Dung beetles recount the nature of the pastthe biologists behind the new research findings synthesized decades of studies on fossil beetles focusing on beetles associated with the dung of large animals in the past or with woodlands and trees.
An important way to create more self-managing ecosystems with a high level of biodiversity is to make room for large herbivores in the European landscape--and possibly reintroduce animals such as wild cattle bison and even elephants.
and thereby ensure the basis for a high level of biodiversity says senior scientist Rasmus Ejrnã s. The study received financial support from the 15 june Foundation and a grant from the European Research Council.
A region of ultra-high biodiversity the western Amazon harbors thousands of plant species that grow at different elevations and in different soils on different geologies.
and laboratory-based effort to determine the relationship between function and biological diversity of plant species in tropical forests.
#Entomologists update definitions to tackle resistance to biotech crops, pesticidesresistance to pesticides has now been recorded in nearly a thousand pest species including more than 500 insects 218 weeds and 190 fungi that attack plants.
and conventional farmers have adopted widely transgenic Bt crops since 1996. In 2013 Bt corn and Bt cotton were planted on 187 million acres worldwide
and use them to classify 13 cases of resistance to five Bt toxins in transgenic corn
Although some scientists have expressed concern that reports of pest resistance to Bt crops provide'ammunition'to anti-biotech activists Tabashnik said Pests are remarkably adaptable.
They usually evolve resistance to any tactic that's used repeatedly to control them so this problem is limited not to transgenic crops.
This is a crucial question for scientists studying the biological importance of color in nature but measuring color is much more challenging than measuring other characteristics like size or weight.
More importantly color is involved in a wide range of biological phenomena. Flowers attract pollinators fruits attract seed-dispersing animals plants express stress responses
Color is one of the most conspicuous aspects of biological diversity and often carries adaptive significance explains Smith who is interested in understanding how
and fruit development plant nutrient deficiencies responses to heat and drought stress and other biological phenomena that result in visible color changes.
Understanding effects of smoke compounds on seed germinationalthough seemingly destructive wildfires help to maintain biodiversity
and colleagues on the other hand provide researchers with the means to distinguish the effects of smoke compounds from other additives.
The results of the new study was published online Feb 27 in the journal Allergy Asthma & Clinical Immunology.
Consumer concerns about bacterial resistance to antibiotics have prompted the swine industry to seek additional methods to protect the health of pigs including special feed additives.
or PRRS virus while the other half of the pigs were challenged non. We've known for a long time that plant extracts also called essential oils
or botanicals have certain biological actions said Yanhong Liu a doctoral student who led the studies.
After feeding the pigs challenged with the PRRS virus the three plant extracts the researchers observed that the pigs were more efficient in week 1 (55 percent)
When they checked blood samples from the pigs with the PRRS virus they found that the pigs fed plant extracts also had a lower blood viral load (13 percent)
and the PRRS virus. In production animals inflammation is costly. Inflammation reduces feed intake and it diverts nutrients away from growth to the immune system Pettigrew said
The researchers will continue to study the mechanisms behind the beneficial effects they observed including conducting gene expression studies.
In a paper in the journal Global Change Biology BU biology Prof. Pamela Templer and her co-authors show that soil freezing due to diminishing snowpack damages the roots of sugar maple trees
In particular the genetics of Yellowstone bison are important because they are known to be free of cattle genes
and represent bison that existed on the Great plains for thousands of years. WCS Bison Project Coordinator Keith Aune said This study represents an important milestone in bison conservation
and these research findings enable us to practice genetic rescue from brucellosis infected bison herds.
The Yellowstone animals passing through this system of testing are critical to conserving the diversity of the bison genome over the long term.
They seek to reconcile existing genetic and paleoenvironmental evidence for human habitation on the Bering land bridge--also called Beringia--with an absence of archaeological evidence.
and genetics that speak to American origins and saying look there was an environment with trees and shrubs that was very different than the open grassy steppe.
The theory that humans inhabited the Bering land bridge for some 10000 years helps explain how a Native american genome (genetic blueprint) became separate from its Asian ancestor O'Rourke says.
At some point the genetic blueprint that defines Native american populations had to become distinct from that Asian ancestry he explains.
Genetic and Paleoenvironmental Evidenceo'Rourke and colleagues point to a study of MITOCHONDRIAL DNA--genetic information passed by mothers--sampled from Native americans throughout The americas.
The study found that the unique genome or genetic blueprint of Native americans arose sometime before 25000 years ago
but didn't spread through The americas until about 15000 years ago. This result indicated that a substantial population existed somewhere in isolation from the rest of Asia
while its genome differentiated from the parental Asian genome O'Rourke says. The researchers suggested Beringia as the location for this isolated population and suggested it existed there for several thousand years before members of the population migrated southward into the rest of North
Several other genetic-genomic analyses of Native american populations have resulted in similar conclusions he adds. For a long time many of us thought the land bridge was a uniform tundra-steppe environment--a broad windswept grassland devoid of shrubs
Livestock affect most of the world's biodiversity hotspots Liu said. They make up 20 percent of all of Earth's land mammals
Biogas technology has been used successfully for decades and it can produce renewable electricity at a cost that's competitive with traditional fuels the authors said.
The amount of methane biogas that went uncollected from palm oil wastewater lagoons last year alone could have met a quarter of Malaysia's electricity needs.
Biological control methods can target psyllid populations in a field but it takes a while for them to be effective
Texas A&m University scientists are working to map the genes controlling drought and heat tolerance in recent varieties.
and ultimately clone the genes controlling drought and heat tolerance for molecular studies and deployment of these genes in other crops she said.
Joining Zhang on the project are Dr. Hongbin Zhang Texas A&m professor of plant genomics and systems biology and director of the Laboratory for Plant Genomics and Molecular genetics;
Dr. B b. Singh a visiting scholar and cowpea breeder with the Texas A&m soil and crop sciences department;
and Dr. Dirk Hays Texas A&m associate professor of physiological and molecular genetics all in College Station. The goal of the study is to develop single nucleotide polymorphisms
This research will use high-throughput site-associated DNA sequencing to map the genes controlling drought
and heat tolerant genes but also develop a platform for mapping genes controlling several other biotic and abiotic stress tolerances such as aphid resistance and low phosphorus tolerance both
The drought and heat tolerant genes once defined and cloned will significantly advance understanding of the molecular basis underlying plant tolerances to these stresses Zhang said.
and related crops thus supporting the long-term genetic improvement and sustainability of U s. agriculture and food systems she said.
By carefully analyzing eau de male goat researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 27 have identified now a novel citrus-scented ingredient that speaks directly to the females.
However the filter probably cannot trap most viruses which are much smaller in size. Karnik says his group now plans to evaluate the filtering potential of other types of sapwood.
In the future the team plans to use a genetic approach to test the function of individual proteins in the saliva to determine their function and essentiality to the feeding process.
and that has the potential to make them much better biological control agents. The sterile insect technique or SIT has been used for decades
In this biological control method large numbers of sterile male insects are released to compete with wild males for the attention of invasive wild females.
#Moths trapped with plant-produced sex pheromonea collaborative experiment involving a Kansas State university biochemist may mark the beginning of an effective environmentally friendly plant-based method of insect control.
Timothy Durrett assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics was part of the collaboration that used various plant
and moths to create a biological pathway that made it possible for plants to produce the moths'sex pheromones.
Once it has been harvested rapeseed can be used as a biofuel and added to diesel in varying proportions after simple cold pressing.
The results which are published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry show that the total amount of cholesterol the levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL
Eating strawberries also improved other parameters such as the general plasma lipid profile antioxidant biomarkers (such as Vitamin c or oxygen radical absorbance capacity) antihemolytic defences and platelet function.
Wake Forest biology professor Miles Silman and a team of researchers who are affiliated not with Duke energy used images taken from the drone to create a 3d model of the ash pond spill site.
and biology graduate student Max Messinger attached a camera to their unmanned aircraft and flew a grid-like pattern over the ash pond taking pictures at regular intervals.
#Genetic secret of mosquito resistance to DDT, bed net insecticides discoveredresearchers from LSTM have found that a single genetic mutation causes resistance to DDT
With the continuing rise of resistance the research published in the journal Genome Biology is key as scientists say that this knowledge could help improve malaria control strategies.
The researchers led by Dr Charles Wondji used a wide range of methods to narrow down how the resistance works finding a single mutation in the GSTE2 gene which makes insects break down DDT
They have shown also that this gene makes insects resistant to pyrethroids raising the concern that GSTE2 gene could protect mosquitoes against the major insecticides used in public health.
The spread of resistance genes could hold back efforts to prevent the disease. The authors say that knowing how resistance works will help to develop tests
and stop these genes from spreading amongst mosquito populations. Charles Wondji said:''We found a population of mosquitoes fully resistant to DDT (no mortality
and pyrethroids and mosquitoes from a laboratory fully susceptible strain and did a genome wide comparison study.
They identified the GSTE2 gene as being upregulated--producing a lot of protein--in Benin mosquitoes. They found that a single mutation (L119f) changed a non-resistant version of the GSTE2 gene to a DDT resistant version.
They designed a DNA-based diagnostic test for this type of resistance (metabolic resistance) and confirmed that this mutation was found in mosquitoes from other areas of the world with DDT resistance
X-ray crystallography of the protein coded by the gene illustrated exactly how the mutation conferred resistance by opening up the'active site'where DDT molecules bind to the protein so more can be broken down.
They also introduced the gene into fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and found they became resistant to DDT
or a busy airport where cold viruses and other germs circulate freely flowers are common gathering places where pollinators such as bees
The unusual arrangement of cells in a chicken's eye constitutes the first known biological occurrence of a potentially new state of matter known as disordered hyperuniformity according to researchers from Princeton university
The lab of co-corresponding author Joseph Corbo an associate professor of pathology and immunology and genetics at Washington University in St louis studies how the chicken's unusual visual layout evolved.
That's never been seen in any system physical or biological. If you had asked me to recreate this arrangement before
The discovery of hyperuniformity in a biological system could mean that the state is more common than previously thought said Remi Dreyfus a researcher at the Pennsylvania-based Complex Assemblies of Soft Matter lab (COMPASS) co-run by the University of Pennsylvania
They will find this kind of hyperuniformity is more common in many physical and biological systems.
#New technique promises cheaper second-generation biofuel for carsproducing second-generation biofuel from dead plant tissue is environmetally friendly
The production of second generation biofuels thus becomes cheaper probably attracting many more producers and competition and this may finally bring the price down.
Cellulose is the most common biological material in the world so there is plenty of it he adds.
and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production. These are only the first steps in a bigger initiative that will turn sugarcane
The team will present its latest findings Tuesday (Feb 25) at the U s. Department of energy's ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington D c. Biodiesel is attractive
because for example with soybean once you've pressed the oil out it's fairly easy to convert it to diesel said Stephen P. Long a University of Illinois professor of plant biology and leader of the initiative.
and later with sugarcane the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant.
Using genetic engineering the researchers increased photosynthetic efficiency in sugarcane and sorghum by 30 percent Long said.
The epicenter of China's devastating Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 was in the Wolong Nature Reserve a globally important valuable biodiversity hotspot and home to the beloved and endangered giant pandas.
The findings funded by the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council and The Gatsby Foundation will be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on 17 february.
In 2012 the third year of the trial the potatoes experienced ideal conditions for late blight.
Non-transgenic Desiree plants were infected 100 by early August while all GM plants remained fully resistant to the end of the experiment.
The introduced gene from a South american wild relative of potato triggers the plant's natural defense mechanisms by enabling it to recognize the pathogen.
Cultivated potatoes possess around 750 resistance genes but in most varieties late blight is able to elude them.
and by the time a gene is introduced successfully into a cultivated variety the late blight pathogen may already have evolved the ability to overcome it said Professor Jonathan Jones from The Sainsbury Laboratory.
Scientists hope to replace chemical control with genetic control though farmers might be advised to spray even resistant varieties at the end of a season depending on conditions.
The Sainsbury Laboratory is continuing to identify multiple blight resistance genes that will difficult for blight to simultaneously overcome.
Their research will allow resistance genes to be prioritized that will be more difficult for the pathogen to evade.
and experiment with multiple resistance genes. By combining understanding of resistance genes with knowledge of the pathogen they hope to develop Desiree
and Maris Piper varieties that can completely thwart attacks from late blight. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Norwich Bioscience Institutes.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Family meals do more than put food on the table: Benefits of cooking, eating as a familymake mealtime a family time.
which the seeds were harvested said Sarah Cohen an associate professor of biology at the Romberg Tiburon Center.
The emphasis on genetic diversity is a relatively new concern in ecosystem restoration projects where there has been an understandable urgency to move plants and animals back into an area as quickly as possible.
and to explore how successful different genotypes are in different settings so we can more strategically design the movement of individuals for restoration.
The researchers then examined genetic fingerprints called microsatellites from the plants to measure the genetic diversity in each new crop.
Genetic diversity can be measured in a number of ways by looking at the number of different variants in a gene in a population for instance
These offspring impressively maintained the genetic diversity and distinctiveness of their source beds in their new mesocosm environments at the RTC-SFSU lab said Cohen.
In classes at the RTC students are learning how to combine genetics and ecology for projects that build better strategies to preserve the surprisingly distinct eelgrass meadows of San francisco bay.
James Kellner assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University the paper's lead and corresponding author noticed what seemed like implausibly large canopy growth in LIDAR images collected by the Carnegie Airborne
Dr FÃ rst from the School of Biological sciences at Royal Holloway said: Wild and managed bees are in decline at national and global scales.
It showed that deformed wing virus (DWV) and the fungal parasite Nosema ceranae--both of which have major negative impacts on honeybee health--can infect worker bumblebees
One of the novel aspects of our study is that we show that deformed wing virus
and studied genetic similarities between DWV in different pollinator populations. Three factors suggest that honeybees are spreading the parasites into wild bumblebees:
honeybees have higher background levels of the virus and the fungus than bumblebees; bumblebee infection is predicted by patterns of honeybee infection;
and honeybees and bumblebees at the same sites share genetic strains of DWV. We have known for a long time that parasites are behind declines in honeybees said Professor Brown.
or virus particle on the flowers that they visit and these may then infect wild bees.
The above story is provided based on materials by Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Pond-dwelling powerhouses genome points to biofuel potentialduckweed is a tiny floating plant that's been known to drive people daffy.
Now the genome of Greater Duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) has given this miniscule plant's potential as a biofuel source a big boost.
In a paper published February 19 2014 in the journal Nature Communications researchers from Rutgers University the Department of energy Joint Genome Institute and several other facilities detailed the complete genome
These and other properties make it an ideal candidate as a biofuel feedstock--a raw source for biofuel production.
Removing these woody materials from feedstock has been a major challenge in biofuel production. Also although they are small enough to grow in many environments unlike biofuel-producing microbes duckweed plants are large enough to harvest easily.
S. polyrhiza turns out to have one of the smallest known plant genomes at about 158 million base pairs and fewer than 20000 protein-encoding genes.
That's 27 percent fewer than Arabidopsis thaliana--which until recently was believed to be the smallest plant genome--and nearly half as many as rice plants.
The most surprising find was insight into the molecular basis for genes involved in maturation--a forever-young lifestyle said senior author Joachim Messing director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
S. polyrhiza leaves resemble cotyledons embryonic leaves inside plant seeds that become the first leaves after germination.
S. polyrhiza had fewer genes to promote and more genes to repress the switch from juvenile to mature growth.
Because of the reduction in neoteny there is an arrest in development and differentiation of organs. So this arrest allowed us to uncover regulatory networks that are required for differentiation
which genes were preserved over time and which were not. Many of the genes responsible for cellulose and lignin production in land dwelling plants were missing
and there were fewer copies of those that were present. Genes for another compound related to cell walls called expansins which are involved with cell wall
and root growth were reduced also. Genes for starch production on the other hand were retained and are used probably for creating starch-filled turions specialized buds produced by aquatic plants for overwintering enabling them sink to the bottom of ponds
and revive in warmer weather. Moreover despite the reduced number of total genes S. polyrhiza has more copies of genes for enzymes involved in nitrogen absorption and metabolism than in other plants.
This is probably linked to the plant's ability to utilize excess nitrogen in contaminated waters.
A thorough understanding of the genome and cellular mechanisms of S. polyrhiza could greatly enhance current efforts to recruit duckweed as a biofuel source.
Messing estimates that duckweed will be a viable biofuel source within the next five years and points to Ceres Energy Group in New jersey
Understanding which genes produce which traits will allow researchers to create new varieties of duckweed with enhanced biofuel traits such as increased reduction of cellulose or increased starch or even higher lipid production.
Starch can be used directly as a biofuel source and it can be converted to ethanol the way corn is converted currently to ethanol fuel
but oils would have greater energy than ethanol. Classical breeding or genetics does not apply here because of its clonal propagation
and rare flowering but these organisms can be transformed with DNA Messing said. Therefore new variants can be created with modified pathways for industrial applications.
This genome was sequenced as part of a DOE Office of Science JGI Community Science Program (CSP project (formerly the Community Sequencing Program.
The sequencing of this genome opens new frontiers in the molecular biology of aquatic plants said Messing.
and a new milestone in plant molecular biology and evolution as previous studies were either classical botany
or biochemistry of photosynthesis. The placement of the Spirodela genome as a basal monocot species will serve as a new reference for all flowering plants.
The above story is provided based on materials by DOE/Joint Genome Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Public demand has led to the rapid development of organic farming in recent years to provide healthy food products that are free of chemical additives
Now researchers from the two organizations have identified a new strategy for controlling the disease using biological control agents derived from isolates from UK cherries and plums.
Controlled sets of cherries and plums--with and without the biological control agents added--were placed in conditions known to induce the onset of brown rot disease.
Professor Peter Jeffries of the University's School of Biosciences said:''Brown rot disease is a major problem for the UK's cherry
The study was carried out by Professor Jeffries and research student Nattawut Rungjindamai of the School of Biosciences along with Professor Xiang-Ming Xu of East Malling Research.
The potential temperature changes also pose a severe threat to biodiversity. Furthermore the researchers used a simple climate model to study a variety of plausible greenhouse gas scenarios and SRM termination years over the 21st century.
These questions have puzzled life scientists since ancient times. Now an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Padua in Italy propose a thought-provoking answer based on a famous mathematical formula that has been accepted as true for generations but never fully understood.
If you studied biology in high school or college odds are memorized you Kleiber's Law: metabolism equals mass to the three-quarter power.
This formula one of the few widely held tenets in biology shows that as living things get larger their metabolisms
Named after The swiss biologist Max Kleiber who formulated it in the 1930s the law fits observations on everything from animals'energy intake to the number of young they bear.
history booksa new study reconstructing the evolutionary tree of flu viruses challenges conventional wisdom and solves some of the mysteries surrounding flu outbreaks of historical significance.
The study published in the journal Nature provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the evolutionary relationships of influenza virus across different host species over time.
In addition to dissecting how the virus evolves at different rates in different host species the study challenges several tenets of conventional wisdom--for example the notion that the virus moves largely unidirectionally from wild birds to domestic birds rather than with spillover
It also helps resolve the origin of the virus that caused the unprecedentedly severe influenza pandemic of 1918 The new research is likely to change how scientists
and health experts look at the history of influenza virus how it has changed genetically over time
We now have a really clear family tree of theses viruses in all those hosts--including birds humans horses pigs
--and once you have that it changes the picture of how this virus evolved said Michael Worobey a professor of ecology
and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who co-led the study with Andrew Rambaut a professor at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh.
if you don't account for the fact that the virus evolves at a different rates in each host species you can get nonsense--nonsensical results about
when and from where pandemic viruses emerged. Once you resolve the evolutionary trees for these viruses correctly everything snaps into place
and makes much more sense Worobey said adding that the study originated at his kitchen table.
And I had a glimmer of an idea that this would be important for our public health inferences about where these viruses come from
The team analyzed a dataset with more than 80000 gene sequences representing the global diversity of the Influenza a virus
Using the new family tree of the flu virus as a map showed which species moved to which host species and when.
It revealed that for several of its 8 genomic segments avian influenza virus is not nearly as ancient as often assumed.
What we're finding is that the avian virus has an extremely shallow history in most genes not much older than the invention of the telephone Worobey explained.
which included UA graduate student Guan-Zhu Han and Andrew Rambaut a professor from the University of Edinburgh who is affiliated also with the U s. National institutes of health found a strong signature in the data suggesting that something revolutionary happened to avian influenza virus
with the majority of its genetic diversity being replaced by some new variant in a selective sweep in an extremely synchronous event.
Worobey said the timing is provocative because of the correlation of that sudden shift in the flu virus'evolution with historical events in the late nineteenth century.
According to Worobey the newly generated evolutionary trees show a global replacement of the genes in the avian flu virus coinciding closely with the horse flu outbreak
which the analyses also reveal to be the closest relative to the avian virus. Interestingly a previous research paper analyzing old newspaper records reported that in the days following the horse flu outbreak there were repeated outbreaks described at the time as influenza killing chickens
whether the virus jumped from horses to birds or vice versa but a close relationship between the two virus species is clearly there.
With regard to humans the research sheds light on a longstanding mystery. Ever since the influenza pandemic of 1918 it has not been possible to narrow down even to a hemisphere the geographic origins of any of the genes of the pandemic virus. Our study changes that Worobey said.
It is now clear that most of its genome jumped from birds very close to 1918 in the Western hemisphere
and there is a suggestion that it was North america in particular. The results also challenge the accepted wisdom of wild birds as the major reservoir harboring the flu virus from where it jumps to domestic birds
and other species including humans. Instead the genetic diversity across the whole avian virus gene pool in domestic and wild birds often appears to trace back to earlier outbreaks of the virus in domestic birds Worobey explained.
People tend to think of wild birds as the source of everything but we see a very strong indication of spillover from domestic birds to wild birds he said.
and eggs may be substantially shaping the diversity of these viruses in the wild over time spans of decades.
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