November 5, 2009, 8:42 AM CT

Making better broccoli

Carotenoidsfat-soluble plant compounds found in some vegetablesare essential to the human diet and reportedly offer important health benefits to consumers. Plant carotenoids are the most important source of vitamin A in the human diet; the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, found in corn and leafy greens vegetable such as kale, broccoli, and spinach, are widely considered to be valuable antioxidants capable of protecting humans from chronic diseases including age-related macular degeneration, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Vegetables in the cabbage family (such as kale, cauliflower, and broccoli) have long been known as particularly good sources of dietary carotenoids. Recently, broccoli has emerged as the stand-out member of the species, providing more carotenoids to American consumers than any of its cabbage-family relatives. Yet, little has been understood about the carotenoid make-up of this popular green vegetableuntil now.

Mark W. Farnham of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Charleston, South Carolina, and Dean A. Kopsell from the Plant Sciences Department, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, designed a research study aimed at finding out more about the carotenoid content of field-grown broccoli and determining the effects of genetics and the environment on carotenoid levels. The duo's research confirmed that broccoli heads contain abundant levels of lutein, an antioxidant usually thought to provide nutritional support to eyes and skin. Other carotenoids like beta-carotene, violaxanthin, neoxanthin, and antheraxanthin were also found in broccoli heads, but lutein was clearly the most significant, accounting for about half of all carotenoids measured......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

November 5, 2009, 8:39 AM CT

Indoor plants to fight air pollution

Air quality in homes, offices, and other indoor spaces is becoming a major health concern, especially in developed countries where people often spend more than 90% of their time indoors. Surprisingly, indoor air has been reported to be as much as 12 times more polluted than outdoor air in some areas. Indoor air pollutants emanate from paints, varnishes, adhesives, furnishings, clothing, solvents, building materials, and even tap water. A long list of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs [including benzene, xylene, hexane, heptane, octane, decane, trichloroethylene (TCE), and methylene chloride], have been shown to cause illnesses in people who are exposed to the compounds in indoor spaces. Acute illnesses like asthma and nausea and chronic diseases including cancer, neurologic, reproductive, developmental, and respiratory disorders are all associated with exposure to VOCs. Harmful indoor pollutants represent a serious health problem that is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths each year, as per a 2002 World Health Organization report.

Stanley J. Kays, Department of Horticulture, University of Georgia, was the lead researcher of a study published in HortScience that tested ornamental indoor plants for their ability to remove harmful VOCs from indoor air. As per Kays, some indoor plants have the ability to effectively remove harmful VOCs from the air, and not only have the ability to improve our physical health, but also have been shown to enhance our psychological health. Adding these plants to indoor spaces can reduce stress, increase task performance, and reduce symptoms of ill health......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

November 5, 2009, 8:37 AM CT

Seeking flower variety

Florists and other retailers who sell flowers and plants can now add another tool to their marketing kit. A recent study of "consumption values" may help them understand what influences consumers' choices in regard to floral purchases, and how to better design marketing efforts and purchase stock that can increase customers and sales.

Li-Chun Huang from National Taiwan University and Tzu-Fang Yeh from Da-Yeh University headed a research project that reviewed the differences in floral consumption values across consumer groups (the full study appears in a recent issue of HortTechnology).

A consumer survey was conducted in cities and rural areas in Taiwan in 2006 where 677 participants were surveyed. As per responses to a survey question that asked whether they purchased flowers, participants were divided into two categories: ''users'' and ''nonusers'' of flowers.

The majority of survey participants indicated that the following values (in descending order) influenced their floral purchases: showing care to others, emotion conditioning, and "sensory hedonics", a phenomenon in which consumers perceive the value of flowers based on touching, smelling, or tasting them. Interestingly, those participants identified as "heavy users" of flowers revealed different priorities, rating "emotion conditioning" as more important than "showing care to others". The scientists note that this implies that "heavy users" make more frequent floral purchase flowers partly because they are more emotionally stimulated by flowers. Heavy users also rated "curiosity fulfillment" higher, leading to them to look for more novelty and variety when purchasing flowers......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

November 4, 2009, 8:19 AM CT

Sustainably grown garlic

Consumer interest in new and diverse types of garlic is on the rise. Fueled by factors including the growth of the "local foods" movement, interest in world cuisines, and widespread reports touting its numerous health benefits, demand for high-quality, locally grown garlic is increasing throughout the U.S.

While most grocery stores in carry the familiar white, "softneck" garlic (which is most often imported), varieties of "hardneck" garlic in colorful hues of purple, magenta, pink, and white are becoming more available at local vegetable stands and through direct-marketing programs. The results of a recent study of 10 garlic cultivars can help farmers identify niche regional markets and offer new, in-demand garlic varieties to consumers.

Hundreds of garlic (Allium sativum L.) cultivars are available from seed companies, retailers, and germplasm collections. Increasingly, growers purchase bulbs from nonlocal sources and are often disappointed by unpredictable yields. Garlic bulbs resulting from seed stock purchased in other regions may not display the characteristicssuch as bulb size, shape, and colorfeatured in the catalogs.

Gayle M. Volk of the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Fort Collins, and David Stern of the Garlic Seed Foundation authored a study designed to determine which garlic traits are stable and which traits vary depending on where the garlic is grown. As per the study published in a recent issue of HortScience and funded primarily by the Northeast Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education program, previous research has shown that traits such as clove number, clove skin coloration, and topset number are representative of cultivar type across growth locations, whereas "phenotypic" traits such as bulb wrapper color, bulb size, and bulb elemental composition are specific to sites......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

November 4, 2009, 8:16 AM CT

Pecan trees benefit from thinning

Pecan trees, like many fruit trees, have a tendency to bear fruit in cycles, producing a large crop in one or two years, followed by one or two years with little or no crop. This cycle, called "alternate bearing", is the most profit-limiting biological problem facing pecan producers; the inconsistent production pattern creates supply and marketing challenges that can have severe negative effects on the pecan industry.

Producers have experienced success using mechanical fruit thinning as a way to minimize the effects of alternate bearing on several pecan cultivars. While the protocol for mechanical crop thinning has been established for some pecan cultivars grown in Oklahoma and Kansas, little research has been conducted regarding the economic value and potential profitability of fruit thinning of cultivars found in the southeastern United States. To address this issue, researchers at the University of Georgia's Department of Horticulture studied the effects of mechanical fruit thinning on pecan yield, nut quality, and profitability using 'Sumner' and 'Cape Fear' pecan trees, two important cultivars prevalent in areas of the southeastern U.S. The research study was published in a recent issue of HortTechnology

Ten 20-year-old trees of both 'Sumner' and 'Cape Fear' were used for the study. Trees grown in Tifton loamy sand soil in a commercial pecan orchard in Irwin County, Georgia, were used for the study. The trees were spaced 40 x 40 feet and were drip-irrigated. Treatments were replicated five times in a randomized complete-block design. Five trees of each cultivar were mechanically thinned using a tree shaker with a hydraulic shaker heada process called trunk shakingto remove 30% to 40% of the fruit on each tree, and five trees were not thinned......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

November 4, 2009, 8:15 AM CT

For African violets

African violets have a mixed reputation. Their delicate, colorful flowers and furry, soft leaves make them a favorite among home gardeners and growers. But the striking plants are often regarded as temperamental: a precise recipe of light, moisture, warm temperatures, high humidity, and fertilizer is mandatory to encourage african violets to grow and flower.

A recently published study by researchers Julia C. Brotton and Janet C. Cole from the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Oklahoma State University (in a recent issue of HortTechnology) could provide african violet enthusiasts with important care information about the finicky flower.

Because of their brightly colored flowers and hairy leaves, people are attracted to african violets and often want to touch the leaves and flowers. But how does all this attention affect the plants? The research team set out to determine the effect of "brushing" african violet leaves on plant growth and quality. Cole explained, "Because (african violet) growers work in conditions that can contribute to the development of dry, irritated skin, a number of growers use body lotions to help soothe and moisturize their dry skin. A number of consumers also use these products. Our study researched whether touching or "brushing" african violet leaves causes damage, especially when body lotion or other skin care products have been applied to hands before touching the plants"......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

November 4, 2009, 8:10 AM CT

White sharks in the north Pacific

The white shark appears to be the ultimate loner of the ocean, cruising thousands of miles in a solitary trek, but a team of scientists has discovered that the sharks have maintained such a consistent pattern of migration that over tens of thousands of years the white sharks in the northeastern Pacific Ocean have separated themselves into a population genetically distinct from sharks elsewhere in the world.

"White sharks are a large, highly mobile species," said Salvador Jorgensen, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. "They can go just about anywhere they want in the ocean, so it's really surprising that their migratory behaviors lead to the formation of isolated populations".

Researchers with the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program combined satellite tagging, passive acoustic monitoring and genetic tags to study white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) popularly known as great white sharks in the North Pacific. The team consisted of scientists from Stanford University, University of California-Davis, Point Reyes Bird Observatory and the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation, and the details of their study are to be published online Nov. 3 by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B

The fact that the northeastern Pacific white sharks undergo such a consistent, large-scale migration, and that they are all closely related and distinct from other known white shark populations, suggests that it is possible to conduct long-term population evaluation and monitoring of these animals......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

November 4, 2009, 7:59 AM CT

Cultured pearls from the queen conch

For more than 25 years, all attempts at culturing pearls from the queen conch (Strombus gigas) have been unsuccessfuluntil now. For the first time, novel and proprietary seeding techniques to produce beaded (nucleated) and non-beaded cultured pearls from the queen conch have been developed by researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI). With less than two years of research and experimentation, Drs. Hctor Acosta-Salmn and Megan Davis, co-inventors, have produced more than 200 cultured pearls using the techniques they developed. Previous to this breakthrough, no high-quality queen conch pearl had been cultured. This discovery opens up a unique opportunity to introduce a new gem to the industry. This significant accomplishment is comparable to that of the Japanese in the 1920s when they commercially applied the original pearl culture techniques developed for pearl oysters.

HBOI has been working with the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) to conduct extensive laboratory testing of the queen conch cultured pearls. In its independent analysis, GIA used techniques that included conventional gemological examination, chemical composition, spectroscopy, spectrometry and microscopy. HBOI and GIA plan to jointly publish the results of these trials in an upcoming issue of GIA's scientific journal, Gems & Gemology........ Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

November 2, 2009, 10:56 PM CT

North Atlantic Fish Populations Shifting

About half of 36 fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, a number of of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the last four decades, with some stocks nearly disappearing from U.S. waters as they move farther offshore, as per a newly released study by NOAA researchers.

Their findings, reported in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, show the impact of changing coastal and ocean temperatures on fisheries from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Canadian border.

Janet Nye, a postdoctoral researcher at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and the main author of the study, looked at annual spring survey data from 1968 to 2007 for stocks ranging from Atlantic cod and haddock to yellowtail and winter flounders, spiny dogfish, Atlantic herring, and less well-known species like blackbelly rosefish. Historic ocean temperature records and long-term processes like the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation dating back to 1850 were also analyzed to put the temperature data into context.

"During the last 40 years, a number of familiar species have been shifting to the north where ocean waters are cooler, or staying in the same general area but moving into deeper waters than where they traditionally have been found," Nye said. "They all seem to be adapting to changing temperatures and finding places where their chances of survival as a population are greater"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

November 2, 2009, 8:44 AM CT

Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose

Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity?

A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists from Michigan Technological University. Joseph Bump, Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich report in the November 2009 issue of the journal Ecology that the carcasses of moose killed by wolves at Isle Royale National Park enrich the soil in "hot spots" of forest fertility around the kills, causing rapid microbial and fungal growth that provide increased nutrients for plants in the area.

"This study demonstrates an unforeseen link between the hunting behavior of a top predatorthe wolfand biochemical hot spots on the landscape," said Bump, an assistant professor in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science and first author of the research paper. "It's important because it illuminates another contribution large predators make to the ecosystem they live in and illustrates what can be protected or lost when predators are preserved or exterminated".

Bump and colleagues studied a 50-year record of more than 3,600 moose carcasses at Isle Royale. They measured the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels in the soil at paired sites of wolf-killed moose carcasses and controls. They also analyzed the microbes and fungi in the soil and the leaf tissue of large-leaf aster, a common native plant eaten by moose in eastern and central North America......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

November 2, 2009, 8:42 AM CT

Researchers sequence swine genome

A global collaborative has produced a first draft of the genome of a domesticated pig, an achievement that will lead to insights in agriculture, medicine, conservation and evolution.

A red-haired Duroc pig from a farm at the University of Illinois will now be among the growing list of domesticated animals that have had their genomes sequenced. Scientists will announce the achievement Monday (Nov. 2) at a meeting at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England.

"The pig is a unique animal that is important for food and that is used as an animal model for human disease," said Larry Schook, a University of Illinois professor of biomedical sciences and leader of the sequencing project. "And because the native wild animals are still in existence, it is a really exciting animal to look at to learn about the genomic effects of domestication," he said.

The Duroc is one of five major breeds used in pork production around the world and is one of about 200 breeds of domesticated pigs. There are also numerous varieties of wild boar, the non-domesticated pigs that are believed to have originated in Eurasia.

The sequencing project involved an international team of researchers and.

genome-sequencing centers. The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, formerly the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, provided $10 million in initial funding, requiring that this be the only pig genome-sequencing project in the world, that it be a public-private partnership and a global collaborative effort, with significant financial or in-kind support from the other participating agencies and stakeholders......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 29, 2009, 10:07 PM CT

A heat sensor for body-clock synchronization

New research on the fruit-fly brain points to a possible mechanism by which temperature influences the body clock, as per researchers from Queen Mary, University of London.

Eventhough much is known about how light affects the body clock - also known at the circadian clock - it is not well understood which cells or organs sense daily temperature changes or how temperature signals reach the part of the brain that contains the circadian clock.

A variety of organisms, including insects and humans, have evolved an internal circadian clock to regulate patterns of behaviour throughout the day - for example sleep, appetite, alertness and concentration.

Senior study author Dr Ralf Stanewsky, from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, explains: "Given the substantial similarity between the fly and mammalian clock, our studies might also help to understand the human circadian clock and in the future perhaps contribute to developing therapys against the negative effects of sleep-disorders and shift-work".

Specially evolved "clock cells" in the brain contain the circadian clock, which needs to be synchronised with the natural environmental cycles every day to prevent them running too fast or too slow.

Dr Stanewsky and his colleagues have shown that fly brains were unable to synchronize to temperature cycles when separated from the rest of the body. This is in contrast with the ability to synchronize to light-dark cycles, which can take place with or without a connection to the fly body......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 27, 2009, 9:57 AM CT

Environmental Impact Of Marine Fisheries

An Australian method for assessing the environmental impact of marine fisheries has caught the eye of fishery management agencies worldwide.

Aspects of the 'ecological risk evaluation' (ERA) method have been adopted in the US, Canada, Ecuador, and the Western and Central Pacific, and by the international eco-labelling organisation the Marine Stewardship Council.

The method was developed in research led by Dr Tony Smith and Dr Alistair Hobday from CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship in association with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA).

"AFMA needed a tool for assessing the ecological risk linked to a diverse range of fishing practices: from the hand-selection of rock lobsters in the Coral Sea, to the trawling of Patagonian Toothfish deep in the Southern Ocean," Dr Smith says.

"We met the challenge with a three-step method that considers targeted and incidentally caught species, as well as threatened, endangered and protected species. Ongoing research is further developing the method for habitats and ecological communities.

"Each level of analysis potentially screens out issues of low concern and directs attention to higher risk issues. This helps fishery managers to guard against unacceptable changes to the ecosystem, while being strategic about where to focus dollars and time," Dr Smith says......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 27, 2009, 9:54 AM CT

The skeleton: Size matters

Vertebrates have in common a skeleton made of segments, the vertebrae. During development of the embryo, each segment is added in a time dependent manner, from the head-end to the tail-end: the first segments to be added become the vertebrae of the neck, later segments become the vertebrae with ribs and the last ones the vertebra located in the tail (in the case of a mouse, for example). In this process, it is crucial that, on the one hand, each segment, as it matures, becomes the correct type of vertebra and, on the other, that the number of vertebrae in the skeleton, and therefore the size of the spine, are minutely controlled.

It has long been known that the identity of each vertebra is due to the activation of a class of genes called Hox. Now, in the latest issue of Developmental Cell (*) scientists from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Cincia, in Portugal, the Institute KNAW and University Medical Centre (The Netherlands) show that besides determining the identity of the vertebrae, Hox genes also have a say in how a number of are going to be formed at all.

There is a huge diversity in number of vertebrae in animals: some have a number of vertebrae, and are thus longer, like a snake, and others have fewer vertebrae and are shorter, like mice. Vertebrae are made from precursors known as somites, formed in the embryos, sequentially from head to tail. This process is directly associated with growth of the embryo at its tail end: the more it grows, the more somites it makes and, as a result the more vertebrae the adult animal has. Of the a number of genes involved in this growth, a family of genes called Cdx are known to play a central role......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 27, 2009, 9:52 AM CT

Charles Darwin's ideas about the origin of life

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago, he deliberately avoided the subject of the origin of life. This, coupled with the mention of the 'Creator' in the last paragraph of the book, led us to believe he was not willing to commit on the matter. An international team, led by Juli Peret of the Cavanilles Institute in Valencia, now refutes that idea and shows that the British naturalist did explain in other documents how our first ancestors could have come into being.

"All organic beings that have lived on Earth could be descended from some primordial form", explained Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859. Despite this statement, the scientist took it upon himself to understand the evolutional processes underlying biodiversity.

"Darwin was convinced of the incredible importance of this issue for his theory and he had an amazingly modern materialist and evolutional vision about the transition of inanimate chemical matter into living matter, despite being very aware of Pasteur's experiments in opposition to spontaneous generation", Juli Peret, principal author of this study and researcher at the Cavanilles Institute of Evolutional Biology and Biodiversity at the University of Valencia, explains to SINC.

The study, which is reported in the latest issue of the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, demonstrates that Darwin had an advanced idea on the origin of the first species, and was troubled by the problem. "It is utterly wrong to believe that he was invoking a divine intervention; it is also well documented that the mention of the 'Creator' in The Origin of the Species was an addition for appearance's sake that he later regretted", affirms Peret......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 26, 2009, 7:36 AM CT

Mantis shrimps inspire technology

The remarkable eyes of a marine crustacean could inspire the next generation of DVD and CD players, as per a newly released study from the University of Bristol published recently in Nature Photonics

The mantis shrimps in the study are found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and have the most complex vision systems known to science. They can see in twelve colours (humans see in only three) and can distinguish between different forms of polarized light.

Special light-sensitive cells in mantis shrimp eyes act as quarter-wave plates which can rotate the plane of the oscillations (the polarization) of a light wave as it travels through it. This capability makes it possible for mantis shrimps to convert linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa. Manmade quarter-wave plates perform this essential function in CD and DVD players and in circular polarizing filters for cameras.

However, these artificial devices only tend to work well for one colour of light while the natural mechanism in the mantis shrimp's eyes works almost perfectly across the whole visible spectrum from near-ultra violet to infra-red.

Dr Nicholas Roberts, main author of the Nature Photonics paper said: "Our work reveals for the first time the unique design and mechanism of the quarter-wave plate in the mantis shrimp's eye. It really is exceptional out-performing anything we humans have so far been able to create"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 10:19 PM CT

New method to help keep fruit and vegetables fresh

ATLANTA Did you know that millions of tons of fruits and vegetables in the United States end up in the trash can before being eaten, as per the U.S. Department of Agriculture?

A Georgia State University professor has developed an innovative new way to keep produce and flowers fresh for longer periods of time.

Microbiologist George Pierce's method uses a naturally occurring microorganism no larger than the width of a human hair to induce enzymes that extend the ripening time of fruits and vegetables, and keeps the blooms of flowers fresh. The process does not involve genetic engineering or pathogens, but involves microorganisms known to be linked to plants, and are considered to be helpful and beneficial to them.

"These beneficial soil microorganisms serve essentially the same function as eating yogurt as a probiotic to have beneficial organisms living in the gastrointestinal system," Pierce said.

The process works by manipulating the organism's diet so that it will over express certain enzymes and activities that work in the ripening process and keeping the flower blooms fresh. Pierce analogizes this to using diet and exercise to improve the performance of an athlete.

"We change the diet of the organism, and we can change its performance," Pierce said. "It's no different than taking a good athlete and putting them on a diet and exercise regime, and turning him or her into a world-class athlete"......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 10:05 PM CT

Genomes of Two Strains of E. coli Sequenced

An international team of scientists from the United States, Korea, and France has sequenced and analyzed the genomes of two important laboratory strains of E. coli bacteria, one used to study evolution and the other to produce proteins for basic research or practical applications. The findings will help guide future research and will also open a window to a deeper understanding of classical research that is the foundation of our understanding of basic molecular biology and genetics.

The team, which includes two scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, published its results online on October 17, 2009, in three papers in the Journal of Molecular Biology.

E. coli has been linked to recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, but the two most important laboratory types, named K-12 and B, were isolated from non-malignant E. coli that are normal inhabitants of the human intestine. Both have been indispensable tools for biomedical research and biotechnology.

K-12 was isolated in 1922 in Palo Alto, California. Its genome sequence - the series of nucleotide bases (labeled A, T, G, and C) that make up the source code for running the machinery of the cell - has been known since 1997. The early history of B, however, was unknown until the current collaboration painstakingly analyzed historical scientific papers and personal recollections to trace it back to a strain at the Institut Pasteur, in Paris, in 1918. Adding to this historical reconstruction, the newly sequenced genomes of two different B strains allow the complete genomes of these laboratory workhorses to be compared for the first time......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 8:54 AM CT

Family tree for cattle, other ruminants

Pairing a new approach to prepare ancient DNA with a new scientific technique developed specifically to genotype a cow, an MU animal scientist, along with a team of international researchers, created a very accurate and widespread "family tree" for cows and other ruminants, going back as far as 29 million years. This genetic information could allow researchers to understand the evolution of cattle, ruminants and other animals. This same technique also could be used to verify ancient relatives to humans, help farmers develop healthier and more efficient cattle, and assist researchers who are studying human diseases, as per the research, which is being published in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"We studied 678 different animals, representing 61 different species, and using the new Illumina cow 'SNP chip,' or 'snip chip,' we were able to generate some very precise genetic data for which the chip was not designed," said Jerry Taylor, a professor of animal science in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resource and main author of the study. "Our SNP chips allow researchers to examine hundreds of thousands of points on an animal's genome simultaneously. When we applied this technique to 48 recognized breeds of cattle, we were able to construct a family tree and infer the history of cattle domestication and breed formation across the globe"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 8:48 AM CT

Carbon-offsetting and conservation

Logged rainforests can support as much plant, animal and insect life as virgin forest within 15 years if properly managed, research at the University of Leeds has found.

Because trees in tropical climates soak up large amounts of carbon dioxide, restoring logged forest through planting new trees could also be used in carbon trading, as per Dr David Edwards, from University's Faculty of Biological Sciences.

Dr Edwards is calling for the inclusion of biodiversity-friendly strategies in carbon trading schemes to ensure that carbon off-setting projects support, rather than undermine, rainforest conservation.

Currently, large plantations of one type of tree, such as Eucalpytus, are popular as carbon off-setting or sequestration projects in the tropics because they also provide commercial benefits, but they do not support tropical biodiversity.

But Dr Edwards has shown that managed restoration of logged forest which can also be used for carbon off-setting brings biodiversity virtually back to pre-logging levels within 15 years, much quicker than forest left to regenerate naturally.

"Our research shows that it is possible to have both carbon sequestration and biodiversity benefits within the same scheme," he said.

"This could act as a strong incentive to protect logged forests under threat of deforestation for oil palm and other such crops. Selectively logged rainforests are often vulnerable because they're seen as degraded, but we've shown they can support similar levels of biodiversity to unlogged forests"......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

October 19, 2009, 6:43 AM CT

Time in a bottle

A 21-year Michigan State University experiment that distills the essence of evolution in laboratory flasks not only demonstrates natural selection at work, but could lead to biotechnology and medical research advances, scientists said.

Charles Darwin's seminal Origin of Species first laid out the case for evolution exactly 150 years ago. Now, MSU professor Richard Lenski and his colleagues document the process in their analysis of 40,000 generations of bacteria, published this week in the international science journal Nature

Lenski, Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology at MSU, started growing cultures of fast-reproducing, single-celled E. coli bacteria in 1988. If a genetic mutation gives a cell an advantage in competition for food, he reasoned, it should dominate the entire culture. While Darwin's theory of natural selection is supported by other studies, it has never before been studied for so a number of cycles and in such detail.

"It's extra nice now to be able to show precisely how selection has changed the genomes of these bacteria, step by step over tens of thousands of generations," Lenski said.

Lenski's team periodically froze bacteria for later study, and technology has since developed to allow complete genetic sequencing. By the 20,000-generation midpoint, scientists discovered 45 mutations among surviving cells. Those mutations, as per Darwin's theory, should have conferred some advantage, and that's exactly what the scientists found......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 15, 2009, 7:47 PM CT

Discovery overturns long-held theory about biological clocks

University of Michigan mathematicians and their British colleagues say they have identified the signal that the brain sends to the rest of the body to control biological rhythms, a finding that overturns a long-held theory about our internal clock.

Understanding how the human biological clock works is an essential step toward correcting sleep problems like insomnia and jet lag. New insights about the body's central pacemaker might also, someday, advance efforts to treat diseases influenced by the internal clock, including cancer, Alzheimer's disease and mood disorders, said University of Michigan mathematician Daniel Forger.

"Knowing what the signal is will help us learn how to adjust it, in order to help people," said Forger, an associate professor of mathematics and a member of the U-M's Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. "We have cracked the code, and the information could have a tremendous impact on all sorts of diseases that are affected by the clock".

The body's main time-keeper resides in a region of the central brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei, or SCN. For decades, scientists have believed that it is the rate at which SCN cells fire electrical pulses-fast during the day and slow at night-that controls time-keeping throughout the body......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 15, 2009, 7:44 PM CT

Being a standout has its benefits

Standing out in a crowd is better than blending in, at least if you're a paper wasp in a colony where fights between nest-mates determine social status.

That's the conclusion of a study by University of Michigan scientists published online this week in the journal Evolution.

"It's good to be different, to wear a nametag advertising your identity," said graduate student Michael Sheehan, who collaborated on the research with evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Tibbetts.

In earlier research, Tibbetts showed that paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) recognize individuals by variations in their facial markings and that they behave more aggressively toward wasps with unfamiliar faces. Then last year, Sheehan and Tibbetts published a paper in Current Biology demonstrating that these wasps have surprisingly long memories and base their behavior on what they remember of prior social interactions with other wasps.

That's important in a species like P. fuscatus, in which multiple queens establish communal nests and raise offspring cooperatively, but also compete to form a linear dominance hierarchy. Remembering who they've already bested-and been bested by-keeps individuals from wasting energy on repeated aggressive encounters and presumably promotes colony stability by reducing friction......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 15, 2009, 7:41 PM CT

Do 3 meals a day keep fungi away?

The fact that they eat a lot and often may explain why most people and other mammals are protected from the majority of fungal pathogens, as per research from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

The research, reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, showed that the elevated body temperature of mammals the familiar 98.6o F or 37o C in people is too high for the vast majority of potential fungal invaders to survive.

"Fungal strains undergo a major loss of ability to grow as we move to mammalian temperatures," said Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D., chair and professor of microbiology & immunology at Einstein. Dr. Casadevall conducted the study in conjunction with Vincent A. Robert of the Utrecht, Netherlands-based Fungal Biodiversity Center, also known as Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures.

"Our study makes the argument that our warm temperatures may have evolved to protect us against fungal diseases," said Dr. Casadevall. "And being warm-blooded and therefore largely resistant to fungal infections may help explain the dominance of mammals after the age of dinosaurs."

There are roughly 1.5 million fungal species. Of these, only a few hundred are pathogenic to mammals. Fungal infections in people are often the result of an impaired immune function. By contrast, an estimated 270,000 fungal species are pathogenic to plants and 50,000 species infect insects. Frogs and other amphibians are prone to fungal pathogens, one of which, chytridiomycosis, is currently raging through frogs worldwide. Fungi are also important in the decomposition of plants......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 15, 2009, 5:23 PM CT

Loss of Tumor-Suppressor and DNA-Maintenance Proteins

A study reported in the recent issue of Nature Genetics demonstrates that loss of the tumor-suppressor protein p53, coupled with elimination of the DNA-maintenance protein ATR, severely disrupts tissue maintenance in mice. As a result, tissues deteriorate rapidly, which is generally fatal in these animals. In addition, the study provides supportive evidence for the use of inhibitors of ATR in cancer treatment.

Essentially, says senior author Eric Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the findings highlight the fact that day-to-day maintenance mandatory to keep proliferative tissues like skin and intestines functional is about more than just regeneration, a stem cell-based process that forms the basis of tissue renewal. It's also about housekeeping, the clearing away of damaged cells.

Whereas loss of ATR causes DNA damage, the job of p53 is to monitor cells for such damage and either stimulate the early demise of such cells or prevent their replication, the housekeeping part of the equation. The findings indicate that as messy as things can become in the absence of a DNOne of the majortenance protein like ATR, failing to remove resulting damaged cells by also deleting p53, is worse. "Because the persistence of damaged cells in the absence of p53 prevents appropriate tissue renewal, these and other studies have underscored the importance not only of maintaining competent stem cells, but also of eliminating what gets in the way of regeneration," explains Brown......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:14 AM CT

Whale-sized genetic study for southern hemisphere humpbacks

After 15 years of research in the waters of the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and an international coalition of organizations have unveiled the largest genetic study of humpback whale populations ever conducted in the Southern Hemisphere.

By analyzing DNA samples from more than 1,500 whales, scientists can now peer into the population dynamics and relatedness of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales as never before, and help inform management decisions in the sometimes politically charged realm of whale conservation.

The results of the massive analysis appear in PLoS One, an interactive open-access journal for scientific and medical research. Other contributors to the study include: Columbia University; University of Pretoria; Environment Study of Oman; Instituto Baleia Jubarta and PURCS (Brazil); University of Cape Town; Marine and Coastal Management (South Africa); Faculdade de Biocincias; Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (Gabon); Association Megaptera (France); Universit de La Rochelle (France).

"Humpback whales are perhaps the most studied species of great whale in the Northern Hemisphere, but a number of of the interactions among Southern Hemisphere populations are still poorly understood," said Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants Program and main author of the study. "This research illustrates the vast potential of genetic analyses to uncover the mysteries of how humpbacks travel and form populations in the southern ocean basins."........ Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:11 AM CT

Pets With a Microchip

Animals shelter officials housing lost pets that had been implanted with a microchip were able to find the owners in almost three out of four cases in a recently published national study.

As per the research, the return-to-owner rate for cats was 20 times higher and for dogs 2 ½ times higher for microchipped pets than were the rates of return for all stray cats and dogs that had entered the shelters.

"This is the first time there has been good data about the success of shelters finding the owners of pets with microchips," said Linda Lord, main author of the study and an assistant professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University.

"We observed that shelters did much better than they thought they did at returning animals with microchips to their owners".

Lord said that though the American public so far has not seemed to embrace the practice, this study suggests that pet owners should give strong consideration to microchipping their companion animals.

She also noted, however, that no animal identification is more effective than a tag on a collar that includes the pet's name and the owner's phone number.

Animal microchips are implanted at veterinary offices or shelters and contain a unique number that is revealed when the pet is scanned by a microchip detector. The number coincides with contact information that owners register with a microchip manufacturer......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 8:26 AM CT

Conservation biologists setting their targets too low

Conservation biologists are setting their minimum population size targets too low to prevent extinction.

That's as per a newly released study by University of Adelaide and Macquarie University researchers which has shown that populations of endangered species are unlikely to persist in the face of global climate change and habitat loss unless they number around 5000 mature individuals or more.

The findings have been published online in a paper 'Pragmatic population viability targets in a rapidly changing world' in the journal Biological Conservation

"Conservation biologists routinely underestimate or ignore the number of animals or plants mandatory to prevent extinction," says main author Dr Lochran Traill, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.

"Often, they aim to maintain tens or hundreds of individuals, when thousands are actually needed. Our review observed that populations smaller than about 5000 had unacceptably high extinction rates. This suggests that a number of targets for conservation recovery are simply too small to do much good in the long run".

A long-standing idea in species restoration programs is the so-called '50/500' rule. This states that at least 50 adults are mandatory to avoid the damaging effects of inbreeding, and 500 to avoid extinctions due to the inability to evolve to cope with environmental change......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 8:18 AM CT

Rainforest Plants Then and Now

Smithsonian scientists working in Colombia's Cerrejn coal mine have unearthed the first megafossil evidence of a neotropical rainforest. Titanoboa, the world's biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in rainforests today, indicating that rainforests flourished during warm periods.

"Modern neotropical rainforests, with their palms and spectacular flowering-plant diversity, seem to have come into existence in the Paleocene epoch, shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago," said Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "Pollen evidence tells us that forests before the mass extinction were quite different from our fossil rainforest at Cerrejn. We find new plant families, large, smooth-margined leaves and a three-tiered structure of forest floor, understory shrubs and high canopy."

Historically, good rock exposures and concentrated efforts by paleontologists to understand the evolution of neotropical rainforestsone of the most awe-inspiring assemblages of plant and animal life on the planethave been lacking. "The Cerrejn mining operation is the first clear window we have to see back in time to the Paleocene, when the neotropical rainforest was first developing," said Scott Wing, a paleontologist from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 7:56 AM CT

Panama butterfly migrations

A high-speed chase across the Panama Canal in a Boston Whaler may sound like the beginning of another James Bond filmbut the protagonist of this story brandishes a butterfly net and studies the effects of climate change on insect migrations at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

"Our long-term study shows that El Nio, a global climate pattern, drives Sulfur butterfly migrations," said Robert Srygley, former Smithsonian post doctoral fellow who is now a research ecologist at the US Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Climate change has been associated with changes in the migration of butterflies in North America and Europe but this is one of the first long-term studies of environmental factors driving long-distance migration of tropical butterflies.

For 16 years, Srygley and his colleagues tracked the progress of lemony yellow Sulfur butterflies, Aphrissa statira, a species found from Mexico to Brazil, as they migrate across central Panama from Atlantic coastal rainforests to the drier forests of the Pacific coast.

"The El Nio Southern Oscillationa global climate cycleturns out to be the primary cause for increases in the plants that the larvae of these butterflies eat. El Nio results in dry, sunny days in Panama, which favor plant growth. When the plants prosper, we see a big jump in the number of Statira Sulfur butterflies"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 30, 2009, 6:39 AM CT

Understanding of how insects smell

New research announced recently, Wednesday 30th September, by a team of leading researchers working with the UK's national Synchrotron, Diamond Light Source, could have a significant impact on the development and refinement of new eco-friendly pest control methods for worldwide agriculture.

Reported in the Journal of Molecular Biology, the study was carried out by Dr Jing-Jiang Zhou and his colleagues at the world's oldest agricultural research centre and the largest UK facility, Rothamsted Research, in collaboration with Professor Nick Keep's group from the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at Birkbeck, University of London.

Dr Jing-Jiang Zhou, Senior Research Scientist in insect molecular biology at Rothamsted Research, studies insect olfaction and chemical ecology at the molecular level, he explains, "Using Diamond Light Source's intense X-rays, we unravelled the detailed mechanisms associated with pheromone detection which dictates mating behaviour in silkworm moths. They are a model organism and any new insights into the working of their olfactory system has repercussions on our global understanding how insects locate mates and their hosts".

Solving this protein structure also represents a significant achievement in the advance of structural biology in the UK and it marks the 100th new structure identified at Diamond since its opening in 2007......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 29, 2009, 10:30 PM CT

Marine Microbe Is Source of Rare Nutrient

A newly released study of microscopic marine microbes, called phytoplankton, by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of South Carolina has solved a ten-year-old mystery about the source of an essential nutrient in the ocean.

Roughly a decade ago researchers discovered a rare form of organic phosphorus in marine organic matter. Not only were the scientists surprised to find this form of phosphorus, called phosphonate, but the concentrations in which it was found were very high, throughout the ocean. Researchers hypothesized that phosphonate is produced and consumed in the ocean, but no one understood where it came from and why it was so abundant.

Enter Trichodesmium. In 2006, WHOI biologist Sonya Dyhrman along with other WHOI colleagues initiated a field and laboratory study with this phytoplankton group, which is plentiful in low-nutrient warm tropical and subtropical waters. They discovered that Tricodesmium uses phosphonate to fuel its biological processes, including the fixation of carbon and nitrogen.

Their finding was unexpected because, chemically, phosphonate has a very strong carbon-phosphorus bond that requires a lot of energy, and a special set of genes, for Trichodesmium to break.

But Dyhrman and her colleagues's discovery that Trichodesmium could use this form of phosphorus to support carbon and nitrogen fixation still didn't solve the basic mystery: where were the high concentrations of this rare compound coming from?........ Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

September 29, 2009, 10:25 PM CT

Building on Nature

Natural systems are the focus of two intriguing and imperative research areas: creating revolutionary capabilities for sensing and response; and obtaining hydrocarbons from plants and microorganisms.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced 20 grants in these areas for FY 2009, awarding a total of $39,991,202 over four years to 94 researchers from 27 institutions through the NSF Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI).

"Big ideas are needed if we are to significantly advance the development of biosensing and biofuels," said Thomas Peterson, NSF assistant director for engineering. "That's why EFRI is stimulating high-risk research in these areas of national need".

In the first area, scientists will study how fish move, how butterflies drink, how spiders see, and even how the Venus flytrap catches dinner, and then find ways to engineer these mechanisms for sensing and response into new materials and systems.

Other researcher teams will investigate the behavior of DNA, neurons and other biological tissues to discover how to harness their activity to produce materials or improve their function, or how to detect the beginnings of diseases such as cancer or immune disorders.

Sohi Rastegar, director of EFRI, said, "Working at the interface of living and engineered systems presents a number of challenges but also new opportunities for discoveries that will address many national needs, which include detecting precursors of serious diseases, protecting critical and aging infrastructures, and mitigating environmental hazards and pollution"......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

September 28, 2009, 6:44 AM CT

From underground 850 new species

Australian scientists have discovered a huge number of new species of invertebrate animals living in underground water, caves and "micro-caverns" amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback.

A national team of 18 scientists has discovered 850 new species of invertebrates, which include various insects, small crustaceans, spiders, worms and a number of others.

The team led by Professor Andy Austin (University of Adelaide), Dr Steve Cooper (South Australian Museum) and Dr Bill Humphreys (Western Australian Museum) has conducted a comprehensive four-year survey of underground water, caves and micro-caverns across arid and semi-arid Australia.

"What we've found is that you don't have to go searching in the depths of the ocean to discover new species of invertebrate animals you just have to look in your own 'back yard'," says Professor Austin from the Australian Center for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity at the University of Adelaide.

"Our research has revealed whole communities of invertebrate animals that were previously unknown just a few years ago. What we have discovered is a completely new component to Australia's biodiversity. It is a huge discovery and it is only about one fifth of the number of new species we believe exist underground in the Australian outback"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 27, 2009, 8:51 AM CT

163 new species found: including a bird-eating fanged frog

A new WWF report celebrates the recent discovery of 163 new species in the Greater Mekong region of South-east Asia - including a bird-eating fanged frog, a leopard-patterned gecko and a bird that would rather walk than fly - but we also warn they could soon face extinction because of climate change.

Our report, entitled Close Encounters, lists 100 new plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, 2 mammals and a bird, all identified in the last year by researchers within the jungles and rivers of the Greater Mekong, which spans Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan.

The discoveries include: a bird-eating fanged frog that lies in streams waiting for prey; a bird called the Nonggang babbler, which walks longer distances than it flies, only taking flight when frightened; and the leopard gecko, a reptile with orange eyes, spindly limbs and technicolour skin.

But recent studies show the climate of the Greater Mekong region is changing, and models suggest continued warming, increased variability and more frequent and damaging extreme climate events.

Rising seas and saltwater intrusion will cause major coastal impacts, particularly in the Mekong River delta, one of the three most vulnerable deltas on Earth, as per the most recent International Panel on Climate Change report......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 24, 2009, 7:06 AM CT

Fish fend off invading germs with an initial response

Since the human response to infection is highly complex, research to understand how people fight infection is facilitated by studying how similar processes occur in simpler organisms. Zebrafish are becoming an important model for human disease, since they are easily handled, maintained and manipulated and a number of fundamental processes between zebrafish and humans are conserved. In addition, the small zebrafish embryo is highly amenable to drug screening assays. The functional similarity between the initial responses of zebrafish embryo and humans to infection suggests that the zebrafish embryo appears to be a valuable model for understanding early immune responses and identifying potential therapeutics for infection or immune mediated disease. However, the initial response of zebrafish to infection and how it compares to the human response is not well understood.

When humans first encounter germs, like viruses or bacteria, the first stage of a two-part inflammatory response is triggered, which is termed the innate immune response. During this early phase, proteins are made around the site of infection to initiate the body's defense system and to recruit circulating immune cells, which begins the inflammatory process. A family of proteins that are critical to instigating the immune response are the interferons (IFN), especially IFN-γ......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 23, 2009, 7:33 AM CT

Frog fungus hammering biodiversity

Sometimes to see something properly, you have to stand farther back. This is true of Chuck Close portraits where a patchwork of a number of small faces changes into one giant face as you back away.

It may also be true of the frogs of Central America, where the pattern of extinctions emerges clearly only at a certain spatial scale.

Everyone knows that frogs are in trouble and that some species have disappeared, but a recent analysis of Central American frog surveys shows the situation is worse than had been thought.

Under pressure from a fungal disease, the frogs in this biodiversity hot spot are undergoing "a vast homogenization" that is leaving behind impoverished communities that increasingly resemble one another.

"We're witnessing the McDonaldization of the frog communities," says Kevin G. Smith, Ph.D., associate director of the Tyson Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

The analysis, of data collected over a number of years by Karen R. Lips, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology and director of the program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology at the University of Maryland and research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, was published online in the recent issue of Ecology Letters......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 20, 2009, 7:12 PM CT

Bananas Gone Bad Glow Blue in UV-Light

Nicholas Turro of Columbia University, Bernhard Krautler of the University of Innsbruck, Austria and their colleagues have observed that, as chlorophyll ages and begins to disintegrate in banana peels it does not change color in the spectrum of visible light we see. Instead, it glows blue when observed under ultraviolet light.

While the light show adds a level of exoticism to the fruit in our eyes, and serves to attract a host of potential consumers in the eyes of insects and other animals who can appreciate the UV, the display is equally exciting to chemists. Because the glowing molecules occur in close proximity to dying tissue, they promise to be a literal beacon for the further study of the way organisms cleanse themselves of dying cells, or programmed cell death. A well known and poorly understood condition in which programmed cell death malfunctions is cancer.

Turro and colleagues describe how ordinary brown spots that form on bananas as they transition from ripe to rotten, each show a glowing blue halo in UV, caused by the congregation of chlorophyll breakdown byproducts. Their research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Chlorophyll is the molecule that makes much of the life on earth possible. It is the integral ingredient that allows plants to take in a mixture of carbon dioxide, water and sunlight and convert it to oxygen, sugars and starches. These are the same sugars and starches we eat every time we fix a salad, and the same oxygen that we breathe......... Posted by: Erica      Read more         Source