Researchers at the Institute of Food Research are looking at how to turn straw from oilseed rape into biofuel.
Straw from crops such as wheat barley oats and oilseed rape is seen as a potential source of biomass for second generation biofuel production.
Straw contains a mix of sugars that could be used as a source of biofuels that do not compete with food production
However the sugars are in a form that makes them inaccessible to the enzymes that release them for conversion into biofuels so pre-treatments are needed.
Using the facilities at the Biorefinery Centre on the Norwich Research Park Professor Keith Waldron
which involves'pressure-cooking'the biomass to drive a number of chemical reactions. A rapid pressure-release then causes the material to be ripped open to further improve accessibility.
and duration of steam explosion and then used a variety of physical and biochemical techniques to characterise
which straw can be converted to biofuels. For example adding enzymes that more effectively remove xylan should improve yield.
It may even be possible to improve the straw itself for example to reduce the uronic acid content in the biomass as suggested by these findings.
whether there are ways of breeding more biofuel-ready varieties of oilseed rape with the same yields of oilseed but with more amenable straw.
The above story is provided based on materials by Norwich Bioscience Institutes. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
These findings prompted the researchers at the Institute for Parasitology to look for a way to increase the level of these antibodies in sows.
The scientists'analyses of honeybee waggle dances reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 22 suggest that costly measures to set aside agricultural lands
Recent experiments in the forests of Sweden had brought into a question a long-held theory of biology:
The research to be published in Global Change Biology on June 3 was carried out by 10 researchers from 11 universities and research institutions in Brazil and the UK.
The majority of people are unaware of the dimensions of the biodiversity crisis said Dr. Quentin Wheeler founding director of the IISE and ESF president.
The top 10 is designed to bring attention to the unsung heroes addressing the biodiversity crisis by working to complete an inventory of earth's plants animals and microbes.
or documented said Dr. Antonio Valdecasas chair of the selection committee and a biologist and research zoologist with Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid Spain.
California U s a. This tiny shrimp the smallest in the genus was identified from among specimens originally collected from a cave on that island of romance sunny Santa catalina off the coast of Southern California.
Part of a marine family known as skeleton shrimp only distantly related to the ones some humans love to dip in cocktail sauce this crustacean is the first of its genus to be reported in the northeastern Pacific.
The new species was collected by sweeping vegetation in secondary growth forest at Laselva Biological Station in Costa rica.
We are very far from having exhausted the knowledge of the biodiversity On earth. Wheeler offered three reasons why an inventory of Earth's species is critical:
or female offspring depends on the weather according to a study led by Joffrey Moiroux and Jacques Brodeur of the University of Montreal's Department of Biological sciences.
and to identify biomarkers associated with the disease. Limited diet records were available for 2167 ECLIPSE participants who provided dietary intake information at eight time points over a three-year period.
Next the researchers looked at specific standard lung function measurements for the same group of people including the six-minute walk test (SMWT) St george's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) scores and inflammatory biomarkers.
as a result of their high gamma-tocopherol consumption said senior author Joan Cook-Mills an associate professor of medicine in allergy/immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of medicine.
Cook-Mills presented her research in May at the Oxidants and Antioxidants in Biology World Congress.
Stanley C. Jordan MD director of Kidney Transplantation and Transplant Immunology is a prominent pioneer in designing treatment approaches that have significantly reduce the amount of antibodies thereby reducing the risk of organ rejection.
Small and fast-growing Arabidopsis thaliana is used widely as the lab mouse of plant biology. The plant grows in Europe from Spain to Scandinavia
although they still may be critical for preserving genetic diversity especially from warmer parts of the species range that may facilitate adaptation to future climates.
and organismal biology who specializes in forest ecology; and Richard Moore professor of environment and natural resources who studies agricultural trends in the state.
Among the technologies evaluated in situ are floor type in cattle housing use of additives in slurry storage manure turning flexible lagoons for collective slurry storage biowashers for gases at the outlet of air ducts of the sheds
The study published in mbioâ the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology reveals surprising relationships between diet
The above story is provided based on materials by American Society for Microbiology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Genetic basis of pest resistance to biotech cotton discoveredan international team led by scientists at the University of Arizona
Their findings reported in the May 19 issue of the journal PLOS ONE shed light on how the global caterpillar pest called pink bollworm overcomes biotech cotton
but this is the first analysis of the molecular genetic basis of severe pest resistance to a Bt crop in the field said Bruce Tabashnik one of the paper's authors and the head of the Department of Entomology in the UA College
The emergence of resistant pink bollworm in India provided the researchers an opportunity to test the hypothesis that insects in the field would evolve resistance to Bt toxin by the same genetic mechanism found previously in the lab. In the lab strains the scientists had identified mutations in a gene
if field-resistant pink bollworm from India harbored these same changes in the cadherin gene Fabrick said.
He said that by collaborating with Indian scientists we discovered that the same cadherin gene is associated with the resistance in India
Sullivan and his colleagues used a new method to demonstrate that biological nitrogen fixation in tropical rain forests may be less than a quarter of previous estimates.
Nitrogen enters the environment either through a microbial process called biological nitrogen fixation or through human activity such as fertilization and fossil-fuel consumption.
That could be given a problem the high biodiversity of tropical rain forests and their important role in the global carbon cycle and the Earth's climate.
He notes that human impacts on the nitrogen cycle typically are greatest where biological nitrogen fixation is low and human inputs of nitrogen are high-like in many parts of North america including Montana.
Past research has assumed that tropical rain forests have high levels of biological nitrogen fixation and that humans add relatively little nitrogen to tropical ecosystems.
Professor Philip Eaton Professor of Cardiovascular Biochemistry at King's college London said: The findings of our study help to explain why previous research has shown that a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil
Candace Williams an MSU doctoral student in biochemistry conducted the research in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison the Memphis Zoo
and the National Zoo in Washington D c. Williams presented her findings at the American Society for Microbiology in Boston in May.
Under the direction of biochemist Ashli Brown Johnson MSU scientists set out to determine if there were similarities in the microbes that digest this plant-based diet.
Williams used advanced genetic sequencing techniques to determine what gastrointestinal bacteria were present. The procedure revealed all microbes in the fecal matter including some that were known not Johnson said.
Study of these microbes may have unrealized potential for agriculture biomass digestion for bioenergy crops or other discovery research applications.
#Transgenic mice produce both omega-3, omega-6 fatty acids on carbohydrate dietmassachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a transgenic mouse that synthesizes both the omega-3 and omega-6 essential
and in 2004 Kang's group reported that mice transgenic for a c. elegans gene called fat-1 converted omega-6s into omega-3s in their tissues.
The current study describes how crossbreeding the fat-1 mouse with another strain transgenic for the c. elegans gene fat-2
which converts monosaturated fats into omega-6s can produce mice expressing both c. elegans genes.
The crossbreeding protocol produces four different strains within the same litter--Omega mice that express both fat-1 and fat-2 strains that express only one of the c. elegans genes
While there are regulatory issues that need to be addressed this transgenic approach may help meet the increasing demand for omega-3-rich foods
The study is published early online in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. Lung cancer is now the second leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide.
The researchers performed autopsies investigating various tissues and testing for the presence of bacteria viruses and parasites.
The causes of the pneumonia turned out to be bacteria with the evocative names Mannheimia glucosida (in honour of the German biologist Walter Mannheim nothing to do with the German town) and Bibersteinia trehalosi.
and other chronic diseases according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
and in detail with the very first steps of new particle formation and growth said Donahue professor of chemistry chemical engineering engineering and public policy and director of CMU's Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research.
That's what Assistant professor of Biology Daniel Bunker and Phd candidate Caroline Devan intend to determine with the help of a $150000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Pursuing her Phd in biology at NJIT has given her the opportunity to ask some critical questions
which is being developed under the lead of Associate professor of Biology Gareth Russell. Physical examination of pollen in the nests also is expected to yield information about the food sources the bees visit
Robert Howarth greenhouse gas expert and ecology and environmental biology professor fears that we may not be many years away from an environmental tipping point â
. But the extra emphasis on biodiversity due to degradation of natural habitats and accelerating extinction rate of plants and animals worldwide has placed a higher emphasis on researchers documenting
but recent museum biodiversity projects and collaborations have focused on discovering as many new species as possible.
Museum scientists utilized advanced taxonomic methods during recent biodiversity survey projects including DNA bar coding a process that uses a genetic marker to identify
It is important to understand the other 99 percent of biodiversity that once inhabited the planet
In order to attract the female assumes Tamara Pokorny biologist at the Ruhr-Universitã¤t Bochum (RUB.
The scientist from the Department of Animal Ecology Evolution and Biodiversity also found out that bees are aware of
Getting energy for exhausting flightsthe Bochum biologist also studies the orchid bees'flight performance. The small insects do actually fly over distances of 50 kilometres.
Natural beauty recreation a source of lumber wood pulp for paper products raw material for biofuels. They also generate jobs
If harvests are too gentle then it's likely that there isn't enough light reaching the forest floor to ensure regeneration.
or to conserve biodiversity. What distinguishes silviculture from forest ecology is the idea of managing the forests to preserve
One critical factor is that to be selection silviculture one of the goals must be providing for the regeneration of new trees
Weeds influence gene expression, growth in cornthe axiom growing like a weed takes on new meaning in light of changes in gene expression that occur
Using sophisticated genetic-mapping techniques the South dakota State university professor and her research team are documenting how corn
and weeds affect each other's gene response Clay and a team of two research associates and a soils expert planted plots of velvetleaf alone corn with velvetleaf and corn kept weed-free.
In addition specific genes that influenced photosynthesis and other important plant responses differed in expression. Another study compared the corn's growth and yield in response to weeds lack of nitrogen or shade.
In all cases Clay and Horvath found that genes were expressed differentially compared with nonstressed plants.
When grown with weeds genes that control the major facets of the corn plant's metabolism were decreased
In short these changes in gene expression adversely affect the plant's ability to grow and reproduce.
when the corn had as few as two and four leaves they still saw differences in gene expression
However Clay points out the amount of biomass--the stem and leaves--was not significantly different.
The genes never recovered says Clay even after the weeds were removed. The impact is long term she adds
These changes in gene expression can help explain instances in which the yield is unaffected but a slight reduction has taken place in the plant
Next the researchers look at the effect of water stress on gene expression using corn planted on high and low ground.
The genes of the water-stressed corn on the top of the hill were regulated down in terms of phosphorus uptake Clay explains.
We didn't have that ability before we had the genome sequence. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by South dakota State university.
#Biological control for brazilian peppertree closer than evera South american insect could help control the invasive Brazilian peppertree in places where it supplants critical habitat for many organisms according to University of Florida and U s. Department of agriculture scientists.
but researchers are looking for environmentally friendlier biological agents to permanently suppress growth and reproduction of the tree.
which is only slightly colder than the insect is used to. â#oethe idea of biological control is to reunite these highly specialized natural enemies with their host plant in this case Brazilian peppertree to help reduce plant densities in the invaded areaâ#said Veronica Manrique a UF
senior biological scientist and lead author of the study. â#oewe are also working with two other natural enemies a psyllid
biologists Bruce Archibald and Rolf Mathewes new information about ancient climates. According to their research published online this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences these fossil beetles indicate that during a period of global warming in the geological past there were mild frost-free winters extended even in the uplands
The long-term biological effects of use are still unknown the authors said. In tackling the question of
Cary Mitchell professor of horticulture said the technique could be particularly useful for growing transgenic crops to produce high-value medicinal products such as antibodies for the budding plant-derived industrial and pharmaceutical compounds industry.
Mitchell described corn as a good candidate crop for the industry because of the plant's bounty of seeds and well-characterized genome
It is an affordable non-chemical means of taking genetically modified crops to harvest maturity without getting any kind of pollen or seed into the ecosystem.
He said that former mines could be prime locations to grow high-value transgenic plants
This statement is the result of a researcher group from the School of Agricultural Engineers of Universidad Politã cnica de Madrid in collaboration with the Institute of Food Science Research (CIAL-CSIC) who found that the usage of natural additives
The usage of oenological additives is based on inactive yeast which means nonviable yeasts and without fermentative capacity.
As a result they statistically proved that the wines with additives based on antioxidant inactive yeasts were more intense in fruit aromas (strawberry and banana) and less intense in aromatic notes more specific for oxidation (yeast.
and rich in glutathione could be interesting additives to preserve the aroma of young wines during their storage.
#Bee biodiversity boosts crop yieldsresearch from North carolina State university shows that blueberries produce more seeds and larger berries if they are visited by more diverse bee species allowing farmers to harvest significantly more pounds of fruit per acre.
We've shown that there is a real financial benefit associated with biodiversity Burrack says. The next step is to figure out how to foster that diversity in practical terms.
He and his fellow team members--Jian Wu a graduate student in soil and water science researcher Diane Bright and Jim Graham a professor of soil microbiology--are based at the UF/IFAS Citrus
Comparisons between native and nonnative populations can provide a'natural'experimental approach to clarify the biological and environmental factors that may contribute to range expansion
This finding suggests that the neonicotinoids are causing some other kind of biological mechanism in bees that in turn leads to CCD.
biology at HSPH. Since 2006 there have been significant losses of honey bees from CCD. Pinpointing the cause is crucial to mitigating this problem
and CCD in this study future research could help elucidate the biological mechanism that is responsible for linking sublethal neonicotinoid exposures to CCD said Lu.
Trees are taller for a given diameter in Southeast asia compared with South america meaning they gain more biomass per unit of diameter growth
Aboveground wood production is the amount of biomass gained in the woody parts of a tree.
With growing global datasets collected using standardised methods further comparisons will be possible across the tropics to help elucidate the nature and causes of variation in plant biomass growth.
or Ailanthus plots according to Matthew Kasson who recently received his doctorate in plant pathology and environmental microbiology from Penn State.
and could be used as a bio-control agent throughout the United states said Kasson. Since tree-of-heaven's introduction into Pennsylvania in the 1780s the tree has spread from a rare
and iron in them (at high CO2) said University of Illinois plant biology and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Andrew Leakey an author on the study.
when to gorice University bioengineers have created a hydrogel that instantly turns from liquid to semisolid at close to body temperature
The hydrogel created in the lab of Rice bioengineer Antonios Mikos is a liquid at room temperature
The new material detailed in the American Chemical Society journal Biomacromolecules takes the state of the art a few steps further Rice scientists said.
This study describes the development of a novel thermogelling hydrogel for stem cell delivery that can be injected into skeletal defects to induce bone regeneration
and matures said Mikos Rice's Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular engineering.
Watson and his colleagues at Rice's Bioscience Research Collaborative solved the problem by adding chemical cross-linkers to the gel's molecules.
and co-authors including Paul Engel chair of Rice's Department of chemistry and F. Kurtis Kasper a senior faculty fellow in bioengineering.
and may be suited better for a biotech company he said. We focus more on the performance of the hydrogels
and inclinations from monogamy to addiction to animals'including humans'underlying biology. To that growing list they're adding division of labor--at least in killer bees.
Climate change impacts on biodiversity are already being observed in alteration of the timing of critical biological events such as spring bud burst and substantial range shifts of many species. In the longer term there is an increased risk
Tobacco use and obesity are two health issues that have been vying in the last five years for first place as the major health problem in the United states said Joseph Kang lead author of the study and assistant professor in preventive medicine-biostatistics at Feinberg.
In a separate study presented on April 27 at the Experimental Biology annual meeting in San diego Laurie Nommsen-Rivers Phd a researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Perinatal Institute showed that postpartum metabolic health
We've identified the key regulator of this symbiosis said Alex C. C. Wilson associate professor of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and corresponding author of the study.
A remarkably basic mechanism regulates the biosynthesis of symbiont-produced arginine in response to the needs of the pea aphid.
and because of other features peculiar to aphid metabolism transporter Apglnt1 not only regulates arginine biosynthesis but all amino acid biosynthesis Wilson said.
The system is simple and elegant. Thus amino acid transporters play a key role in the evolutionary success of these insects.
Further these expansions result from large-scale gene duplications that took place independently in different sap-eating insects.
Gene duplication is a process that occurs when part of an organism's genetic material is replicated.
Groups of similar genes that share an evolutionary ancestry are called gene families. Given the extensive gene duplication of the amino acid transporter gene families that took place multiple times independently in sap-feeding insects it makes sense that gene duplication might be important for recruiting amino acid transporters to mediate
amino acid exchange between these insects and their symbionts said Rebecca P. Duncan doctoral student in the Department of biology at UM and first author of the study.
The sap-eating insects with expanded amino acid transporters come from a common ancestor. However given that the genes expanded independently in each insect sap-feeding insects likely evolved their relationships with their symbionts separately as opposed to in their common ancestor.
Hence Wilson's lab can test if their model is broadly applicable by examining the mechanism of symbiotic regulation in the other sap-feeding insects used in this study.
The findings of these studies show that symbiotic relationships have the power to shape animal evolution at the genetic level.
Save threatened species by giving them treated cotton for nestswhen University of Utah biologists set out cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide wild finches in the Galapagos islands used the cotton to help build their nests killing parasitic
We are trying to help birds help themselves says biology professor Dale Clayton senior author of a study outlining the new technique.
The findings were published online May 5 2014 in the journal Current Biology. Self-fumigation is important
because there currently are no other methods to control this parasite bloodsucking maggots of the nest fly Philornis downsi says University of Utah biology doctoral student Sarah Knutie the study's first author.
The biologists built wire-mesh dispensers for the cotton. They tried processed cotton balls treated with 1 percent permethrin solution
The Utah biologists found 26 active nests of which 22 (85 percent) contained cotton: 13 nests had treated permethrin cotton nine had untreated cotton
Their research is published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. When applied to Salmonella-contaminated tomato plants in a field study the bacterium known as Paenibacillus alvei significantly reduced the concentration of the pathogen compared to controls.
This bacterium also has known no history of human pathology making it a great candidate as a biological control agent says Zheng.
The above story is provided based on materials by American Society for Microbiology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
but crop domestication has taken much longer than expected--a delay caused less by genetics and more by culture and history according to a new study co-authored by University of Guelph researchers.
Lukens and Guelph Phd student Ann Meyer worked on the study with biologists at Oklahoma State university and Washington state University.
Examining crop genetics might also help breeders and farmers looking to further refine and grow more crops for an expanding human population.
and understanding the genetic basis of past plant improvement should help future efforts he said.
To study the historical effects of interactions between genes and between genes and the environment they looked at genes controlling several crop plant traits.
Domestication has yielded modern crops whose seeds resist shattering such as corn whose kernels stay on the cob instead of falling off.
whether genetic factors hindered transmission of genes controlling such traits. Instead they found that domestication traits are passed often faithfully from parent to progeny
The research which appears online this week in Molecular Systems Biology was conducted at the Texas Medical center in Houston by researchers from Rice the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine.
The story for poorly aggressive cells was said quite different Nagrath assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of bioengineering at Rice.
Nagrath director of Rice's Laboratory for Systems Biology of Human Diseases said the new metabolic analysis indicates that ovarian cancer may be susceptible to multidrug cocktails particularly
The research also revealed a specific biochemical test that pathologists could use to guide such treatments.
The three-year study included cell culture studies at Rice as well as a detailed analysis of gene expression profiles of more than 500 patients from the Cancer Genome Atlas and protein-expression profiles from about 200
Nagrath said the study also revealed another key finding--a direct relationship between glutamine and an ovarian cancer biomarker called STAT3.
and signaling is vital to developing novel strategies to tackle cancer said MD Anderson co-author Prahlad Ram associate professor of systems biology and co-director of the MD Anderson Cancer Center's Systems Biology
Agronomic and genetic crop improvements over the years help a lot when growing conditions are good
and color can improve the microbiological safety of meats according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
It was one of those natural history moments that you long to see up close said de la Rosa the director of the La Selva Biological Station for the Organization for Tropical Field Studies in San pedro Costa rica.
Tear-drinking lachryphagous behavior in bees had only recently been observed by biologists. He remembered a 2012 report of a solitary bee sipping the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Ecuador's Yasunã National park
He now thinks the phenomenon may not be as rare as biologists had assumed--just hard to witness.
De la Rosa is a specialist in the biology of non-biting midges and a natural historian with his eyes always open to new discoveries.
De la Rosa's job as director of La Selva Biological Station brings him an unusual number of serendipitous encounters with wildlife.
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