#Mapping the benefits of our ecosystemswe rely on our physical environment for many things--clean water land for crops or pastures storm water absorption and recreation among others.
and how they lived says Cerling a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics and biology at the University of Utah.
Ted Turlings an author of the study and head of the Laboratory for Fundamental and Applied Research in Chemical Ecology Institute of Biology at the University of Neuchã¢tel Switzerland.
and losses in one of the world's richest areas of biodiversity and home to the endangered giant pandas.
and elaborating on what children already know about different nutrition-related themes including dietary variety digestion food categories microscopic nutrients and nutrients as fuel for biological functions.
This has been demonstrated by a new synthesis carried out by two researchers at Aarhus University--Professor of Biology Jens-Christian Svenning and Assistant professor Brody Sandel.
The challenges we faceconsequently if you're trying to practise natural forest management with natural regeneration you may see completely different plants regenerating compared with
but with a mechanism they had never been able to observe according to Dr. Hays Rye Texas A&m Agrilife Research biochemist.
and how they interact with each other in a complicated network said Rye who also is associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&m.
but with a mechanism they had never been able to observe according to Dr. Hays Rye Texas A&m Agrilife Research biochemist.
and how they interact with each other in a complicated network said Rye who also is associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&m.
Researchers from Oregon State university concluded that moisture stress is a key limitation for conifer regeneration following stand-replacing wildfire
A decade after this fire there was almost no tree regeneration at lower drier sites said Erich Dodson a researcher with the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society.
There was some regeneration at higher sites with more moisture. But at the low elevations it will be a long time before a forest comes back
#Aerial mosquito spraying study finds no immediate public health risksin what researchers say is the first public health study of the aerial mosquito spraying method to prevent West Nile virus a UC Davis study analyzed emergency
which will likely magnify the incidence West Nile virus and the risks of human transmission.
Unfortunately West Nile virus is endemic in California and the United states and the controversy of mosquito management will likely arise every summer said Estella Geraghty associate professor of clinical internal medicine at UC Davis
West Nile virus has become an increasingly serious problem throughout the United states and may become more of a threat as the climate warms.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention West Nile virus is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in the United states. The virus is transmitted to humans and animals through the bite of an infected mosquito.
Mosquitoes become infected with the virus when they feed on infected birds. In California around the time of the study#2004 and 2005#hundreds of people were sickened by West Nile virus
and 48 died. Most people exposed to the disease do not have symptoms but in about 1-in-150 people it can be fatal
because these conditions have known no plausible biological connection with aerial spraying the results related to these conditions are indeed likely to have occurred by chance.
Integrated mosquito management#a method to control mosquitoes through targeted interventions based on mosquito biology that includes surveillance of mosquito activity reducing breeding sites such as neglected swimming pools
and the killing of larval and adult mosquitoes#are used all in California to control the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus
The article is titled Correlation between aerial insecticide spraying to interrupt West Nile virus transmission and emergency department visits in Sacramento County California.
Resistance gene found against Ug99 wheat stem rust pathogenthe world's food supply got a little more plentiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough.
Eduard Akhunov associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State university and his colleague Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California-Davis led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat
Andres Salcedo doctoral candidate in genetics from Mexico; and Cyrille Saintenac a postdoctoral research associate currently working at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in France.
The team's study Identification of Wheat Gene Sr35 that Confers Resistance to Ug99 Stem Rust Race Group appears in the journal Science.
It identifies the stem rust resistance gene named Sr35 and appears alongside a study from an Australian group that identifies another effective resistance gene called Sr33.
This gene Sr35 functions as a key component of plants'immune system Akhunov said. It recognizes the invading pathogen
and triggers a response in the plant to fight the disease. Wheat stem rust is caused by a fungal pathogen.
or three genes that were so efficient against stem rust for decades that this disease wasn't the biggest concern Akhunov said.
As a first line of defense wheat breeders and researchers began looking for resistance genes among those that had already been discovered in the existing germplasm repositories he said.
The Sr35 gene was one of those genes that was discovered in einkorn wheat grown in Turkey Akhunov said.
Until now however we did not know what kind of gene confers resistance to Ug99 in this wheat accession.
To identify the resistance gene Sr35 the team turned to einkorn wheat that is known to be resistant to the Ug99 fungal strain.
Researchers spent nearly four years trying to identify the location of the Sr35 gene in the wheat genome which contains nearly two times more genetic information than the human genome Once the researchers narrowed the list of candidate genes they used two complementary approaches to find the Sr35 gene.
It was a matter of knocking out each candidate gene until we found the one that made a plant susceptible Akhunov said.
Next researchers isolated the candidate gene and used biotechnical approaches to develop transgenic plants that carried the Sr35 gene
and showed resistance to the Ug99 race of stem rust. Now that the resistance gene has been found Akhunov
and colleagues are looking at what proteins are transferred by the fungus into the wheat plants
and recognized by the protein encoded by the Sr35 gene. This will help researchers to better understand the molecular mechanisms behind infection
According to co-author PSW wildlife biologist Dr. Kathryn Purcell exposure of wildlife to pesticides has been documented widely
According to co-author PSW wildlife biologist Dr. Kathryn Purcell exposure of wildlife to pesticides has been documented widely
#Comparing genomes of wild and domestic tomatoyou say tomato I say comparative transcriptomics. Researchers in the U s. Europe and Japan have produced the first comparison of both the DNA sequences and
which genes are active or being transcribed between the domestic tomato and its wild cousins. The results give insight into the genetic changes involved in domestication
and may help with future efforts to breed new traits into tomato or other crops said Julin Maloof professor of plant biology in the College of Biological sciences at the University of California Davis. Maloof is senior author on the study published June 24 in the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. For example breeding new traits into tomatoes often involves crossing them with wild relatives.
The new study shows that a large block of genes from one species of wild tomato is present in domestic tomato
and has unexpected widespread effects across the whole genome. Maloof and colleagues studied the domestic tomato Solanum lycopersicum and wild relatives S. pennellii S. habrochaites and S. pimpinellifolium.
Comparison of the plants'genomes shows the effects of evolutionary bottlenecks Maloof noted--for example at the original domestication in South america
Among other findings genes associated with fruit color showed rapid evolution among domesticated red-fruited tomatoes
And S. pennellii which lives in desert habitats had accelerated evolution in genes related to drought tolerance heat and salinity.
New technology is giving biologists the unprecedented ability to look at all the genes in an organism not just a select handful.
but also the MESSENGER RNA being transcribed from different genes. RNA transcription is the process that transforms information in genes into action.
If the DNA sequence is the list of parts for making a tomato plant the MESSENGER RNA transcripts are the step-by-step instructions.
Gene expression profiling combined with an understanding of the plants'biology allows researchers to understand how genes interact to create complex phenotypes said Neelima Sinha professor of plant biology at UC Davis
Genomics has tracked fast previous gene-by-gene analyses that took us years to complete she said.
Experiments conducted on the fruit fly Drosophila by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have shown that hunger not only modifies behaviour but also changes pathways in the brain.
Neurobiologists in Martinsried have discovered now how the brain deals with this constant conflict in deciding between a hazardous substance and a potential food source taking advantage of the fly as a great genetic model organism for circuit neuroscience.
but differences in the expression of the genes encoding these enzymes did not fully explain the rotation-resistant beetles'advantage.
and does more damage than any other invasive tree said Matthew Kasson who received his doctorate in plant pathology and environmental microbiology from Penn State.
It's the number one cause of native regeneration failure in clearcuts in Pennsylvania. Kasson who is a postdoctoral researcher in plant pathology physiology
Dr Jon Blount from Biosciences at the University of Exeter who led the research said:
Joseph Craine research assistant professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State university examined how climate change during the next 50 years will affect grazing animals such as bison and cattle in the Great plains.
and sexes collected from 22 bison herds throughout the U s. The information came from herds owned by the university's Konza Prairie Biological Station;
The study is an offshoot of Craine's ecology research with the Konza Prairie Biological Station
Managed by the university's Division of Biology the Konza Prairie spans about 8600 acres.
Their research is published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
The above story is provided based on materials by American Society for Microbiology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and the University of California at Davis. Vegetables and fruits don't die the moment they are harvested said Rice biologist Janet Braam the lead researcher on a new study this week in Current Biology.
Braam is professor and chair of Rice's Department of Biochemistry and Cell biology. Braam's team simulated day-night cycles of light and dark to control the internal clocks of fruits
In new research Brown University scientists describe the genetic and regulatory factors that compel the male's role in the process.
Millions of times on a spring day there is a dramatic biomolecular tango where the flower rather than adorning a dancer's teeth is the performer.
A new paper in Current Biology describes the genetically prescribed dance steps of the pollen tube
High school biology leaves off with this: In normal pollination sperm-carrying pollen grains land on the pistil's tip
In his lab at Brown University Mark Johnson associate professor of biology studies the true complexity of intercellular communications that conduct this process with exquisite precision.
Among the fundamental biology questions at play in the sex lives of flowers for example are how cells recognize each other know what to do
What they knew from a prior study is that the gene expression in pollen tubes that had grown through a pistil was much different than that of pollen tubes grown in the lab. Leydon's first step
therefore was to see which regulators of gene expression or transcription factors were at work in pistil-grown pollen tubes but not in the lab-grown ones.
which the genes for all three transcription factors were disabled. Then he took the pollen from each to pollinate normal flowers.
which pollen tube-expressed genes were being regulated by the MYB transcription factors. In pollen tubes that had grown through pistils they found 11 that were grossly underexpressed in the mutated pollen tubes compared to normal ones.
what those genes do. They encode a variety of tasks but one in particular got Leydon's attention
In other words expressing that gene could be pushing the pollen tube's self-destruct mechanism. This is not just a dialogue
Future work Johnson said will include tracking down the relevant genes more fully and determining whether thionin is indeed the pollen tube buster that the genes
and their MYB-related expression seem to indicate. The work may also have implications beyond basic science Johnson said.
and share the same number of chromosomes but fertilization often fails at the pollen tube burst
or introduce genetic diversity that will allow the reproductive process to be efficient even in difficult environmental conditions Johnson said.
The researchers used the Brown University Genomics Core Facility in their work. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Brown University.
and other wetland big boys that produce a lot of plant biomass and carbon Mitsch says. Once carbon ends up in wetland soil it can also remain there for hundreds to thousands of years because of waterlogged conditions that inhibit microbial decomposition.
At the end of the study the researchers measured biomarkers of liver damage through blood samples and examined what type of bacteria was in the intestine through fecal samples and intestinal biopsies.
This previously unmeasured influence on the environment may offer a new way of looking at biodiversity management and carbon storage for climate change.
This has significance for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. Although the study was carried out on a small scale it could inform practices done in much larger areas.
Appreciating the role of predators is also important currently given that top predators are declining at rates faster than that of many other species in global trends of biodiversity loss.
Wolong is a biodiversity hotspot that's home to endangered giant pandas. Wolong and the conservation program became a stage on
and former CSIS doctoral students Wei Liu now a postdoctoral fellow at IIASA in Laxenburg Austria Mao-Ning Tuanmu now a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
#Pesticides significantly reduce biodiversity in aquatic environmentsthe pesticides many of which are used currently in Europe and Australia are responsible for reducing the regional diversity of invertebrates in streams and rivers by up to 42 percent researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
and fungicides on the regional biodiversity of invertebrates in flowing waters using data from Germany France and Victoria in Australia.
The authors of the now-published study state that this is the first ever study which has investigated the effects of pesticides on regional biodiversity.
whether or to which extent and at what concentrations their use causes a reduction in biodiversity in aquatic environments.
In both Europe and Australia the researchers were able to demonstrate considerable losses in the regional biodiversity of aquatic insects and other freshwater invertebrates.
A difference in biodiversity of 42 percent was found between non-contaminated and strongly-contaminated areas in Europe;
The researchers also discovered that the overall decrease in biodiversity is primarily due to the disappearance of several groups of species that are especially susceptible to pesticides.
Biological diversity in such aquatic environments can only be sustained by them because they ensure a regular exchange between surface and ground water thus functioning as an indicator of water quality.
The authors point out that the use of pesticides is an important driver for biodiversity loss
and that legally-permitted maximum concentrations do not adequately protect the biodiversity of invertebrates in flowing waters.
The latest results show that the aim of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to slow down the decline in the number of species by 2020 is jeopardized.
The threat to biodiversity from pesticides has obviously been underestimated in the past. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Helmholtz Centre For Environmental Research-UFZ.
Seven months later the researchers collected samples of the animals'visceral and subcutaneous fat tissues to evaluate levels of two biological markers of inflammation.
These biomarkers were CD68 a marker for inflammatory cells and adiponectin a molecule with a known role in the development of metabolic syndrome.
#Genetic diversity key to survival of honey bee colonieswhen it comes to honey bees more mates is better.
A new study from North carolina State university the University of Maryland and the U s. Department of agriculture (USDA) shows that genetic diversity is key to survival in honey bee colonies--a colony is less likely to survive
whether a colony's genetic diversity has an impact on its survival and what that impact may be says Dr. David Tarpy an associate professor of entomology at North carolina State university
We knew genetic diversity affected survival under controlled conditions but wanted to see if it held true in the real world.
Tarpy took genetic samples from 80 commercial colonies of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in the eastern United states to assess each colony's genetic diversity which reflects the number of males a colony's queen has mated with.
The more mates a queen has had the higher the genetic diversity in the colony. The researchers then tracked the health of the colonies on an almost monthly basis over the course of 10 months
This study confirms that genetic diversity is enormously important in honey bee populations Tarpy says.
The paper Genetic diversity affects colony survivorship in commercial honey bee colonies was published online this month in the journal Naturwissenschaften.
#Bioenergy potential unearthed in leaf-cutter ant communitiesas spring warms up Wisconsin humans aren't the only ones tending their gardens.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Bacteriology colonies of leaf-cutter ants cultivate thriving communities of fungi
and shelter for the ants for researchers they are potential models for better biofuel production.
because a lot of plant biomass goes in and is converted to energy for the ants says Frank Aylward a bacteriology graduate student and researcher with the Great lakes Bioenergy Research center.
Aylward is the lead author of a study identifying new fungal enzymes that could help break down cellulosic--or non-food--biomass for processing to fuel.
His work appears on the cover of the June 15 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
All the enzymes that we found are known similar to enzymes but they are completely new; no one had identified
Building on Aylward's previous study of these gardens the researchers relied on genome sequencing provided by the U s. Department of energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
In addition to sequencing the genome of Leucoagaricus gongylophorous the fungus cultivated by leaf-cutting ants the researchers looked at the genomes of entire living garden communities.
We really tried as thoroughly as possible to characterize the biomass degrading enzymes produced Aylward says.
and match them with others that we already know about to achieve even better biomass degradation.
After sequencing the L. gongylophorous genome the researchers noticed that the fungus seemed to be doing the lion's share of cellulose degradation with its specialized enzymes.
and bacteria says Garret Suen co-author of the study and a UW-Madison assistant professor of bacteriology and Wisconsin Energy Institute researcher.
Accessing and deconstructing cellulose is also the goal of GLBRC researchers who want to ferment the stored sugars to ethanol and other advanced biofuels.
but understanding how they work in the context of the ant community could help researchers create similar methods for processing cellulosic biofuel feedstocks such as corn stalks and grasses.
The strong resemblance to a small city drives home the point that energy production in such a meticulously coordinated system would be difficult to replicate in a lab or a biorefinery.
and purify biomass-degrading enzymes synthetically. New enzymes could be added to known combinations and tested for their ability to break down biofuel feedstocks.
However this process can be time-consuming and costly. To put their findings in perspective the researchers plan to study other insects
They hope that a better understanding of these complex systems will help them share their biomass-degrading secrets with bioenergy researchers.
#Black locust tree shows promise for biomass potentialresearchers from the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of Illinois evaluating the biomass potential of woody crops are taking a closer look at the black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) which showed a higher yield
It's typically been tough to break down the biomass in woody plants to make it useful for alcohol production.
and his team's role in the EBI's feedstock production/agronomy program is to improve the production aspects of bioenergy crops.
Robinia pseudoacacia is showing great potential as a biomass crop for Midwestern energy production out-yielding the next closest species by nearly threefold Kling said.
and professor of biology at Saint joseph's University advises that it's best to investigate the plant that's choking your columbines
Thousands of plant genes activated by ethylene gasit's common wisdom that one rotten apple in a barrel spoils all the other apples
--but now the genes underlying these phenomena of nature have been revealed. In the online journal elife a large international group of scientists led by investigators at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have traced the thousands of genes in a plant that are activated once ethylene a gas that acts as a plant
growth hormone is released. This study the first such comprehensive genomic analysis of ethylene's biological trigger may lead to powerful practical applications the researchers say.
Ethylene not only helps ripen fruit it also regulates growth and helps defends a plant against pathogens among a variety of other functions.
Teasing out the specific genes that perform each of these discrete functions from the many genes found to be activated by ethylene might allow scientists to produce plant strains that slow down growth
Now that we know the genes that ethylene ultimately activates we will be able to identify the key genes
By all accounts it took a Herculean effort to decode the genetic pathways that ethylene activates--one that involved four institutions and 19 researchers many of whom normally work in human biology.
For example Ecker invited the expertise of Carnegie mellon University computer scientist Ziv Bar-Joseph transcriptional expert Timothy Hughes from the University of Toronto as well as computational biologist Trey Ideker
Now we can see that by altering the expression of one protein ethylene produces cascading waves of gene activation that profoundly alters the biology of the plant.
what happens in Arabidopsis after ethylene gas causes activation of EIN3 a master transcription factor--a protein that controls gene expression--that Ecker had discovered
What genes are turned on? And what are those genes doing? Using a technique known as Chip-Seq the researchers exposed Arabidopsis to ethylene and identified all the regions of the plant genome that bound to EIN3
which required using next-generation sequencing. They then used genome-wide mrna sequencing to identify those targeted genes
whose expression actually changes due to interaction with EIN3. Not all genes targeted by EIN3 have changes in their gene expression Ecker says.
They found that thousands of genes in the plant responded to EIN3. Then the investigators discovered two interesting things.
First when EIN3 is activated by ethylene it goes back to control the genes in the pathway that were used to activate the EIN3 transcription factor in the first place.
That tells us that a plant making a critical master regulator like EIN3 wants to keep that production pathway under very tight control Ecker says.
We had expected not this and now this gives us a strategy to understand genetic control of other plant hormones.
The second discovery is that EIN3 targets all other hormone signaling pathways in the plant.
) National Science Foundation Plant Systems Biology IGERT (DGE-0504645) The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant GBMF3034) Gates Millennium Scholarship National institutes of health (1ro1
The above story is provided based on materials by Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Wood not so green a biofuel? Logging may have greater impact on carbon emissions than previously thoughtusing wood for energy is considered cleaner than fossil fuels
The findings suggest that calls for an increased reliance on forest biomass be reevaluated and that forest carbon analyses are incomplete
Woody biomass which includes trees grown on plantations managed natural forests and logging waste makes up about 75 percent of global biofuel production.
Mineral soil carbon responses can vary highly depending on harvesting intensity surface disturbance and soil type.
and dead biomass as well as the belowground organic soil horizon mineral soil horizon and roots Friedland said. Co-authors included Dartmouth's Thomas Buchholz a former postdoctoral student and Claire Hornig a recent undergraduate student and researchers from the University of Vermont Lund University in Sweden and the Vermont Department
and biomass harvesting on elemental cycling processes in high-elevation forests in the Northeastern United states. He considers many elements including carbon trace elements such as lead and major elements such as nitrogen and calcium.
The results appear in the journal Global Change Biology-Bioenergy. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Dartmouth College.
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