoia and Inyo National Forests where the 2002 Mcnally Fire burned more than 150000 acres.
#Human Y chromosome much older than previously thoughtthe discovery and analysis of an extremely rare African american Y chromosome pushes back the time of the most recent common ancestor for the Y chromosome lineage tree to 338000 years ago.
The new divergent lineage which was found in an individual who submitted his DNA to Family tree DNA a company specializing in DNA analysis to trace family roots branched from the Y chromosome tree before the first appearance of anatomically modern humans in the fossil record.
Hammer said the most striking feature of this research is that a consumer genetic testing company identified a lineage that didn't fit anywhere on the existing Y chromosome tree
even though the tree had been constructed based on perhaps a half-million individuals or more. Nobody expected to find anything like this.
whether in Africa or among African-americans in the U s. and that some of these may further increase the age of the Y chromosome tree.
That is potentially game changing for tree nurseries and the biomass industry. When it comes to making fuels out of trees crops grasses
or algae it's all about the cell walls of the plants. Will they make it hard
and choosing the right ones can make the difference between a profit and a loss for tree growers or between a fruitful or fruitless feedstock line for biomass companies.
Finding that particular species or that individual tree that has the genetic markers for the optimal biofuel candidate has heretofore been laborious and painstaking.
whether it's switchgrass remnants of corn stalks fast-growing trees or algae. The traditional strategy had been a multistep approach involving sample dissolution and chromatographic analysis
which can determine what the tree is composed of --but at the cost of disintegrating the sample.
NREL's Tool Combines Precision and Speedthe path toward an ultra-fast ultra-sophisticated screening tool went through Arborgen one of the nation's largest tree seedling suppliers.
It still took a week to analyze samples from just 250 trees. We were doing everything manually in a heated furnace Davis said.
Our partners have genetic markers for 1000 trees and can pinpoint the gene that has an effect on lignin content cellulose content
and find a tree in the natural population with similar genetic traits or use genetic transformation to introduce the desirable traits.
Growers can determine that some of those identical-looking trees are actually a bit different. Using the information that is provided by HTAP researchers
and breeders can determine what genes in the cloned trees are responsible for the advantageous biofuel potential.
And biologists then can graft a desirable cell-wall trait onto a new line of trees. We've phenotyped tens of thousands of samples so far Davis said.
and volcanic ash they encountered while feeding in an ancient tropical forest. The new work was conducted in Argentina where scientists had thought Earth's first grasslands emerged 38 million years ago an assumption based on fossils of these specialized teeth.
Instead there were tropical forests rich with palms bamboos and gingers according to Caroline Strã mberg UW assistant professor of biology and lead author of an article in Nature Communications.
In the case of Argentine mammals Strã mberg and her co-authors hypothesize that the teeth adapted to handle volcanic ash
For example some layers of volcanic ash are as thick as 20 feet (six meters. In other layers soils and roots were just starting to develop
when they were smothered with more ash. Chewing grasses is abrasive because grasses take up more silica from soils than most other plants.
In work funded by the National Science Foundation Strã mberg and her colleagues collected samples from Argentina's Gran Barranca literally Great Cliff that offers access to layers of soil ash
they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees--elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale.
Their calls reverberate through the trees reminding us of the grandeur of primeval nature. If we do not turn the situation around quickly the future of elephants in Africa is doomed.
Growing up in the Caatinga region--a unique dry woodland biome in northeastern Brazil with many endemic legume species--Cardoso was fascinated by the beautiful mass flowering of leafless Luetzelburgia trees during the dry season.
The first thing they do is find a spanning tree for the graph. A tree is a particular kind of graph that has closed no loops.
A family tree is a familiar example; there a loop might mean that someone was both parent and sibling to the same person.
A spanning tree of a graph is a tree that touches all of the graph's nodes
Efficient algorithms for constructing spanning trees are established well. The spanning tree in hand the MIT algorithm then adds back just one of the missing edges creating a loop.
A loop means that two nodes are connected by two different paths; on the circuit analogy the voltage would have to be the same across both paths.
and large cats faced with relentless human encroachment will seek sanctuary in the sultry thickets of mangrove
These harsh coastal biomes are characterized by thick vegetation--particularly clusters of salt-loving mangrove trees
and mangrove swamps as current--and possibly future--wildlife refuges Katarzyna Nowak a former postdoctoral researcher of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton compiled a list of 60 primates
Among big cats the Bengal tiger for instance holds its sole ground in Bangladesh in the Sundarbans the world's largest mangrove forest.
Meanwhile Zanzibar's red colobus monkey--driven to coastal mangroves by deforestation--can struggle to find the freshwater it needs as Nowak reported in the American Journal of Primatology in 2008.
The paper Mangrove and Peat Swamp Forests: Refuge Habitats for Primates and Felids was published in the journal Folia Primatologica.
and coffee to examine the consequences of having abundant wild pollinators for crop pollination. Our study demonstrates that production of many fruit
and seed crops that make diets interesting such as tomatoes coffee and watermelon is limited because their flowers are pollinated not adequately says Harder.
This has led to a realization that increased production of biofuels must take place on so-called marginal land acreage not suitable for growing food crops but capable of growing switch grass Indian beech trees and Barbados nut trees.
Also modern soil samples consistently contain pollen from the Australian pine (Casuarinaceae Casuarina) a plant which is an invasive species from Australia never found in prehistoric samples.
Calculating their occurrence at increasing distances from the residences they determined that human-adapted species are 36 percent more likely to occur near the homes than in the surrounding mixed hardwood-conifer forests
The tree tomatoa researcher at the UPM is collaborating in the characterization of genetic resource of the tree tomato to enhance its cultivation and commercialization in Andean and Mediterranean countries.
The three most southern national forests in the Sierra nevada--Inyo Sequoia and Sierra--will be among the first of the 155 national forests to update their management plans.
#Turning pine sap into evergreen plasticsplastic bags are a bane of nature. And not just bags--just about all plastics really.
Given that the new polymers he's working on often come from pine trees firs and other conifers he's giving the word evergreen added resonance.
Rather than tapping a barrel of oil to obtain starting materials Tang's research group
instead begins with the natural resins found in trees especially evergreens. The rosin and turpentine derived from their wood is rich in hydrocarbons similar but not identical to some components of petroleum.
Hydrocarbon-rich starting materials whether from petroleum or tree resin can be converted into various forms of
and rosin three components of tree resin (and other natural products as well) that are plentiful sources of cycloaliphatic and aromatic structures.
He found that shrubs such as willow and birch became the dominant plants in response to warming where the herbivorous animals were excluded from the ecosystem.
When these shrubs expand in the plant community they tend to shade their neighbors and the build up of leaf litter around the shrubs tends to cool the soil surface reducing the availability of soil nutrients for other plants Post said.
Benefits of being a mosaica genetically mosaic eucalyptus tree is able to control which leaves are saved from predation because of alterations in its genes finds an study published in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Plant Biology.
Between two leaves of the same tree there can be many genetic differences--this study found ten SNP including ones in genes that regulate terpene production
which allows a single tree to produce both nectarines and peaches. Researchers from the Australian National University found that in the long-lived eucalyptus tree (Eucalyptus melliodora) somatic mutation is also responsible for their interesting ability to produce some branches with leaves that are predated readily
while others are pest resistant. At a genetic level there were ten genes which contained differences between these leaves.
Amanda Padovan who led this project explained The main defence against predation of Eucalyptus is a cocktail of terpene oils including monoterpenes sesquiterpenes and FPCS
which give the tree its distinctive smell. Leaves which were resistant to predation had five fewer monoterpenes and nine fewer sesquiterpenes than the tastier leaves.
While this loss of control probably has a high evolutionary cost it allows the tree to survive the insect-plant war.
The tree investigated had one branch which was untouched by insects when the rest of the tree was defoliated completely.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Biomed Central Limited. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
More importantly the study demonstrates that the diseased trees suffered from severe phosphorus (P) deficiency
and that application of phosphorus solutions to the diseased trees significantly alleviated HLB symptoms and thus improved fruit yield in a three-year field trial in southwest Florida.
Both donor and receptor trees tested negative for other graft-transmissible pathogens of citrus. As controls five plants were mock-inoculated with pathogen-free healthy tissue.
Leaves were collected also continuously at later points to ensure that the tissue used for srna libraries was from the diseased trees. srnas ranging from 18 to 28 nucleotides were isolated cloned
if trees can be diagnosed with HLB and treated before symptoms start to become apparent then money spent by the global citrus industry on additional treatments might be saved.
In particular mir399 which is induced by P starvation in other plant species was discovered to be induced by HLB infection in the diseased citrus trees.
Dr Jin writes we hypothesized that applying P solutions to the Las-positive trees would reduce HLB symptoms
and improve tree performance. Phosphorus solutions were applied to HLB-positive sweet orange trees in a field trial three times per year for more than three years.
After two years of treatment the diseased trees displayed the significantly reduced HLB symptoms. Compared with the mock-treated plants the P-treated trees had a greener appearance and more vigorous growth.
Fruit yield increased approximately twofold compared with the mock-treated plants. It should be noted that the application of phosphorus solutions did not cure the trees
but this study suggests that additional phosphorus application may help the diseased trees to look healthier
and improve fruit yield. This along with the potential use of mirnas to diagnose infected trees earlier could have real practical significance given the global economic importance of citrus plants and the rising costs of HLB management.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Oxford university Press. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Thigh fat may be to blame for older adults who slow downa new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical center shows that an increase in fat throughout the thigh is predictive of mobility loss in otherwise healthy
#Decoys could blunt spread of ash-killing beetlesas the emerald ash borer ravages North american ash trees threatening the trees'very survival a team of entomologists
Emerald ash borers (EABS) a type of beetle native to Asia first appeared in the U s. about 20 years ago.
They are now moving east from Michigan killing ash trees on the Eastern Seaboard as far south as North carolina.
Within 25 years practically no ash trees may remain on either side of the St lawrence Seaway said Akhlesh Lakhtakia Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering science and Mechanics at Penn State.
As their name implies emerald ash borers are iridescent green. The beetles don't carry disease
but their larvae feed on the ash trees'sap effectively killing the trees by depriving trees of their nourishment.
Thomas C. Baker Distinguished Professor of Entomology at Penn State knew that the male EAB locates a mate by flying over an ash tree finding a female by identifying her green wings
They also ran a pilot test in Hungary with a related beetle pest that bores into oak trees.
so that populations of emerald ash borers can be detected in new locations quickly paving the way for efficient use of other control methods according to the researchers.
As a carbon-negative technology BECCS takes advantage of the innate ability of trees grasses
Keith has launched also a startup company called Carbon Engineering that's developing industrial-scale machines--artificial trees--that are designed to capture CO2 directly from the air.
or fuels mechanical trees do not generate power and in fact require natural gas to operate. Following the 2012 negative-emissions workshop GCEP issued an international request for proposals to develop net-negative carbon emissions technologies.
#Tree-ring data show history, pattern to droughtsdendrochronologists have shown that tree-ring data produce a remarkably accurate history of droughts and other climate changes.
and environmental change by relying on characteristic patterns of tree-ring growth--can provide a climate perspective on important events such as large-scale human migration and even the rise and fall of entire civilizations.
and dendrochronologist David Stahle and Ewing Research Professor Edward Cook of Columbia University used more than 1400 climate-sensitive tree-ring chronologies from multiple tree species across North america to reconstruct the Palmer
Their tree-ring reconstructions cover the same geographic area but extend back to 800 A d. Stahle wanted to examine the reconstructed indices to test the accuracy of the records
Comparisons of reconstructed PDSI with instrumentally measured PDSI during the 20th century document the remarkable accuracy with which the tree-ring data reproduce the spatial pattern
Both of these droughts have precedents in the centuries-long tree-ring reconstructions Stahle said.
In fact the tree-ring data document drought anomalies in prehistory with a similar severity and spatial impact that persisted for two to three years.
Severe drought over the Corn belt and southern Great plains are likely to recur especially with continued warming over the United states. The tree-ring reconstructions of the Palmer index indicated that the Great Pueblo Drought
For more than a decade Stahle has taken core samples from trees and examined the chronology of their rings to help explain the societal impact of drought and other climate changes.
A recently published 1238-yearlong tree-ring chronology the longest and most accurate of its kind for Mesoamerica was the first to reconstruct the climate of pre-colonial Mexico on an annual basis for more than a millennium.
Many animals that dwell in trees bushes deadfall or underground perish from the blazes or succumb later from lack of food and shelter or increased predation.
In Australia for instance the koala is especially vulnerable to wildfires that consume the tree canopy as the animals are slow-moving
Fast-moving savanna fires generally remain on the surface inflicting only minimal damage on trees barely heating the soil below
and have grown over time reaching more than $25 billion a year in 2008 said first author James Lightwood Phd a UCSF associate professor of clinical pharmacy.
#Wetland trees a significant overlooked source of methanewetland trees are overlooked a significant source of the potent greenhouse gas methane according to a new study by researchers at The Open University and the Universities of Bristol and Oxford.
We also enclosed tree stems in chambers and the results were surprising. About 80 per cent of all methane emissions was venting through the trees.
The roots of trees like all plants need oxygen to survive. One strategy that trees use to cope in waterlogged soil is to enlarge porous structures known as lenticels in their stems to allow air to enter
and diffuse to their roots. Pangala and colleagues have shown that these common adaptations in wetland trees are two-way conduits that also allow soil gas to escape to the atmosphere.
Dr Gauci said: This work challenges current models of how forested wetlands exchange methane with the atmosphere.
Ground-based estimates of methane flux in the tropics may be coming up short because tree emissions are included never in field campaigns.
Although willow is a familiar inhabitant of wet soil it was not among the trees studied in the Sebangau River catchment in Borneo.
However the eight tree species investigated by the team are common in the tropics including the vast Amazon basin.
Establishing whether tree-mediated emissions of methane are ubiquitous in tropical wetlands is now the focus of a new three-year Natural Environment Research Council grant to Dr Gauci
and Dr Hornibrook that begins later this year. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Bristol.
From an ecological viewpoint an ant colony is much like a tree putting out seeds with the potential to create new trees.
#Southwest regional warming likely cause of pinyon pine cone declinecreeping climate change in the Southwest appears to be having a negative effect on pinyon pine reproduction a finding with implications for wildlife species sharing the same woodland ecosystems says a University
The new study showed that pinyon pine seed cone production declined by an average of about 40 percent at nine study sites in New mexico
The biggest declines in pinyon pine seed cone reproduction were at the higher elevation research sites experiencing more dramatic warming relative to lower elevations said Redmond of CU's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
We are finding significant declines in pinyon pine cone production at many of our study sites said Redmond.
The cones in which the pinyon seeds are produced are initiated two years prior to seed maturity
The study is one of the first to examine the impact of climate change on tree species like pinyon pines that instead of reproducing annually shed vast quantities of cones every few years during synchronous episodic occurrences known as
Redmond said such masting in the pinyon pine appears to occur every three to seven years resulting in massive bumper crops of cones covering the ground.
In addition to showing that total pinyon pine cone production during the 2003-2012 decade had declined from the 1969-1978 decade in the study areas the team found the production of cones during masting events also declined during that period.
Some scientists believe masting events evolved to produce a big surplus of nut-carrying cones--far too many for wildlife species to consume in a season--making it more likely the nuts eventually will sprout into pinyon pine seedlings she said.
This study provides evidence that increasing air temperatures may be influencing the ability of a common and iconic western U s. tree pinyon pine to reproduce.
We would predict that declines in pinyon pine cone production may impact the long-term viability of these tree populations.
Wildlife biologists say pinyon-juniper woodlands are popular with scores of bird and mammal species ranging from black-chinned hummingbirds to black bears.
A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona estimated that 150 Clark's nutcrackers cached roughly 5 million pinyon pine nuts in a single season benefiting not only the birds themselves but also the pines
For the new study Redmond revisited nine pinyon pine study sites scattered throughout New mexico and Oklahoma that had been studied previously in 1978 by Forcella.
Both Forcella and Redmond were able to document pinyon pine masting years by counting small concave blemishes known as abscission scars on individual tree branches that appeared after the cones have been dropped she said.
Since each year in the life of a pinyon pine tree is marked by a whorl--a single circle of branches extending around a tree trunk--the researchers were able to bracket pinyon pine reproductive activity in the nine study areas for the 1969-1978 decade
Pinyon pines take three growing seasons or about 26 months to produce mature cones from the time of cone initiation.
Low elevation conifers including pinyon pines grow in water-limited environments and have been shown to have higher cone output during cool
In addition to the climate-warming trend under way in the Southwest the 2002-03 drought caused significant mortality in pinyon pine forests Redmond said.
Pinyon nuts the Southwest's only commercial source of edible pine seeds today were dietary staples of indigenous Americans going back millennia.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011