Natural compound from green tomatoes increases muscle, protects against muscle wastingas unlikely as it sounds green tomatoes may hold the answer to bigger stronger muscles.
Using a screening method that previously identified a compound in apple peel as a muscle-boosting agent a team of University of Iowa scientists has discovered now that tomatidine a compound from green tomatoes is even more potent for building muscle and protecting
and the health care system in general says Christopher Adams M d. Ph d. UI associate professor of internal medicine and molecular physiology and biophysics.
More muscle less fatin a new study published online April 9 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry Adams searched for a small molecule compound that might be used to treat muscle atrophy.
Designing healthier foodsan attractive aspect of tomatidine is that it is a natural compound derived from tomatoes.
Adams and his team previously used this same research strategy to discover that ursolic acid a compound from apple peels promotes muscle growth.
We are interested now very in the possibility that several food-based natural compounds such as tomatidine
The isolates are being identified using techniques such as molecular typing and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization using time of flight or MALDI-TOF.
#Black carbon is ancient by the time it reaches seafloora fraction of the carbon that finds its way into Earth's oceans--the black soot
and charcoal residue of fires--stays there for thousands for years and a new first-of-its-kind analysis shows how some black carbon breaks away
and hitches a ride to the ocean floor on passing particles. The study by scientists from Rice university the University of California Irvine and the University of South carolina offers the first detailed analysis of how black carbon gets into deep ocean sediments as well as an accounting of the types
and amounts of black carbon found in those sediments. Our previous work showed that the black carbon in ocean sediments is said ancient lead investigator Ellen Druffel the Fred Kavli Professor of Earth System Science at UC Irvine.
It's anywhere from 2000 to 5500 years older than the organic carbon in the same sediments.
That means that it either stays dissolved in the water for a long time before it's deposited
or it stays trapped somewhere else--like the soil--for thousands of years before it enters the ocean.
This new study offers the most complete picture yet of how black carbon finds its way into deep ocean sediments.
The environmental fate of black carbon is understood not well said study co-author Caroline Masiello a Rice biogeochemist who began studying black carbon with Druffel in the 1990s.
It's extraordinarily stable and though we don't fully understand how nature breaks it down
Virtually all black carbon results from combustion. Soot the airborne version of black carbon is a key element of smoke.
Charcoal is another form of black carbon. Each form is produced naturally by wildfires as well by industry and other human activities.
Druffel and colleagues said their study did not aim to answer questions about how much black carbon people are producing today
or how human-produced black carbon is affecting global climate. Our aim was to show how the black carbon cycle likely works in the ocean Druffel said.
We are looking for the baseline which is an important thing for others to have to do future studies about anthropogenic change.
Scientific interest in black carbon is high. On the one hand a comprehensive 2013 study found that soot is a far more important player in global climate than was believed previously.
On the other there is a growing global movement among gardeners farmers and others to use another form of black carbon--biochar--to both boost crop yields and to counter greenhouse emissions by locking
carbon in soil for centuries. Sediment traps like this one being deployed from the research vessel New Horizon were used to sample black carbon in particles that sank to the bottom of the Northeast Pacific.
Credit: E. Druffel/UC Irvinewhether you come at this from the point of view of reducing soot in the atmosphere
or of using biochar to counter global warming it's important to have a better understanding of where black carbon goes how it gets there
and types of black carbon found in seafloor sediments. This helps us narrow down the role of the ocean as a sink for both soot and charcoal.
Black carbon's journey to the bottom of the ocean begins when the material enters the water.
The researchers used radiocarbon dating and other techniques to examine the black carbon that was buried in seafloor sediments in the Northeast Pacific that dated to about 20000 years ago.
and amounts of black carbon that were dissolved in seawater trapped in sediments and contained in oceangoing particles tiny specs of matter that gradually sink to the seafloor.
We found that black carbon is taken up by particles that are produced in the water column said Coppola.
One example would be fecal pellets that are excreted by organisms. Another is a sticky'marine snow'that falls slowly downward to the bottom
Coppola said black carbon tends to stay dissolved in seawater and only occasionally gets snagged by a passing marine particle.
I'm surprised that given how much black carbon is produced most of it remains in the ocean for thousands of years Coppola said.
It's very interesting that only a relatively small amount with a certain type of chemistry is removed to the ocean floor.
#Scalable CVD process for making 2-D molybdenum diselenidenanoengineering researchers at Rice university and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have unveiled a potentially scalable method for making one-atom-thick layers of molybdenum
and materials industries to make thin films of silicon carbon fibers and other materials. This new method will allow us to exploit the properties of molybdenum diselenide in a number of applications said study leader Pulickel Ajayan chair of Rice's Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering.
because they have an atomic structure similar to graphene the pure carbon wonder materials that attracted the 2010 Nobel prize in physics.
because they are only one atom thick. Graphene has extraordinary electronic properties. For example its electron mobility is tens of thousands of times greater than that of TMDCS.
ubiquitin molecules that tag misfolded proteins for degradation and proteasomes that latch onto the tagged proteins and break them down into harmless peptides.
The overall goal is to develop a technology to screen for molecules that would enhance
The lab's immediate goal is to create assays for the rapid detection of small molecules
This will help us rationally design compounds or strategies that could enhance degradation not only for the study and treatment of misfolding diseases but also for a variety of other applications.
To trace the sugars the scientists first had to add a radioactive tag to these molecules.
The tag they used was a positron-emitting isotope of carbon carbon-11 incorporated into carbon dioxide.
When they administered this labeled CO2 to plant leaves the plants incorporated the radioactive carbon into sugars via photosynthesis. The scientists then tracked the labeled sugars throughout the plant using detectors placed along the plant stem.
This finding supports the idea that sugar--not auxin--is the key signaling molecule for this immediate response to clipping.
Only a few labs in the world have the capability using the carbon-11 radioisotope to do the type of experiment that we did to see rapid changes in carbon allocation immediately following a treatment such as shoot tip removal Babst said.
The methodology assigns financial value to ecosystem services such as the provision of clean water carbon storage
At that time carbon dioxide-enriched air was released in the fields creating an elevated level of atmospheric carbon at the test plots similar to
#A balanced carbon footprint for the Amazon Riverconsidered until now a source of greenhouse gas emissions capturing the CO2 fixed by the tropical forest through the soils of the watershed to release it into the atmosphere the Amazon river actually has balanced a carbon footprint.
and EPOC laboratories (OASU CNRS Universitã Bordeaux 1) and published in the journal Nature changes the order for global carbon footprints.
Until now researchers thought that rivers were supplied with carbon by trees and other land plants through the soils of the watershed.
This carbon was transformed then into CO2 and released by outgassing into the atmosphere. Watercourses and in particular the giant Amazon were considered
All emissions covered by the wetlandsthe Amazon emits some 200000 tons of carbon per year through outgassing.
half of this carbon in the form of dissolved CO2 and biodegradable organic matter is transferred directly to the river.
This quantity of CO2 is equivalent to the 200000 tons of carbon outgassed annually. Therefore the carbon footprint of the river system in the central Amazon region is close to equilibrium:
its waters release the same quantity of carbon into the atmosphere as is fixed by its vegetation.
Nevertheless this study highlights the very heavy contribution of inland waters to CO2 emissions. It sheds light on the need to consider the specific properties of wetlands in global carbon footprints.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Institut de Recherche pour le DÃ veloppement (IRD.
and used in other applications such as adhesives insolation carbon fibres and paint additives. Genetic modificationthe genetic modification strategy employed in this study could also be used on other plants like grasses to be used as a new kind of fuel to replace petroleum.
Trees and plants have enormous potential to contribute carbon to our society. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of British columbia.
Natural processes are working hard to keep the carbon cycle in balance by absorbing about half of our carbon emissions limiting the extent of climate change.
In July 2014 NASA will launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) to study the fate of carbon dioxide worldwide.
Forests remove carbon from the air during photosynthesis and store it in wood and roots making these forests
what scientists call carbon sinks. But droughts and wildfires can turn forests into carbon sources releasing the stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
We don't know when and how often forests cross the line from sink to source.
Like all other molecules carbon dioxide molecules absorb only certain colors of light producing a unique pattern of dark features in the spectrum.
The intensity of the dark features increases as the number of carbon dioxide molecules increases in the air that the spectrometer is looking through.
Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are measured in parts per million the number of molecules of carbon dioxide there are in every million molecules of air.
or two carbon dioxide molecules out of the 400--an unprecedented level of precision and one that scientists think will be adequate to detect changes in natural sources
and other conditions the OCO-2 data will allow modelers to better locate carbon sources
so that organizations and individuals throughout the world can make better-informed decisions about carbon. For more information about OCO-2 visit:
He explains that the FDA already requires developers of GM CROPS to compare a handful of key nutritional compounds in GM varieties relative to their non-GM parents.
Cocoa has several different kinds of these compounds so Neilson's team decided to tease them apart
They found that adding one particular set of these compounds known as oligomeric procyanidins (PCS) to the food made the biggest difference in keeping the mice's weight down
The sequences provide researchers access to 96 percent of all peanut genes in their genomic context providing the molecular map needed to more quickly breed drought-and disease-resistant lower-input and higher-yielding
Amazonian grasses sometimes called macrophytes convert atmospheric carbon to plant biomass which is processed then by aquatic microorganisms upon decomposition.
when water levels are low sequestering some carbon and then die when the floods arrive releasing the carbon into the aquatic system said Thiago Silva an assistant professor of geography at SãO Paulo State university in Rio Claro Brazil.
They are followed by aquatic grasses that need to grow extremely fast to surpass the rising floods
Although most of the macrophyte carbon is released back to the atmosphere in the same form that it is assimilated carbon dioxide some of it is exported actually to the ocean as dissolved carbon
In a comprehensive analysis of soil collected from 11 distinct U s. regions from Hawaii to northern Alaska researchers found that the extent to which deforestation disturbs underground microbial communities that regulate the loss of carbon into the atmosphere depends almost exclusively on the texture of the soil.
A serious consequence of deforestation is extensive loss of carbon from the soil a process regulated by subterranean microbial diversity.
According to the researchers particles in fine clay-like soil seem to have a larger surface area to bind nutrients and water.
In contrast sandy soils have larger particles with less surface area retaining fewer nutrients and less organic matter.
This has the potential to inform land management practices concerned with the conservation of biodiversity and the sequestration of carbon in the soil.
New therapies possibleresearchers at Mcmaster University have discovered a key molecule that could lead to new therapies for people with celiac disease an often painful and currently untreatable autoimmune disorder.
Researchers in the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute at Mcmaster University have discovered that a molecule elafin
In studies with mice the researchers found that the administration of the elafin molecule protects the intestinal lining of the upper gut that is damaged by gluten.
and to maintain carbon storage capacity the new study shows that sustainable management of wood resources can achieve both goals while also reducing fossil fuel burning.
Reductions in fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions from construction will become increasingly critical as demand for new buildings bridges
Comparison with ground-based measurements from carbon flux towers and yield statistics confirmed the results.
The study confirms that even with coarse resolution the satellite method could estimate the photosynthetic activity occurring inside plants at the molecular level for areas with relatively homogenous vegetation like the Corn belt.
That's where missions with better resolution could help such as NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2--a mission planned for launch in July 2014 that will also measure solar-induced fluorescence.
and other human influences in the agricultural areas we're not going to correctly estimate the amount of carbon taken up by vegetation particularly corn Joiner said.
Rice scientists mixed very low concentrations of diamond particles (about 6 nanometers in diameter) with mineral oil to test the nanofluid's thermal conductivity
They found it to be much better than nanofluids that contain higher amounts of oxide nitride or carbide ceramics metals semiconductors carbon nanotubes and other composite materials.
at Viakable Technology and Research center in Monterrey Mexico and a research collaborator at Carbon Sponge Solutions in Houston.
They use sub-100 nanometer particles in low-enough concentrations that they don't limit flow
and diamond molecules collide when heated. Brownian motion and nanoparticle/fluid interactions play an important role Taha-Tijerina said.
In the air ammonia mixes with other emissions to form microscopic airborne particles or particulates. The particulates that pose the greatest health risk are those that measure no more than 2. 5 micrometers across or about 1/30 the width of a human hair
As such the particles are on the list of six common air pollutants regulated by EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
Agrilife Research scientists say that the mixture of phenolic compounds present in the peach extract are responsible for the inhibition of metastasis according to the study
because it shows in vivo the effect that natural compounds in this case the phenolic compounds in peach have against breast cancer
In general peach fruit has chemical compounds that are responsible for killing cancer cells while not affecting normal cells as we reported previously
and now we are seeing that this mixture of compounds can inhibit metastasis said Cisneros-Zevallos.
and compounds in different types of cancer as well as in diabetes studies in vitro and in vivo to understand the molecular mechanisms involved.
This lag follows from the effect of the harvest residue removals on the carbon balance of forests especially soil (indirect land-use-related emissions.
which molecules could be delivered. To do this they used pig breast tissue. Surprisingly they found that even large molecules such as proteins can be transported through these openings making a wide range of medications deliverable.
Validating the modelfeedback from a proposal submitted to the National institute of health confirmed that the researchers needed to use human breast tissue to prove the feasibility of the pig model.
A variety of compounds show promise in fighting the many types of breast cancer. Perumal points to a natural compound developed by former colleague
and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Chandradhar Dwivedi to prevent skin cancer--as having the potential to prevent breast cancer.
Additional methods are also being used in Perumal's lab to increase the penetration of the compounds through the nipple.
and the carbon isotopes of leaf wax a marker for plant varieties (grasses indicate dry conditions).
By looking at how concentrations of chemical elements in the sediment change with depth the researchers can develop a continuous record of how much surface runoff poured into the lake.
carbon isotopes from plant leaf wax. Leaves are covered with a carbon-based wax that protects them from losing too much water to evaporation.
Different plants have different carbon isotopes in their leaf wax. Tropical grasses which are adapted for dryer climates tend to have the C-13 isotope.
Trees which thrive in wetter environs use the C-12 isotope. The ratio of those two isotopes in the sediment cores is an indicator of the relative abundance of grass versus trees.
The cores showed an increase in abundance of grass in the same sediments that showed a decrease in surface runoff.
Taken together the results suggest a dry period strong enough to alter the region's vegetation that was correlated closely with the peak glaciation in the northern hemisphere.
The next step for Russell and his colleagues is to see if this pattern is repeated in multiple glacial cycles.
Austria-wide the Institute for Milk Hygiene Milk Technology and Food Science at the University of Veterinary medicine Vienna offers effective Listeria monitoring and a range of molecular and microbiological examination methods for the food industry.
#Forests crucial to green growththe value of forests and tree-based ecosystems extends far beyond carbon sequestration;
Not only do they store carbon they support biodiversity regulate water flows and reduce soil erosion. Nearly 1. 6 billion people worldwide depend on forests as a source of food medicines timber and fuel.
and ways to increase carbon sequestration and mitigate climate change said Sonny Ramaswamy director of USDA's National Institute of Food
Julio Betancourt a USGS paleoecologist and co-author on the study thinks that in the future molecular caving the application of molecular genetics to cave sediments will become more than an afterthought to answer such questions in aridland paleoecology and conservation.
The study published online in the journal Molecular Ecology has important implications for future climate changes.
which exploded and released large quantities of radioactive compounds in the Ukraine region of the Soviet union in 1986.
Benefits included increased carbon and nitrogen in soils erosion prevention more mycorrhizal colonization--beneficial soil fungus that helps plants absorb nutrients--and weed suppression.
and soil-carbon benefits accrue slowly over decades she said. By integrating a suite of ecosystem services into a unified analytical framework we highlighted the potential for cover crops to influence a wide array of ecosystem services.
At its peak the fungus destroyed the entire malting barley crop in the Red river and Ohio river Valleys according to molecular biologist Yang Yen an Agricultural Experiment Station researcher and professor at South dakota State university.
Using advanced genetic and molecular technologies Yen has begun tracing the biochemical pathways that make wheat susceptible or resistant to head blight.
Gene expression Yen has undertaken a molecular study of the disease investigating how the fungal infection impacts wheat gene expression.
By looking at how genes were expressed the molecular biologist narrowed the possibilities from thousands of genes to 608 then to 47 and eventually to three.
and ferment it producing compounds that are anti-inflammatory. The other bacteria in the gut are associated with inflammation
When these compounds are absorbed by the body they lessen the inflammation of cardiovascular tissue reducing the long-term risk of stroke said John Finley Ph d. who led the work.
and the large polyphenolic polymers are metabolized to smaller molecules which are absorbed more easily These smaller polymers exhibit anti-inflammatory activity he said.
and help convert polyphenolics in the stomach into anti-inflammatory compounds. When you ingest prebiotics the beneficial gut microbial population increases and outcompetes any undesirable microbes in the gut like those that cause stomach problems he added.
#Amazon inhales more carbon than it emits, NASA findsa new NASA-led study seven years in the making has confirmed that natural forests in the Amazon remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit
This finding resolves a longstanding debate about a key component of the overall carbon balance of the Amazon basin.
The Amazon's carbon balance is a matter of life and death: living trees take carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow
He found that each year dead Amazonian trees emit an estimated 1. 9 billion tons (1. 7 billion metric tons) of carbon to the atmosphere.
To compare this with Amazon carbon absorption the researchers used censuses of forest growth and different modeling scenarios that accounted for uncertainties.
In every scenario carbon absorption by living trees outweighed emissions from the dead ones indicating that the prevailing effect in natural forests of the Amazon is absorption.
Until now scientists had only been able to estimate the Amazon's carbon balance from limited observations in small forest areas called plots.
On these plots the forest removes more carbon than it emits but the scientific community has been vigorously debating how well the plots represent all the natural processes in the huge Amazon region.
In the years since then he worked with 21 coauthors in five nations to measure the carbon impacts of tree deaths in the Amazon from all natural causes--from large-area blowdowns to single trees that died of old age.
We found that large natural disturbances--the sort not captured by plots--have only a tiny effect on carbon cycling throughout the Amazon said Sassan Saatchi of JPL also a co-author.
That changes the particle's chemical composition and shape so the tag color now would be different.
#Reindeer grazing may counteract effects of climate warming on tundra carbon sinklocal reindeer grazing history is an important determinant in the response of an ecosystem's carbon sink to climate warming say researchers at the Arctic
The consequences of global climate warming on ecosystem carbon sink in tundra are of great interest
because carbon that is currently stored in tundra soils may be released to the atmosphere in a warmer climate.
Carbon balances showed that under the current climate lightly grazed dwarf-shrub-dominated tundra were a stronger carbon sink than heavily grazed graminoid-dominated tundra.
However warming decreased the carbon sink in lightly grazed tundra but had no effect in heavily grazed tundra.
The main reason for this grazer-induced difference was that in heavily grazed tundra graminoids with rapid growth rates were able to increase their photosynthesis and carbon fixation under increased temperatures.
Increased carbon fixation in heavily grazed tundra compensated the warming-induced increase in the carbon dioxide release from the ecosystem.
The significance of reindeer grazing history to tundra carbon balances has not been studied previously. The present results may modify climate models that predict the effects of global warming on global carbon cycles.
The study shows that it is critical to know the grazing history before the responses of tundra carbon balances to climate warming can be understood.
and identified the various antioxidant polyphenol compounds. In our antibacterial studies we have been testing honey's activity against E coli Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa among others.*
#Big data tackles tiny molecular machinesopen feed cut. Such is the humdrum life of a motor molecule the subject of new research at Rice university that eats
and excretes damaged proteins and turns them into harmless peptides for disposal. The why is obvious:
The paper describes the Onuchic group's first successful attempt to feed data through their computational technique to describe the complex activity of a large molecular machine formed by proteins.
but functional proteins big protein complexes and molecular machines have multiple conformations. Computational models are also useful
They can combine into larger molecular machines that grab other molecules walk cargoes within a cell
One such biomachine is Ftsh a membrane-bound molecule in E coli made of six protein copies that form two connected hexagonal rings.
The molecule attracts and degrades misfolded proteins and other cellular detritus pulling them in through one ring which closes like the shutter of a camera and traps the proteins.
Through molecular simulations using structure-based models and the discovery via DCA of likely couplings in the genetic source of the proteins the Rice team found evidence to support the hypothesis of a paddling mechanism in the molecule that Morcos described as a collapse of the two rings once trash found its way inside.
First the ring pore closes to grab the protein; then the molecule flattens he said.
Then when the motor is flat the rings open to release the peptides and the molecule expands again to restart the cycle.
Key to the success of DCA is the realization that amino acid mutations represent contacts that co-evolve for specific purposes.
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