#Less than $200 million would conserve precious Atlantic Forest in Brazil, say researchersbrazil could conserve its valuable Atlantic Forest by investing just 0. 01 per cent of its annual GDP according to a new study.
The Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlã¢ntica) is one of the most important and threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world containing the only living examples of nearly 10000 species of plant and more bird species than all of Europe.
but it is also contains a vast range of biological diversity. The forest is a crucial habitat that is home to more than half of Brazil's threatened animal species. At the moment outside of protected areas nearly 90 per cent of the Atlantic Forest has less than 30 per cent of forest cover remaining.
in order to restore the minimum amount of habitat needed to conserve biodiversity and maintain ecosystem functions.
and estimated that to maintain a similar level of biodiversity and ecosystem functions which are found in protected areas such as national parks. a minimum of 30 per cent of native habitat needs to be preserved.
Our study shows a clear threshold of biodiversity losses with deforestation; below this threshold not only many species disappear
and biodiversity conservation is optimized. Furthermore this information can be a practical tool for planning sustainable landscapes
Nutrition Research center Epidemiology and Genetics Core. An unhealthy diet has long been considered a major contributor to the development of diabetes
As part of the process Rice organic chemist K c. Nicolaou and structural biologist Yousif Shamoo and their colleagues created
so the only way we can make it available to study by biologists for its potential in medicine is to synthesize it in the laboratory.
Three years of effort led the chemists working at Rice's Bioscience Research Collaborative to find a structure that not only matches that of natural viridicatumtoxin B
Three was to use the technology we've developed to make analogs of it in the hope that we could find something simpler and yet better in terms of its biological and pharmacological properties.
The lab turned synthetic samples over to biologist Shamoo and his group for testing against a number of bacterial strains and comparison with natural viridicatumtoxin B. This was very exciting for us said Nicolaou who moved his lab from the Scripps Research Institute
In order to investigate the biological properties of our synthesized compounds we turned to the Shamoo laboratory for its expertise in the area of antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria.
The biologists reported that the synthetic version performed as well as the natural and analogs lacking a hydroxyl group were even more effective against the same Gram-positive bacteria.
The interface between chemistry and biology is the key to success in discovering drugs. Co-authors of the JACS paper are graduate students Christopher Hale Lizanne Nilewski and Kathryn Beabout and postdoctoral fellows Christian Nilewski Heraklidia Ioannidou and Abdelatif El Marrouni all of Rice
Shamoo is Rice's vice provost for research and a professor of biochemistry and cell biology.
and other universities for nearly two years to map out the world's most important ecosystems and biodiversity.
Crop pests include fungi bacteria viruses insects nematodes viroids and oomycetes. The research published in the journal Global Ecology
and Biogeography describes the patterns and trends in their spread using global databases to investigate the factors that influence the number of countries reached by pests and the number of pests in each country.
Dr Dan Bebber of Biosciences at the University of Exeter said: If crop pests continue to spread at current rates many of the world's biggest crop producing nations will be inundated by the middle of the Century posing a grave threat to global food security.
and the Citrus tristeza virus (given its name meaning'sadness'in Portuguese and Spanish by farmers in the 1930s)
Professor Sarah Gurr of Biosciences the University of Exeter added: New virulent variants of pests are constantly evolving.
which force diversified selection and heralds the appearance of new aggressive genotypes. There is hope if robust plant protection strategies
and biosecurity measures are implemented particularly in the developing world where knowledge is scant. Whether such precautions can slow
but it plays a heavy role in setting up some of the most fundamental symbiotic relationships in biology.
when fairly strong stimuli are applied to the entire growing root says Anã who just published a review of touch in the interaction between plants and microbes in the journal Current Opinion in Plant Biology.
Biologists believe this ubiquitous mechanism began about 450 million years ago when plants first moved onto land.
#Water thermostat could help engineer drought-resistant cropsduke University researchers have identified a gene that could help scientists engineer drought-resistant crops.
The gene called OSCA1 encodes a protein in the cell membrane of plants that senses changes in water availability
It's similar to a thermostat said Zhen-Ming Pei an associate professor of biology at Duke.
Some researchers hope that genetic engineering --in addition to improved farming practices and traditional plant breeding--will add to the arsenal of techniques to help crops withstand summer's swelter.
and hundreds of genes are involved. The problem is confounded by the fact that drought is accompanied often by heat waves
Pei and Duke colleagues Fang Yuan James Siedow and others identified a gene that encodes a protein in the cell membranes of plant leaves
The gene was identified in Arabidopsis thaliana a small unassuming plant related to cabbage and canola that is the lab rat of plant research.
and plants with defective versions of the gene side by side in the same pot and exposed them to drought stress the mutant plants experienced more wilting.
The team's next step is to manipulate the activity of the OSCA1 gene and related genes and see how those plants respond to drought--information that could lead to crops that respond more quickly and efficiently to dehydration.
Plants that enter drought-fighting mode quickly and then switch back to normal growth mode quickly when drought stress is gone should be able to allocate energy more efficiently toward growth Pei said.
Wine residue, herbal additives found in palace cellar jarsa Bronze age palace excavation reveals an ancient wine cellar according to a study published August 27 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS
or additives within similarly shaped wine jars including honey storax resin terebinth resin cedar oil cyperus juniper and possibly mint myrtle and cinnamon.
The researchers suggest the detection of these additives indicates that humans at the time had sophisticated a understanding of plants
and biology of a species it will allow them to predict how they react. The paper by Devore and Maerz was featured on the cover of the July issue of Ecology.
All these findings underline the importance of the biodiversity of soil microorganisms to the functioning of soils
The NIHR-funded study published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention is the first study of its kind to develop a prostate cancer'dietary index
A comparison of herbivore response to urban and global warming is published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Unexpected diversity in New zealand tree, kanuka genus Kunzeaat the stroke of a pen a New zealand endemic tree has for the last 31 years been regarded incorrectly the same as a group of'weedy'Australian shrubs and small trees.
and the allied New zealand endemic Leptospermum sinclairii were merged in 1983 with three other Australian species under the oldest available name (L. ericoides) as a new combination in the related genus Kunzea.
analysis showsa new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass--the total material in leaves stems roots fruits grains
When you try to estimate something over the whole planet you have to make some simplifying assumptions said University of Illinois plant biology professor Evan Delucia who led the new analysis
I. He also is an affiliate of the Energy Biosciences Institute which funded the research through the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois. Estimates derived from satellite images of vegetation
and modeling suggest that about 54 gigatons of carbon is converted into terrestrial plant biomass each year the researchers report.
This value has remained stable for the past several decades leading to the conclusion that it represents a planetary boundary--an upper limit on global biomass production the researchers wrote.
But these assumptions don't take into consideration human efforts to boost plant productivity through genetic manipulation plant breeding
and land management Delucia said. Such efforts have yielded already some extremely productive plants. For example in Illinois a hybrid grass Miscanthus x giganteus without fertilizer or irrigation produced 10 to 16 tons of aboveground biomass per acre more than double the productivity of native prairie vegetation or corn.
And genetically modified no-till corn is more than five times as productive--in terms of total biomass generated per acre--as restored prairie in Wisconsin.
Some nonnative species also outcompete native species; this is what makes many of them invasive Delucia said.
In Iceland for example an introduced species the nootka lupine produces four times as much biomass as the native boreal dwarf birch species it displaces.
And in India bamboo plantations produce about 40 percent more biomass than dry deciduous tropical forests.
which plant canopies convert solar radiation to biomass to estimate the theoretical limit of net primary production (NPP) on a global scale This newly calculated limit was roughly two orders of magnitude higher than the productivity of most current managed
or the stem cells of the plant said Paula Mcsteen associate professor in the Division of Biological sciences and a researcher in the Bond Life sciences Center at MU.
Kim Phillips a graduate student in Mcsteen's lab mapped the corn plant's genome and found that a genetic mutation stunted tassel growth
because it was unable to transport boron across the plant membranes inhibiting further growth in the plants.
and expertise at MU including genomics translational experiments with frog eggs research in the field cellular testing
A recent study published online August 24 2014 in Nature Genetics offers a more in depth population-based approach to identifying such mechanisms for adaptation
For the U s. Department of energy which is developing biomass crops for biofuels production this knowledge could determine which genotypes--genetic makeup of an organism--of biomass crop may thrive better than others in certain environments.
The team led by Gerald Tuskan of Oak ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) the Department of energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI)--a DOE Office of Science user facility
--and Stephen Difazio of West virginia University used a combination of genome-wide selection scans and analyses to understand the processes involved in shaping the genetic variation of natural poplar (Populus trichocarpa) populations.
As part of this long-term study the team took samples from 1100 poplar trees growing in wild populations in California Oregon Washington and British columbia.
whose genotypes could be determined accurately so as to characterize the genetic basis for variation in adaptation. The shift from an approach focused on single candidate genes to the large-scale computational approach analyzing all of them is made possible by the availability of the poplar genome
which was published in the journal Science in 2006 by the DOE JGI. Since the genome was made publicly available it has been used to understand woody perennial plant development
and served as a model for genome-level insights in forest trees. The publication itself has been cited more than 1000 times in a wide variety of journals.
This is the first time that deep genomics resources have ever been applied to an ecological question in this case:'
'What does selection do at the genome level?''said Tuskan. In the past people looked at adaptation to factors such as temperature
and light levels and they examined variation in those genes as they vary across environmental gradients.
There was a preconceived notion and a very narrow view of what was causing the response. Here we took five major approaches applied them blindly to the whole genome
and let the analysis show us where the fingerprints of selection are and what genes fall under those fingerprints.
Watch a video of Tuskan on the importance of selection in trees at http://bit. ly/Tuskan14fingerprints.
Going from 1000 genotypes and 45000 genes to figuring out what's not just statistically significant
but biologically meaningful wasn't easy said study first author Luke Evans of West Virginia University.
We did it by determining selection targets--things that looked like they might be under natural selection in wild populations
and selection such that the alleles or gene variants that we have identified have great promise to provide robust long-term improvements to biofuel feedstocks.
These data can be accessed at Phytozome DOE JGI's plant comparative genomics portal. That's a massive number of naturally occurring variants a lot in cell wall chemistry genes and other known productivity genes.
This provides an immediate resource for tree breeding programs he said. The team identified 397 genomic regions that contribute to adaptive traits for wild populations of poplars.
but also for their economic importance in fields ranging from timber to bioenergy Evans noted that the ability to have plantations of poplars through vegetative propagation is a significant tree-breeding tool for picking the appropriate stocks for the task.
If you know every base in a genome you can skip whole generations and use genomic information to predict how well an individual will do said he.
The above story is provided based on materials by DOE/Joint Genome Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Evolutionary history of honeybees revealed by genomicsin a study published in Nature Genetics researchers from Uppsala University present the first global analysis of genome variation in honeybees.
The findings show a surprisingly high level of genetic diversity in honeybees and indicate that the species most probably originates from Asia
We have used state-of-the-art high-throughput genomics to address these questions and have identified high levels of genetic diversity in honeybees.
In contrast to other domestic species management of honeybees seems to have increased levels of genetic variation by mixing bees from different parts of the world.
The findings may also indicate that high levels of inbreeding are not a major cause of global colony losses says Matthew Webster researcher at the department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology Uppsala University.
Another unexpected result was that honeybees seem to be derived from an ancient lineage of cavity-nesting bees that arrived from Asia around 300000 years ago and rapidly spread across Europe and Africa.
The evolutionary tree we constructed from genome sequences does not support an origin in Africa this gives us new insight into how honeybees spread
Hidden in the patterns of genome variation are signals that indicate large cyclical fluctuations in population size that mirror historical patterns of glaciation.
The researchers also identified specific mutations in genes important in adaptation to factors such as climate
and genetic adaptation and establishes a framework for investigating the biological mechanisms behind disease resistance
The study which appears Aug 21 in PLOS Pathogens found strong genetic evidence that three tree species--Canary Island pine Pohutukawa
A few years ago Duke's chairman of Molecular genetics and Microbiology Joseph Heitman M d. was contacted by longtime collaborator
but only now can scientists explain the complex biology behind their taste for sugar. Their discovery required an international team of scientists fieldwork in the California mountains and at Harvard university's Concord Field Station plus collaborations from Harvard labs on both sides of the Charles river.
It's a really nice example of how a species evolved at a molecular level to adopt a very complex phenotype said Stephen Liberles HMS associate professor of cell biology.
This sweet discovery all started with the chicken genome. Before scientists sequenced its genes people assumed that chickens
and all birds taste things the same way that mammals do: with sensory receptors for salty sour bitter sweet
The gene for tasting sweetness is present in their genomes but it's nonfunctional. Scientists suspect that an interplay between taste receptors
The chicken genome is another story: It has no trace of a sweet-taste receptor gene.
Faced with this all-or-nothing scenario Maude Baldwin co-first author of the paper had one reaction.
More bird genomes were sequenced and still no sweet receptor. So began Baldwin's quest to understand how hummingbirds detected sugar
A doctoral student in organismic and evolutionary biology and Museum of Comparative Zoology she is a member of the lab of Scott Edwards Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Ornithology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
After cloning the genes for taste receptors from chickens swifts and hummingbirds--a three-year process--Baldwin needed to test what the proteins expressed by these genes were responding to.
She joined forces with another scientist at another International Taste and Smell meeting. Yasuka Toda a graduate student of the University of Tokyo and co-first author of the paper had devised a method for testing taste receptors in cell culture.
and hummingbird taste receptors into hybrid chimeras to understand which parts of the gene were involved in this change in function.
#Of bees, mites, and viruses: Virus infections after arrival of new parasitic mite in New zealand honeybee colonieshoneybee colonies are dying at alarming rates worldwide.
A variety of factors have been proposed to explain their decline but the exact cause--and how bees can be saved--remains unclear.
and adult bees the mites can transmit several honeybee viruses with high efficiency. Uncontrolled Varroa infestation can thereby cause an accelerating virus epidemic and so kill a bee colony within two to three years.
Interested in the complex interplay between bees mites and viruses Fanny Mondet from the University of Otago Dunedin New zealand and INRA Avignon France and colleagues took advantage of a unique situation in New zealand:
The country was invaded only recently by Varroa which was detected first on the North Island in 2001 and still had an active infestation expansion front traveling southward into Varroa-free areas of the country
The researchers'aim was to monitor the first stages of the Varroa infestation and its consequences for bees and bee viruses.
Each of seven different virus species examined in detail responded in a unique way to the arrival establishment and persistence of the mite.
Consistent with the observations in other countries Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) is the virus most strongly affected by the spread of Varroa throughout New zealand.
Another highly virulent Varroa-transmitted virus Kashmir Bee Virus (KBV) also showed a close association with Varroa.
However in contrast to DWV KBV abundance peaks two years after an initial Varroa infestation and subsequently disappears from the colonies entirely leaving DWV as the dominant honeybee virus in long-term Varroa-infested areas.
The researchers say that the results of their study strengthen the idea that the multiple virus infestations in honeybees interact to create a dynamic and turbulent pathological landscape
and that the viruses play an important part in the survival or collapse of the bee colonies infested by Varroa.
Future work they state will focus on the mechanisms that form the evolutionary basis for the bee-Varroa-virus interaction.
and coworkers the researchers were able to identify the study participants with the greatest apparent compliance to a healthy Nordic diet by testing for a set of diet-related biomarkers in the blood.
Dietary biomarkers are compounds related to a certain food or nutrient that are measurable in bodily tissues and fluids such as blood.
Several blood biomarkers were assessed to reflect the consumption of different key components of the diet such as serum alpha linoleic acid as a biomarker of canola oil consumption EPA and DHA reflecting fatty
fish consumption plasma beta carotene as a biomarker for vegetable intake and plasma alkylresorcinols reflecting whole grain consumption.
when investigating the health effects of whole diets it's useful to measure multiple biomarkers reflecting the intake of different components of the diet.
In future studies the combined use of biomarkers and participants'dietary self-reports can improve dietary intake estimation
In addition informing participants that compliance will be assessed by dietary biomarkers might further motivate them to adhere to study diets.
The shift to more environmentally friendly bioplastics has been challenging and expensive. Athanassiou's team wanted to find a simple less costly way to make the transition.
This opens up possibilities for replacing some of the non-degrading polymers with the present bioplastics obtained from agro-waste the researchers conclude.
Wittemyer is lead author of the new report and a professor in the Department of Fish Wildlife and Conservation Biology at CSU's Warner College of Natural resources.
and are capable of activating genes that change the protein composition in the cell. A team of scientists--headed by Prof.
Brigitte Poppenberger at TUM's Institute of Biotechnology of Horticultural Crops--has been able to show for the first time that the concentration of CES protein increases in certain nuclear regions following brassinosteroid activation.
These structures occur as nuclear bodies in the cell nucleus. The scientists believe that the CES transcription factor collects in specific regions of the DNA in order to effectively control gene function.
The cell seems to bundle key resources to rapidly trigger the production of certain proteins.
but all African pygmy phenotypes do not have the same genetic underpinning suggesting a more recent adaptation than previously thought.
I'm interested in how rainforest hunter-gatherers have adapted to their very challenging environments said George H. Perry assistant professor of anthropology and biology Penn State.
A phenotype is the outward expression of genetic makeup and while two individuals with the same phenotype may look alike their genes may differ substantially.
The pygmy phenotype exists in many parts of Africa Southeast asia the Philippines and potentially in South america.
Perry and colleagues looked at the genetics of the Batwa rainforest hunter-gatherers of Uganda
Their short stature is caused not by a single genetic mutation as occurs in many forms of dwarfism
but is the result of a variety of genetic changes throughout the genome that influence height.
The researchers investigated 16 different genetic locations that were associated with short stature when they looked at individuals who were an admixture of Batwa and Bakiga.
Several of these regions contained genes known to be involved with growth in humans. They then studied these regions to look for indications that the changes were persisted ones that
Genetic mutations occur in populations all the time. If they have a negative impact on the individual they tend to disappear from the population quickly.
The results of the genetic comparison indicated that there was a statistical difference between the two groups indicative of multi gene adaptation.
However when they looked at the Baka of West Africa they did not find the same types of changes in the 16 genetic locations.
What we think we see is that regions of the genome that are involved in the Batwa's Pygmy phenotype do not look the same in West Africa said Perry.
The fact that they are not suggests that both of these Pygmy phenotypes arose independently separated geographically with different underlying genetics
New results pave the way for closed loop biofuel refinerieswhile the powerful solvents known as ionic liquids show great promise for liberating fermentable sugars from lignocellulose
and improving the economics of advanced biofuels an even more promising candidate is on the horizon--bionic liquids.
Researchers at the U s. Department of energy's Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) have developed bionic liquids from lignin and hemicellulose two by-products of biofuel production from biorefineries.
JBEI is a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) that was established by the DOE Office of Science to accelerate the development of advanced next-generation biofuels.
what is now a bane to the bioenergy industry into a boon? says Blake Simmons a chemical engineer who is JBEI's Chief Science and Technology Officer and heads JBEI's Deconstruction Division.
and electricity for the biorefinery but if other uses for lignin could be found with higher economic value it would significantly improve the refinery's overall economics.
Our concept of bionic liquids opens the door to realizing a closed-loop process for future lignocellulosic biorefineries
Simmons and Seema Singh who directs JBEI's biomass pretreatment program are the corresponding authors of a paper describing this research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS.
The paper is titled Efficient biomass pretreatment using ionic liquids derived from lignin and hemicellulose. The lead author is Aaron Socha.
The cellulosic sugars stored in the biomass of grasses and other non-food crops and in agricultural waste can be used to make advanced biofuels that could substantially reduce the use of the fossil fuels responsible for the release of nearly 9 billion metric tons of excess carbon into the atmosphere each year.
More than a billion tons of biomass are produced annually in the United states alone and fuels from this biomass could be clean green
and renewable substitutes for gasoline diesel and jet fuel on a gallon-for-gallon basis. Unlike ethanol drop in transportation fuels derived from biomass have the potential to be dropped directly into today's engines
and infrastructures at high levels--greater than 50-percent--without negatively impacting performance. However if biofuels including cellulosic ethanol are to be a commercial success they must be cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
This means economic technologies must be developed for extracting fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass and synthesizing them into fuels and other valuable chemical products.
A major challenge has been that unlike the simple sugars in corn grain the complex polysaccharides in biomass are embedded deeply within a tough woody material called lignin.
Researchers at JBEI have been cost-effectively deconstructing biomass into fuel sugars by pre-treating the biomass with ionic liquids--salts that are composed entirely of paired ions
and are liquid at room temperature. The ionic liquids that have emerged from this JBEI effort as a benchmark for biomass processing are based imidazolium molten salts
which are made from nonrenewable sources such as petroleum or natural gas. Imidazolium-based ionic liquids effectively and efficiently dissolve biomass and represent a remarkable platform for biomass pretreatment
but imidazolium cations are expensive and thus limited in their large-scale industrial deployment says Singh.
To replace them with a renewable product we synthesized a series of tertiary amine-based ionic liquids from aromatic aldehydes in lignin and hemicellulose.
The JBEI researchers tested the effectiveness of their bionic liquids as a pre-treatment for biomass deconstruction on switchgrass one of the leading potential crops for making liquid transportation fuels.
Lignin and hemicellulose are byproducts from the agricultural industry biofuel plants and pulp mills which not only makes these abundant polymers inexpensive
but also allows for a closed-loop biorefinery in which the lignin in the waste stream can be cycled up
Our results have established an important foundation for the further study of bionic liquids in biofuels as well as other industrial applications he says.
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