Resistance gene found against Ug99 wheat stem rust pathogenthe world's food supply got a little more plentiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough.
Eduard Akhunov associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State university and his colleague Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California-Davis led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat
The team's study Identification of Wheat Gene Sr35 that Confers Resistance to Ug99 Stem Rust Race Group appears in the journal Science.
It identifies the stem rust resistance gene named Sr35 and appears alongside a study from an Australian group that identifies another effective resistance gene called Sr33.
This gene Sr35 functions as a key component of plants'immune system Akhunov said. It recognizes the invading pathogen
As a first line of defense wheat breeders and researchers began looking for resistance genes among those that had already been discovered in the existing germplasm repositories he said.
Until now however we did not know what kind of gene confers resistance to Ug99 in this wheat accession.
To identify the resistance gene Sr35 the team turned to einkorn wheat that is known to be resistant to the Ug99 fungal strain.
and showed resistance to the Ug99 race of stem rust. Now that the resistance gene has been found Akhunov
and colleagues are looking at what proteins are transferred by the fungus into the wheat plants
and environmentalists have focused largely on the supply side for instance electric power plants heating systems and cars that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere Saner and his team decided to take a close look at the other end of the equation--how energy consumption for housing
are hot spots of rotation-resistance and others (in Nebraska and northwest Missouri for example) lack evidence of rotation-resistant rootworms.
and insect resistance and he said'Well I know what time of day I'll eat my vegetables!'
What we have shown is that keeping the internal clock ticking is advantageous with respect to insect resistance
and Melinda Gates Foundation into whether light and other stimuli like touch may be used to enhance pest resistance of food crops in developing countries.
The central regions of these brilliant powerhouses are ringed by doughnuts of cosmic dust 1 dragged from the surrounding space similar to how water forms a small whirlpool around the plughole of a sink.
They applied a technique developed by paper co-author Brad Mcrae of the Nature Conservancy that's based on how electricity finds the path of least resistance when traveling across circuit boards.
and the resistance was made the human and natural landscape barriers. The work was supported by the U s. Environmental protection agency and the Wilburforce Foundation.
or high insulin levels a precursor to insulin resistance which is a prediabetic state Veiga-Lopez reported.
However she said prenatal exposure to BPA did not lead to insulin resistance in sheep as was true in a previous mouse study.
However some scientists feared that widespread use of these proteins in genetically modified crops would spur rapid evolution of resistance in pests.
(CIRAD) in France scrutinized the available field and laboratory data to test predictions about resistance.
and evolve resistance said Tabashnik head of the UA department of entomology who led the study.
and with the data accumulated over that period we have a better scientific understanding of how fast the insects evolve resistance and why.
Analyzing data from 77 studies of 13 pest species in eight countries on five continents the researchers found well-documented cases of field-evolved resistance to Bt crops in five major pests
Their report indicates that in the worst cases resistance evolved in 2 to 3 years;
if resistance genes are initially rare in pest populations; inheritance of resistance is recessive--meaning insects survive on Bt plants
only if have two copies of a resistance gene one from each parent --and abundant refuges are present.
Refuges consist of standard non-Bt plants that pests can eat without ingesting Bt toxins. Computer models showed that refuges should be especially good for delaying resistance
when inheritance of resistance in the pest is explained recessive Carriã re. Planting refuges near Bt crops reduces the chances that two resistant insects will mate with each other making it more likely they will breed with a susceptible mate yielding offspring that are killed by the Bt crop.
The value of refuges has been controversial and in recent years the EPA has relaxed its requirements for planting refuges in the U s. Perhaps the most compelling evidence that refuges work comes from the pink bollworm
which evolved resistance rapidly to Bt cotton in India but not in the U s. Tabashnik said.
One of the paper's main conclusions is that evaluating two factors can help to gauge the risk of resistance before Bt crops are commercialized.
If the data indicate that the pest's resistance is likely to be recessive and resistance is rare initially the risk of rapid resistance evolution is said low Tabashnik.
In such cases setting aside a relatively small area of land for refuges can delay resistance substantially.
Conversely failure to meet one or both of these criteria signifies a higher risk of resistance.
When higher risk is indicated Tabashnik describes a fork in the road with two paths: Either take more stringent measures to delay resistance such as requiring larger refuges
or this pest will probably evolve resistance quickly to this Bt crop. Two leading experts on Bt crops welcomed publication of the study.
Kongming Wu director of the Institute for Plant Protection at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing said This review paper will be very helpful for understanding insect resistance in agricultural systems
and improving strategies to sustain the effectiveness of Bt crops. Fred Gould professor of entomology at North carolina State university commented:
what we know about resistance to transgenic insecticidal crops. Although the new report is the most comprehensive evaluation of pest resistance to Bt crops so far Tabashnik emphasized that it represents only the beginning of using systematic data analyses to enhance understanding and management of resistance.
These plants have been remarkably useful and in most cases resistance has evolved slower than expected Tabashnik said.
I see these crops as an increasingly important part of the future of agriculture. The progress made provides motivation to collect more data
We've also started exchanging ideas and information with scientists facing related challenges such as herbicide resistance in weeds and resistance to drugs in bacteria HIV and cancer.
But will farmers ever be able to prevent resistance altogether? Tabashnik said he doesn't think so.
It's almost a given that preventing the evolution of resistance is not possible. Story Source:
Lessons for the futureenvironmentally friendly modern concretes already include volcanic ash or fly ash from coal-burning power plants as partial substitutes for Portland cement with good results.
and consumption of electricity will reduce emissions the researchers said. Implementing standard energy-efficiency practices focused on refrigeration
While commercial silicon-based solar cells turn about 20 percent of sunlight into electricity and experimental units top 25 percent there's been an undercurrent of research into polymer-based cells that could greatly reduce the cost
one to carry (negative) electrons the other to carry positive charges Verduzco said. The imbalance between the two prompted by the input of energy--sunlight--creates useful current.
and learn to control their structures to increase the solar cell's ability to capture photons and turn them into electricity.
In both cases electrical resistance drops to zero and complete expulsion of magnetic fields occurs. Superconductors have the ability to transport large electrical currents and produce high magnetic fields
Such seamless integration through the graphene interface would provide low-contact resistance between current collectors
Bulk of shoes carbon footprint comes from manufacturing processesa typical pair of running shoes generates 30 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to keeping a 100-watt light bulb on for one week according to a new
A significant portion of the world's shoe manufacturers are located in China where coal is the dominant source of electricity.
Also known as elephant grass miscanthus is one of a new generation of renewable energy crops that can be converted into renewable energy by being burned in biomass power stations.
and provide much better resistance to cheatgrass invasion the study concluded. Continued research is needed to quantify the threshold levels of cattle grazing that would still maintain a healthy native ecosystem.
The measurements also will help direct the searches for atomic EDMS (electric dipole moments) currently being carried out in North america
Indeed it can be crossed with cultivated olive trees to improve various properties such as the drought-resistance of the latter.
Everyone knows that is a silly idea as it results in bacteria rapidly developing resistance. It is the same with these pesticides.
They tested the frogs'resistance when exposed to chlorpyrifos which is used against insects and Roundup Original MAX
and a postdoctoral researcher in Relyea's lab. Although populations differed in their resistance to Roundup populations closer to fields were not more resistant to the herbicide.
Because chlorpyrifos kills in a way that is similar to many other insecticides higher resistance may have been favored each time any insecticide was sprayed said Pitt alumnus Jenise Brown (A&s'09) a coauthor of the study
They found that wood frog populations with resistance to one insecticide also had resistance to the other insecticides.
As they hypothesized in the study published today the researchers suspect that the reason for this cross-resistance is that chlorpyrifos kills in a way that is similar to many other insecticides.
Thus evolving higher resistance to one insecticide may provide higher resistance to others. This finding may buffer an amphibian population from suffering the consequences of exposures to new
and a graduate student in Relyea's lab. In the future Relyea and his team plan to study the genetic mechanisms that underlie increased resistance in amphibians
and determine whether increased resistance occurs in additional animal species that are not the targets of pesticides.
Evidence for the evolution of amphibian resistance to modern pesticides. The article published Feb 21 in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry is titled Cross-tolerance in amphibians:
Two other major goals in agriculture are increasing the carbohydrate content and pest-resistance of crops.
A recent discovery of protein transporters that move sugar throughout the plant has been used to develop rice plants that confer pest resistance to crops the biologists said providing a novel way to simplify the engineering of crops with high yields and pest resistance
The findings which were published today (Apr 29) in the journal Crop science are good news for plant breeders who've relied increasingly in recent years on the wild kin of domesticated crops as new sources of disease resistance drought tolerance
Wheat genome shows resistance genes easy to accessit's hard to go anywhere without a map--especially into the deep and complex world of genetics.
and isolate genes that are responsible for different traits such as disease resistance and days to maturity.
and drought and result in quality bread Gill said adding Most resistance genes seem to lie at the ends of chromosomes
structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and soil's resistance to erosion.
--either directly or via electricity generated by solar cells--to convert the end products of hydrocarbon combustion water and carbon dioxide back into a carbon-based fuel.
The Brookhaven team had identified already some promising leads with experiments demonstrating the potential effectiveness of low-cost molybdenum paired with carbon as well as the use of nitrogen to confer some resistance to the corrosive acidic environment required in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis cells.
and number of tubers as well as by their resistance to the usual diseases of this crop.
The aim of this specialist was to find potatoes which brought together the features of the South american varieties (their colour resistance to pathogens
Resistance to diseases is another of the achievements. The four clones show certain resistance to the pathogens analysed such as the potato virus Y as well as the Pectobacterium atrosepticum bacteria
which weaken the vegetable and considerably undermine its production. Researcher Raquel LÃ pez highlights the importance of taking into account the clones achieved.#
That Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse over the last decade or so is clear.
which in turn could be used to generate efficient electricity. We used free-energy profiling and geometric analysis in these candidate zeolites to understand how the distribution
and do not require electricity or fuel. Instead they use the kinetic energy of flowing stream water to power the lifting of a fraction of this water to a higher elevation.
but a global team led by researchers from the University of Minnesota warns in a new paper that without increased financial support for disease resistance research new strains of a deadly fungal disease could leave millions without affordable access to food.
Scientists have developed new wheat varieties with some resistance to the deadly disease but the disease evolves
Several projects to develop resistance to Ug99 are under way including an international consortium known as the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative a $26 million five-year effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
and sustain investments in rust-resistance research is tantamount to accepting an increase in the risk of yield losses on one of the world's food staples said Phil Pardey leader of the research team and a professor of applied
Evolutionary studies make used of mitochondrial (powerhouse) genomes to identify maternal lineages for example the human mitochondrial Eve.
Now Professor Hoffmann from the University of Melbourne and Professor Michale Turelli from the University of California have shown that by introducing an insecticide resistance gene alongside the Wolbachia bacteria into the mosquito that the insects pass on the disease-blocking bacteria to other mosquitoes faster.
The approach taken in this new work involves adding a pesticide resistance gene to a newer strain of Wolbachia called wmelpop
Prof Hoffmann added that insecticide resistance genes would not spread to the uninfected mosquito populations
because a Wolbachia-infected female with a resistance gene will always pass on both the gene and the bacteria to her offspring.
So the association between resistance and the infection is maintained the resistance does not move into the rest of the population
and/or reduce insulin resistance dietary changes that control blood sugar levels and weight loss that reduces insulin resistance.
A simple natural pill or capsule that would both help control blood sugar and foster weight loss at the same time would be a major advance in the treatment of type 2 diabetes Vinson said.
This means that greenhouses in Europe alone would be able to save as much electricity as half of Sweden's electricity consumption.
Adapting a novel form of insect resistance discovered in a wild plant native to Peru Mutschler-Chu professor of plant breeding and genetics first isolated the resistance.
After successfully transferring the resistance into new lines and breeding out undesirable traits her team added a second layer of protection:
. If some thrips get through with the virus the virus resistance genes are there to mop it up Mutschler-Chu said.
and without the virus resistance genes will be used by Mutschler-Chu and an interdisciplinary team of eight other scientists from seven other institutions nationwide as part of a new five-year $3. 75 million project to control thrips and TOSPO viruses in tomatoes.
or tweaking virus resistance Mutschler-Chu wants to discover the best package for insect and virus control.
and will allow us to better understand the mechanism of drug resistance that is common in prostate cancer patients.
Their study helps explain why one major pest is evolving resistance much faster than predicted
Our goal is to understand how insects evolve resistance so we can develop and implement more sustainable environmentally friendly pest management he said.
To thwart further evolution of pest resistance to Bt crops farmers have shifted recently to the pyramid strategy:
if an individual pest has resistance to one toxin the other toxin will kill it.
His home institution the Center for Agricultural Research for Development or CIRAD is interested keenly in factors that could affect pest resistance to Bt crops in Africa.
For their experiments the group collected cotton bollworm--also known as corn earworm or Helicoverpa zea-a species of moth that is a major agricultural pest and selected it for resistance against one of the Bt toxins Cry1ac.
But on the two-toxin plants the caterpillars selected for resistance to one toxin survived significantly better than caterpillars from a susceptible strain.
and may also explain the reports indicating some field populations of cotton bollworm rapidly evolved resistance to both toxins.
Moreover the team's analysis of published data from eight species of pests reveals that some degree of cross-resistance between Cry1
Contradicting the concept of redundant killing cross-resistance means that selection with one toxin increases resistance to the other toxin.
According to the study's authors even low levels of cross-resistance can reduce redundant killing
In particular inheritance of resistance to plants producing only Bt toxin Cry1ac was dominant which is expected to reduce the ability of refuges to delay resistance.
Refuges consist of standard plants that do not make Bt toxins and thus allow survival of susceptible pests Under ideal conditions inheritance of resistance is not dominant
and the susceptible pests emerging from refuges greatly outnumber the resistant pests. If so the matings between two resistant pests needed to produce resistant offspring are unlikely.
But if inheritance of resistance is seen dominant as with cotton bollworm matings between a resistant moth
which hastens resistance. According to Tabashnik overly optimistic assumptions have led the EPA to greatly reduce requirements for planting refuges to slow evolution of pest resistance to two-toxin Bt crops.
The new results should come as a wakeup call to consider larger refuges to push resistance further into the future Carriã re pointed out.
Our simulations tell us that with 10 percent of acreage set aside for refuges resistance evolves quite fast
but if you put 30 or 40 percent aside you can substantially delay it. Our main message is to be more cautious especially with a pest like the cotton bollworm Carriã re said.
#Waste heat may economize CO2 capturein some of the first results from a federally funded initiative to find new ways of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power plants Rice university scientists have found that CO2 can be removed more economically using waste heat
--low-grade steam that cannot be used to produce electricity. The find is significant because capturing CO2 with conventional technology is an energy-intensive process that can consume as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that plants use to produce electricity.
This is just the first step in our effort to better engineer a process for capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants said George Hirasaki the lead researcher of Rice's CO2-capture research team The researchers hope to reduce the costs of CO2 capture by creating an integrated
reaction column that uses waste heat engineered materials and optimized components. Hirasaki's team was one of 16 chosen by the Department of energy (DOE) in 2011 to develop innovative techniques for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The team's first findings appear in two new studies that are available online this month in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.
Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO2 that humans add to the atmosphere each year;
these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO2 before it goes up in smoke.
Each of these plants makes electricity by boiling water to create steam to run electric turbines.
while the CO2 at power plants is said not Hirasaki There's also a greater volume of CO2 per unit mass at a power plant than at a natural gas well.
if it is to be cost-effective for CO2 capture at power plants. A major challenge in adapting two-phase amine processing for power plants is the amount of heat required to recycle the amine in the second phase of the process.
Using existing amine processing technology at power plants is impractical because amine recycling would require as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that could otherwise be used to drive turbines
and make electricity Hirasaki said. This phenomenon is known as parasitic power loss and it will drive up the cost of electricity by lowering the amount of electricity a plant can produce for sale.
It has been estimated that the use of current technology for CO2 capture would drive up the cost of electricity by 70 to 100 percent said Rice graduate student Sumedh Warudkar a co-investigator on the Rice university team.
In our study we examined whether it would be possible to improve on that by using lower-value steam to run the amine recyclers.
To test this idea Warudkar used a software package that's commonly used to model industrial chemical processes.
The health tests measured longevity fertility stress and starvation resistance. Findings suggest beneficial health effects dependent on specific foods Some negative
and quality by increasing genetic diversity and analyzing key traits related to its resistance to cold drought and disease.
Tauschii's enhanced disease resistance. Remarkably a higher number of genes for the cytochrome P450 family were identified in Ae tauschii (485) than sorghum (365) rice (333) Brachypodium (262) and maize (261.
Solar Electric Materials an Energy Frontier Research center funded by the U s. Department of energy Office of Science Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001084 (Y. Z
The method known as fast ignition uses lasers capable of delivering more than a petawatt of power (a million billion watts) in a fraction of a billionth of a second to heat compressed deuterium
the use of alternative fuels like biofuels electricity and hydrogen; and strong government policies to overcome high costs and influence consumer choices.
This approach includes reducing work the engine must perform--reducing vehicle weight aerodynamic resistance rolling resistance
hybrid electric vehicles such as the Toyota Prius; plug-in hybrid electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt;
battery electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf; hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles such as the Mercedes F-Cell scheduled to be introduced about 2014;
or electricity the high initial purchase cost is likely to be a significant barrier to widespread consumer acceptance the report says.
Each combines highly efficient vehicles with at least one of three alternative power sources--biofuel electricity or hydrogen.
Vehicles powered by electricity will not emit any greenhouse gases but the production of electricity and the additional load on the electric power grid are factors that must be considered.
To the extent that fossil resources are used to generate electricity the report says that the successful implementation of carbon capture
and storage will be essential. These vehicles also rely on batteries which are projected to drop steeply in price.
and long recharge times are likely to limit the use of all-electric vehicles mainly to local driving.
Fasting blood glucose insulin insulin resistance body weight body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference were assessed every six months for 24 months.
and insulin resistance achieved during the first year of the program by the LWL group largely were maintained in the second year as compared to the usual care group.
The most common choices would be to either burn it for electricity or dispose of the ash.
As the most diverged wild relative of O. sativa (rice) O. Brachyantha has resistance against many rice pathogens and various stress environments.
and insect resistance but it can stand in the way of enzymes that want to get at the sugars locked up in the carbohydrates.
or some other factor affecting recalcitrance (the plant's resistance to give up its structural sugars).
even though the females put up resistance in 60%of the cases observed. Forced copulation also takes place on Borneo.
The weights of the edges describe the resistance of the resistors solving the Laplacian tells you how much current would flow between any two points in the graph.
on the circuit analogy the voltage would have to be the same across both paths.
The key to Narayan's approach is the application of an electric field at approximately 100 volts per centimeter to the material.
and draw current from the electric field to the area --which raises the temperature along the grain boundary.
Preheating the grain boundary with an electric field is allowed what Narayan to lower the sintering temperature from 1450 C to 800 C
and enhance floral advertising Power plants are charged usually negatively and emit weak electric fields. On their side bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air.
No spark is produced as a charged bee approaches a charged flower but a small electric force builds up that can potentially convey information.
By placing electrodes in the stems of petunias the researchers showed that when a bee lands the flower's potential changes
and remains so for several minutes. Could this be a way by which flowers tell bees another bee has recently been visiting?
and distinguish between different floral electric fields. Also the researchers found that when bees were given a learning test they were faster at learning the difference between two colours
How then do bees detect electric fields? This is not yet known although the researchers speculate that hairy bumblebees bristle up under the electrostatic force just like one's hair in front of an old television screen.
The discovery of such electric detection has opened up a whole new understanding of insect perception and flower communication.
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