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Tag: Nature (journal)

  • Ancestral variation guides future environmental adaptations

    Ancestral variation guides future environmental adaptations

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    Newswise — The speed of environmental change is very challenging for wild organisms. When exposed to a new environment individual plants and animals can potentially adjust their biology to better cope with new pressures they are exposed to – this is known as phenotypic plasticity.

    Plasticity is likely to be important in the early stages of colonising new places or when exposed to toxic substances in the environment. New research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, shows that early plasticity can influence the ability to subsequently evolve genetic adaptations to conquer new habitats.

    Sea campion, a coastal wildflower from the UK and Ireland has adapted to toxic, zinc rich industrial-era mining waste which kills most other plant species. The zinc-tolerant plants have evolved from zinc-sensitive, coastal populations separately in different places, several times.

    To understand the role of plasticity in rapid adaptation, a team of researchers lead by Bangor University conducted experiments on sea campion.

    As zinc-tolerance has evolved several times, this gave the researchers the opportunity to investigate whether ancestral plasticity made it more likely that the same genes would be used by different populations that were exposed to the same environment.

    By exposing the tolerant and sensitive plants to both benign and zinc contaminated environments and measuring changes in the expression of genes in the plant’s roots, the researchers were able to see how plasticity in the coastal ancestors has paved the way for adaptation to take place very quickly.

    Dr Alex Papadopulos, senior lecturer at Bangor University explained:

    “Sea campion usually grow on cliffs and shingle beaches, but mining opened up a new niche for them that other plants weren’t able to exploit. Our research has shown that some of the beneficial plasticity in the coastal plants has helped the mine plants to adapt so quickly.”

    Alex added,

    “Remarkably, if a gene responds to the new environment in a beneficial way in the ancestral plants, it is much more likely that that gene will be reused in all of the lineages that are independently adapting to the new environment. Phenotypic plasticity may make it more likely that there would be the same evolutionary outcome if the tape of life were replayed. If we understand the plastic responses that species have to environmental change, we may be better equipped to predict the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.”

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    Bangor University

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  • Volcano-like rupture could have caused magnetar slowdown

    Volcano-like rupture could have caused magnetar slowdown

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    Newswise — HOUSTON – (Jan. 27, 2023) – On Oct. 5, 2020, the rapidly rotating corpse of a long-dead star about 30,000 light years from Earth changed speeds. In a cosmic instant, its spinning slowed. And a few days later, it abruptly started emitting radio waves.

    Thanks to timely measurements from specialized orbiting telescopes, Rice University astrophysicist Matthew Baring and colleagues were able to test a new theory about a possible cause for the rare slowdown, or “anti-glitch,” of SGR 1935+2154, a highly magnetic type of neutron star known as a magnetar.

    In a study published this month in Nature Astronomy, Baring and co-authors used X-ray data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) and NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) to analyze the magnetar’s rotation. They showed the sudden slowdown could have been caused by a volcano-like rupture on the surface of the star that spewed a “wind” of massive particles into space. The research identified how such a wind could alter the star’s magnetic fields, seeding conditions that would be likely to switch on the radio emissions that were subsequently measured by China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).

    “People have speculated that neutron stars could have the equivalent of volcanoes on their surface,” said Baring, a professor of physics and astronomy. “Our findings suggest that could be the case and that on this occasion, the rupture was most likely at or near the star’s magnetic pole.”

    SGR 1935+2154 and other magnetars are a type of neutron star, the compact remains of a dead star that collapsed under intense gravity. About a dozen miles wide and as dense as the nucleus of an atom, magnetars rotate once every few seconds and feature the most intense magnetic fields in the universe.

    Magnetars emit intense radiation, including X-rays and occasional radio waves and gamma rays. Astronomers can decipher much about the unusual stars from those emissions. By counting pulses of X-rays, for example, physicists can calculate a magnetar’s rotational period, or the amount of time it takes to make one complete rotation, as the Earth does in one day. The rotational periods of magnetars typically change slowly, taking tens of thousands of years to slow by a single rotation per second.

    Glitches are abrupt increases in rotational speed that are most often caused by sudden shifts deep within the star, Baring said.

    “In most glitches, the pulsation period gets shorter, meaning the star spins a bit faster than it had been,” he said. “The textbook explanation is that over time, the outer, magnetized layers of the star slow down, but the inner, non-magnetized core does not. This leads to a buildup of stress at the boundary between these two regions, and a glitch signals a sudden transfer of rotational energy from the faster spinning core to the slower spinning crust.”

    Abrupt rotational slowdowns of magnetars are very rare. Astronomers have only recorded three of the “anti-glitches,” including the October 2020 event.

    While glitches can be routinely explained by changes inside the star, anti-glitches likely cannot. Baring’s theory is based on the assumption that they are caused by changes on the surface of the star and in the space around it. In the new paper, he and his co-authors constructed a volcano-driven wind model to explain the measured results from the October 2020 anti-glitch.

    Baring said the model uses only standard physics, specifically changes in angular momentum and conservation of energy, to account for the rotational slowdown.

    “A strong, massive particle wind emanating from the star for a few hours could establish the conditions for the drop in rotational period,” he said. “Our calculations showed such a wind would also have the power to change the geometry of the magnetic field outside the neutron star.”

    The rupture could be a volcano-like formation, because “the general properties of the X-ray pulsation likely require the wind to be launched from a localized region on the surface,” he said.

    “What makes the October 2020 event unique is that there was a fast radio burst from the magnetar just a few days after the anti-glitch, as well as a switch-on of pulsed, ephemeral radio emission shortly thereafter,” he said. “We’ve seen only a handful of transient pulsed radio magnetars, and this is the first time we’ve seen a radio switch-on of a magnetar almost contemporaneous with an anti-glitch.”

    Baring argued this timing coincidence suggests the anti-glitch and radio emissions were caused by the same event, and he’s hopeful that additional studies of the volcanism model will provide more answers.

    “The wind interpretation provides a path to understanding why the radio emission switches on,” he said. “It provides new insight we have not had before.”

    The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (1813649), NASA (80NSSC22K0397), Japan’s RIKEN Advanced Science Institute and Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

    -30-

    Peer-reviewed study:

    “’Magnetar spin-down glitch clearing the way for FRB-like bursts and a pulsed radio episode” | Nature Astronomy | DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01865-y

    Authors: G. Younes, M.G. Baring, A.K. Harding, T. Enoto, Z. Wadiasingh, A.B. Pearlman, W.C.G. Ho, S. Guillot, Z. Arzoumanian, A. Borghese, K. Gendreau, E. Göğüş, T. Güver, A.J. van der Horst, C.-P. Hu, G. K. Jaisawal, C. Kouveliotou, L. Lin and W. A. Majid

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01865-y

    Images:

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/01/0123_GLITCH-mb427-lg.jpg
    CAPTION: Matthew Baring is a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. (Photo by Henry Baring, Lovett Class of 2020)

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/01/0123_GLITCH-mag-lg.jpg
    CAPTION: An artist’s impression of a magnetar eruption. (Image courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

    Related stories:

    Fermi space telescope offers ‘best look ever’ at giant flare – Jan. 13, 2021
    https://news.rice.edu/news/2021/fermi-space-telescope-offers-best-look-ever-giant-flare

    Links:

    This release is available at: https://news.rice.edu/news/2023/volcano-rupture-could-have-caused-magnetar-slowdown

    Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

    Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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    Rice University

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  • Discovering Unique Microbes Made Easy with DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase)

    Discovering Unique Microbes Made Easy with DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase)

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    The Science

    Microbes are foundational for life on Earth. These tiny organisms play a major role in everything from transforming sunlight into the fundamental molecules of life. They help to produce much of the oxygen in our atmosphere. They even cycle nutrients between air and soil. Scientists are constantly finding interactions between microbes and plants, animals, and other macroscopic lifeforms. As genomic sequencing has advanced, researchers can investigate not only isolated microbes, but also whole communities of microorganisms – known as microbiomes – based on DNA found in an environment. The genomes extracted from these communities (metagenomic sequences) can identify the organisms that carry out biogeochemical processes, contribute to health or disease in human gastrointestinal microbiomes, or interact with plant roots in the rhizosphere. The Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) recently released a suite of features and a protocol for performing sophisticated microbiome analysis that can accelerate research in microbial ecology.

    The Impact

    The widespread adoption of DNA sequencing in microbiology has generated huge amounts of genomic data. Researchers need computational tools to recover high-quality genomes from environmental samples to understand which organisms live in an environment and how they might interact. The combination of usability, data, and bioinformatics tools in a public online resource makes KBase a uniquely powerful web platform for performing this task. These new features in KBase will allow biologists to obtain genomes from microbiome sequences with easy-to-use software powered by Department of Energy computational resources. This will reduce the time required to process sequencing data and characterize genomes. Scientists can use KBase to collaboratively analyze genomics data and build research communities to solve common problems in microbial ecology.

    Summary

    Obtaining genomes of uncultivated microbes directly from the environment using DNA sequencing is a recent advance that allows scientists to discover and characterize novel organisms. Sequencing the DNA of all the microbes in a given environment produces a “metagenome.” Performing genetic analysis of metagenomes has emerged as a way to explore microbial traits and behaviors and community interactions in an environmental context. Methods for obtaining metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) have varying degrees of success, depending on the techniques used. An increasing number of researchers generate microbiome sequences, but many do not have ready access to the expertise, tools, and computational resources necessary to extract, evaluate, and analyze their genomes.

    The KBase team added and updated several metagenome analysis tools, data types, and execution capabilities to provide researchers the tools that accelerate the discovery of microbial genomes and uncover the genetic potential of microbial communities. A recent paper in Nature Protocols presents a series of analysis steps, using KBase apps and data products for extracting high quality MAGs from metagenomes. These capabilities, including computing, data storage, and sharing of data and analyses, are provided free to the public via the KBase web platform. This protocol allows scientists to both generate putative genomes from organisms only found in the environment and analyze them with tools to understand who they are, what they are doing, who they are interacting with, and their role in the ecosystem.

     

    Funding

    KBase is funded by the Genomic Science Program in the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research.


    Journal Link: Nature Protocols

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Farming more seaweed to be food, feed and fuel

    Farming more seaweed to be food, feed and fuel

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    Newswise — A University of Queensland-led study has shown that expanding global seaweed farming could go a long way to addressing the planet’s food security, biodiversity loss and climate change challenges.

    PhD Candidate Scott Spillias, from UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Science, said seaweed offered a sustainable alternative to land-based agricultural expansion to meet the world’s growing need for food and materials.

    “Seaweed has great commercial and environmental potential as a nutritious food and a building block for commercial products including animal feed, plastics, fibres, diesel and ethanol,” Mr Spillias said.

    “Our study found that expanding seaweed farming could help reduce demand for terrestrial crops and reduce global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by up to 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year.”

    Researchers mapped the potential of farming more of the 34 commercially important seaweed species using the Global Biosphere Management Model.

    They estimated the environmental benefits of a range of scenarios based on land-use changes, GHG emissions, water and fertiliser use, and projected changes in species presence by 2050.

    “In one scenario where we substituted 10 per cent of human diets globally with seaweed products, the development of 110 million hectares of land for farming could be prevented,” Mr Spillias said.

    “We also identified millions of available hectares of ocean within global exclusive economic zones* (EEZs), where farming could be developed.

    “The largest share of suitable ocean was in the Indonesian EEZ, where up to 114 million hectares is estimated to be suitable for seaweed farming.

    “The Australian EEZ also shows great potential and species diversity, with at least 22 commercially viable species and an estimated 75 million hectares of ocean being suitable.”

    Mr Spillias said many native species of seaweed in Australian waters had not yet been studied from a commercial production perspective.

    “The way I like to look at this is to think about ancestral versions of everyday crops – like corn and wheat – which were uninspiring, weedy things,” he said.

    “Through thousands of years of breeding we have developed the staple crops that underpin modern societies and seaweed could very well hold similar potential in the future.”

    UQ study collaborator Professor Eve McDonald-Madden said the seaweed solution would have to be carried out with care, to avoid displacing problems from the land to the ocean.

    “Our study points out what could be done to address some of the mounting problems of global sustainability facing us, but it can’t be implemented without exercising extreme caution,” she said.

    This research was published in Nature Sustainability.

    UQ acknowledges the collaborative efforts of researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, CSIRO and the University of Tasmania.

    *An area of the sea in which a sovereign state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.

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    University of Queensland

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  • Study Links Key Activating Enzymes to Specific Sites on Proteins in Cells

    Study Links Key Activating Enzymes to Specific Sites on Proteins in Cells

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    RESEARCH SUMMARY

    Study Title: An atlas of substrate specificities for the human serine/threonine kinome

    Publication: Nature (Online) January 11, 2023   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05575-3

    Dana-Farber Cancer Institute author: Lewis C. Cantley, PhD

    Summary:

    Thousands of proteins in a human cell are regulated by phosphorylation — the addition of small chemical groups to the proteins’ amino acids by enzymes called protein kinases. This process is known as phosphorylation. Abnormal protein phosphorylation has been implicated in a number of diseases, notably cancer and degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Some 90,000 sites of phosphorylation on serine and threonine amino acids have been identified, but it hasn’t been known which of more than 300 protein serine or threonine kinases are responsible. In a new study, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute purified and characterized the substrate specificity of essentially all the human protein-serine/threonine kinases and developed a computational method to identify the kinases capable of phosphorylating every known phosphorylation site in the human serine/threonine proteome.

    Impact:

    Several thousand sites of serine and threonine phosphorylation have been associated with human diseases, including cancers and diabetes. The new study provides a mechanism for rapidly identifying the protein kinase that is driving the abnormal behavior of individual cancers.  Since many drugs for inhibiting protein kinases are already approved or in clinical trials, this information can rapidly lead to a new therapy that can be individualized to the patient.

    Funding:

    The research was supported by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and grants from the National Institutes of Health; the Cancer Research UK and Brain Tumor Charity; the Charles and Marjorie Holloway Foundation, and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine.

     

     

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    Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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  • Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry

    Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry

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    Newswise — If you want to build a habitable planet, ices are a vital ingredient because they are the main source of several key elements — namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur (referred to here as CHONS). These elements are important ingredients in both planetary atmospheres and molecules like sugars, alcohols, and simple amino acids.

    An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud. In addition to simple ices like water, the team was able to identify frozen forms of a wide range of molecules, from carbonyl sulfide, ammonia, and methane, to the simplest complex organic molecule, methanol. (The researchers considered organic molecules to be complex when having six or more atoms.) This is the most comprehensive census to date of the icy ingredients available to make future generations of stars and planets, before they are heated during the formation of young stars.

    “Our results provide insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the formation of ice on the interstellar dust grains that will grow into the centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form in disks,” said Melissa McClure, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, who is the principal investigator of the observing program and lead author of the paper describing this result. “These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life.”

    In addition to the identified molecules, the team found evidence for molecules more complex than methanol, and, although they didn’t definitively attribute these signals to specific molecules, this proves for the first time that complex molecules form in the icy depths of molecular clouds before stars are born.

    “Our identification of complex organic molecules, like methanol and potentially ethanol, also suggests that the many star and planetary systems developing in this particular cloud will inherit molecules in a fairly advanced chemical state,” added Will Rocha, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory who contributed to this discovery. “This could mean that the presence of precursors to prebiotic molecules in planetary systems is a common result of star formation, rather than a unique feature of our own solar system.”
     
    By detecting the sulfur-bearing ice carbonyl sulfide, the researchers were able to estimate the amount of sulfur embedded in icy pre-stellar dust grains for the first time. While the amount measured is larger than previously observed, it is still less than the total amount expected to be present in this cloud, based on its density. This is true for the other CHONS elements as well. A key challenge for astronomers is understanding where these elements are hiding: in ices, soot-like materials, or rocks. The amount of CHONS in each type of material determines how much of these elements end up in exoplanet atmospheres and how much in their interiors.
     
    “The fact that we haven’t seen all of the CHONS that we expect may indicate that they are locked up in more rocky or sooty materials that we cannot measure,” explained McClure. “This could allow a greater diversity in the bulk composition of terrestrial planets.”

    Chemical characterization of the ices was accomplished by studying how starlight from beyond the molecular cloud was absorbed by icy molecules within the cloud at specific infrared wavelengths visible to Webb. This process leaves behind chemical fingerprints known as absorption lines which can be compared with laboratory data to identify which ices are present in the molecular cloud. In this study, the team targeted ices buried in a particularly cold, dense, and difficult-to-investigate region of the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud, a region roughly 500 light-years from Earth which is currently in the process of forming dozens of young stars.
     
    “We simply couldn’t have observed these ices without Webb,” elaborated Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who was involved in this research. “The ices show up as dips against a continuum of background starlight. In regions that are this cold and dense, much of the light from the background star is blocked, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity was necessary to detect the starlight and therefore identify the ices in the molecular cloud.”
     
    This research forms part of the Ice Age project, one of Webb’s 13 Early Release Science programs. These observations are designed to showcase Webb’s observing capabilities and to allow the astronomical community to learn how to get the best from its instruments. The Ice Age team has already planned further observations, and hopes to trace out the journey of ices from their formation through to the assemblage of icy comets.
     
    “This is just the first in a series of spectral snapshots that we will obtain to see how the ices evolve from their initial synthesis to the comet-forming regions of protoplanetary disks,” concluded McClure. “This will tell us which mixture of ices — and therefore which elements — can eventually be delivered to the surfaces of terrestrial exoplanets or incorporated into the atmospheres of giant gas or ice planets.”

    These results were published in the Jan. 23 issue of Nature Astronomy.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

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    Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

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  • Researchers find that traded species have distinctive life histories with extended reproductive lifecycles

    Researchers find that traded species have distinctive life histories with extended reproductive lifecycles

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    Newswise — A new study by researchers from Durham University, UK, Queen’s University Belfast, UK, University of Extremadura, Spain and Swansea University, UK have revealed that vertebrate species involved in the live wildlife trade have distinctive life history traits, biological characteristics that determine the frequency and timing of reproduction.

    Researchers discovered that traded species produce large numbers of offspring across long reproductive lifespans, an unusual profile that is likely financially advantageous for trades involving captive breeding such as the pet, food and fur/skin trades.

    Traded species that have also been introduced into non-native areas have a more extreme version of this same life history profile, suggesting that species most likely to become problematic invaders are at a heightened risk of trade and release.

    The study suggests that humans favour species with high reproductive output for trade and release, which are the very species likely to become problematic invaders in future.

    Researchers point out that life history traits are therefore potentially useful for predicting future invasions.

    Full study results have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

    Reflecting on the study results, first author Dr Sally Street of Durham University, said: “Invasive species can cause huge environmental problems but are challenging to manage once established. This means it is really important to try to identify characteristics that increase the risk of species passing through the earliest stages of the invasion pathway, transportation and introduction, which have been relatively understudied.

    “We show that not only are life history traits useful for identifying species at risk of trade, introduction and ultimately invasion, human activities unfortunately seem to favour trade in species that are most likely to succeed if released. We hope our study will contribute to the management and mitigation of future invasions and the damage they can cause to biodiversity.”

    Co-author of the study, Dr Isabella Capellini of Queen’s University Belfast, said: “The rate of traded species is rapidly increasing worldwide; some of these species are accidentally or deliberately introduced and may become problematic invaders damaging native ecosystems. Given the high costs of managing alien invasive species, preventing the release of potentially invasive species may help protect native biodiversity.

    “To help achieve this, in our study we have also identified some vertebrate species at risk of becoming future invaders should they be traded and recommend such species to be monitored and banned from trade.”

    The researchers studied trade data from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

    They analysed the role of life history traits in the probability that mammals, reptiles and amphibians are involved in the wildlife trade and that these species have been released outside of their native ranges.

    Invasive species can cause huge environmental problems and monetary costs. Once established, invasive populations can be difficult or impossible to manage.

    Therefore, understanding the early stages of invasion and predicting future invasions is crucial to minimising this harm.

    The researchers call for increased regulation of the live wildlife trade that is likely crucial for preventing future invasions.

    ENDS

     

     

    Source

    “Human activities favour prolific life histories in both traded and introduced vertebrates”, (2023), S. Street, J. Gutierrez, W. Allen and I. Capellini, Nature Communications.

    Full paper is available online: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35765-6

    Graphics

    Associated images are available via the following link: https://dmscdn.vuelio.co.uk/publicitem/3e635e6d-e204-4145-acfa-e373c2368f2e

    Useful Web Links 

    Dr Sally Street staff profile: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/sally-e-street/

    Dr Isabella Capellini staff profile: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/isabella-capellini

    Department of Anthropology: https://www.durham.ac.uk/anthropology/

    Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre: https://www.durham.ac.uk/dcerc/

    About Queen’s University Belfast

    Queen’s University Belfast is one of the top 200 universities in the world. A member of the Russell Group UK’s 24 leading research-intensive universities, Queen’s is an international centre of research and education, with a student-centred ethos.

    Queen’s is ranked 17th in the world for international outlook (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022), 1st in the UK for entrepreneurial impact (Octopus Ventures, 2020) and 24th in the UK for Research Power (REF 2021/ Times Higher Education). Our research shapes worlds and continues to make a difference to lives and livelihoods, with 88% assessed at world leading or internationally excellent.

    The university is a lead partner in the Belfast Region City Deal which will unlock £1 billion of transformative co-investment, bringing forward projects in advanced manufacturing, clinical research and secure, connected digital technologies.

    About Durham University

    Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.

    We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.

    We conduct boundary-breaking research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2023).

    We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).

    For more information about Durham University visit: www.durham.ac.uk/about/

    END OF MEDIA RELEASE – issued by Durham University Communications Office

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  • We need to learn to live with less steel

    We need to learn to live with less steel

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    Newswise — Steel is one of the most important materials in the world, integral to the cars we drive, the buildings we inhabit, and the infrastructure that allows us to travel from place to place. Steel is also responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, 45 countries made a commitment to pursue near-zero-emission steel in the next decade. But how possible is it to produce the steel we need in society with zero emissions?

    A new study focused on the Japanese steel industry shows that if we are truly committed to reaching zero emissions, we must be prepared for a scenario where the amount of steel we can produce is lower. Japan has set a target for a 46% reduction in emissions from steel by 2030, and zero emissions by 2050. So far, the roadmap for achieving this relies heavily on future innovations in technology. Hope is held out for developments in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen-based technologies.

    In the study, Dr. Takuma Watari, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan, currently working with the University of Cambridge, argues that there is no silver bullet. He says that current plans to cut carbon emissions underestimate how difficult it will be to develop CCS and hydrogen technologies and deploy them widely: “These technologies still face serious technical, economic, and social challenges, and have yet to be implemented at scale. And importantly, it is highly uncertain whether there will be sufficient non-emitting electricity to use these technologies.” We need to confront the possibility that technological innovations might not be ready in time to allow us to maintain current levels of steel production whilst cutting emissions to zero.

    The research involved mapping the current flows of steel in Japan’s industry and using a model to explore how the industry might change if a strict carbon budget were applied in future. Dr. Watari explains that with current practice, the quantity and quality of steel produced would dramatically decrease under a zero-emission carbon budget. This is because of a lack of resources and the practice of downcycling, in which scraps of steel containing impurities are used to make new products. It is difficult to remove these impurities, so the new products have different quality and functionality from the original steel.

    According to Dr. Watari, “zero-emission steel production is possible by 2050, but in limited quantity and quality compared to current total production. This is due to the limited availability of zero-emission compatible resources and downcycling practices of scrap steel.”

    The research indicates that with a carbon budget of zero emissions, the production of steel goods would be dramatically restricted compared to today, reaching about half the current levels at best. In this case, higher-quality steel production (e.g., sheet steel) would be especially hard hit.

    The implication is clear. It is not enough to rely on a technological silver bullet materialising to transform the supply of steel. We also need to look seriously at strategies to reduce demand by shifting our culture of steel use and improving our material efficiency. We also need to pursue upcycling to produce high-grade steel from scrap steel.

    This will require collaboration from those who use steel as well as those who produce it. Steel products could be made more resource efficient if they are designed to last longer or to be lightweight. Once steel products reach the end of their life, upcycling could be achieved through advanced sorting and shredding to remove impurities from scrap steel. As a society, Japan may also have to become less steel-dependent and shift to a model of ‘service use’ rather than ownership of products. Unlike today, when steel is abundant and cheap, a net-zero future will require us to use scarcer, more expensive steel resources with greater efficiency.

    Dr. Watari concludes that we do need to invest in technological innovations, but we cannot simply wait for them to appear. Instead, steel users need to prepare for a world where there is less steel available: “We do not deny the need to invest in innovative production technologies. Rather, what we want to highlight is that we should look for far more strategic options, instead of simply relying on silver bullet production technologies. Placing material efficiency and upcycling at the heart of decarbonisation plans can reduce the over-reliance on innovative production technologies and prepare for the risk that these technologies may not scale up sufficiently in time.”

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    National Institute for Environmental Studies

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  • Physicists observe global spin alignment in heavy-ion collisions

    Physicists observe global spin alignment in heavy-ion collisions

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    Newswise — Physicists from the STAR Collaboration have reported the first observation of a global spin alignment signal in heavy-ion collisions. Published in Nature on Jan. 18, the study provides a potential new avenue for understanding the strong interaction at work at the sub-nucleon level. 

    The STAR (Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) Experiment is based at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The STAR Collaboration comprises 717 collaborators from 71 institutions in 14 countries.  

    This study was performed by researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fudan University, BNL, Kent State University, and the University of Illinois Chicago. 

    As its name implies, the strong force is the strongest of the four fundamental forces in nature. It’s what holds together the building blocks of atoms—the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei, as well as their inner building blocks, quarks and gluons. 

    At RHIC, heavy ions (e.g., gold nuclei) were accelerated to close to the speed of light and collided from opposite directions. The collisions “melted” the boundaries of individual protons and neutrons, setting free the quarks and gluons normally confined within to create a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). 

    In collisions that are not exactly head-on, the colliding system generates a very large orbital angular momentum (OAM). Part of the OAM is transferred to the preferential alignment of the spin of particles along the OAM direction. Since the STAR detector couldn’t directly measure the spin direction, the physicists measured the spin alignment of these particles by tracking the distribution of their decay products relative to the direction perpendicular to the reaction plane of the colliding nuclei. 

    In this study, the researchers measured the spin alignment of the phi and the K*0 mesons. For these particles, there are three possible orientations along the OAM. If no special physics mechanism presents, the probability of each of these three states should be equal to one-third. 

    The researchers found that there was no preference for the K*0 mesons. However, the phi mesons showed a strong signal of global spin alignment, which increased with decreasing collision energy, clearly indicating that they prefer one state over the other two. It is the first time ever that such an alignment has been observed in heavy-ion collisions. 

    The surprising spin-alignment pattern and magnitude for phi mesons cannot be explained by conventional mechanisms, such as the magnetic field strength, vorticity or fragmentation of polarized quarks. 

    Theorists recently came up with the idea that local fluctuations in the strong force within the quark-gluon plasma could be driving the phi mesons’ apparent spin alignment preference. This explanation is still under debate and further experimental verification is needed. This connection, if fully established, will open a potential new avenue for studying the behavior of strong force fields. 

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  • Getting under your skin for better health

    Getting under your skin for better health

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    Newswise — The next frontier of continuous health monitoring could be skin deep.

    Biomedical engineers at the University of Cincinnati say interstitial fluid, the watery fluid found between and around cells, tissues or organs in the body, could provide an excellent medium for early disease diagnosis or long-term health monitoring.

    In a paper published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, they outlined the potential advantages and technological challenges of using interstitial fluid.

    “Why we see it as a valuable diagnostic fluid is continuous access. With blood, you can’t easily take continuous readings,” said UC doctoral graduate Mark Friedel, co-lead author of the study.

    “Can you imagine going about your day with a needle stuck in your vein all day? So we need other tools.”

    Researchers are looking for alternatives to monitor a person’s health and wellness. Sweat is a good medium for measuring certain things like stress or anxiety because it contains hormones such as cortisol. But the body is stingy with other chemicals that are not so easily released in sweat, Friedel said.

    “Sweat glands are big filters that don’t allow everything to pass through,” he said. “So more than half of the things we want to monitor have no access to sweat at all.”

    Blood is the gold standard for health monitoring. But people also have liters of interstitial fluid that make up as much as 15% of their body weight.

    “The key feature of blood that makes it so advantageous is we understand blood really well,” Friedel said. “If you have something in your blood, we know what will happen to your heart or your liver,” he said.

    Researchers said interstitial fluid contains many of the same chemicals in the same proportions as blood, offering a potential alternative to costly and time-consuming lab work.

    The study outlined the various ways doctors can sample interstitial fluid, from applying suction to the skin to deploying microdialysis.

    “As biomedical engineers, one of our greatest goals is to help people better manage their health by making diagnostics more accessible,” said co-lead author Ian Thompson at Stanford University.

    “A big barrier to this accessibility is that most current diagnostics rely on blood sampling, which can be painful and requires trained personnel to perform. Thus, in recent years there has been growing interest in using interstitial fluid just under the skin as a diagnostic sample that is more accessible and less painful to extract.”

    In UC College of Engineering and Applied Science professor Jason Heikenfeld’s Novel Devices Lab, students are developing sensors to measure hormones and other chemicals in interstitial fluid. They use microneedles less than 1 millimeter in length that pierce the skin through a tiny patch.

    “If you had a splinter, it probably went deeper into your skin than our microneedles,” Friedel said. “They’re generally painless. I don’t feel it most of the time. The most uncomfortable part is removing the tape that holds the device down.”

    But even if you don’t know it’s there, your body does, Friedel said. And this minute reaction can affect the test results.

    “There’s a Schrödinger’s observer effect with interstitial fluid. Any time you try to collect and measure it, you inherently change the fluid itself,” Friedel said. “If you stick a needle in your skin, your body becomes inflamed and then your [sample] levels change. For continuous biomonitoring, we want to know those concentrations as they are when you’re not being poked with a tiny needle.

    “That’s why it’s such a challenging fluid that hasn’t been used outside of diabetes monitoring.”

    Still, researchers say, interstitial fluid holds enormous promise for monitoring health through wearable technology. This could help doctors track the efficacy of drugs to ensure proper dosage or provide early diagnosis of illness by monitoring the immune system.

    But Friedel said there is still a lot to learn.

    “We’re trying to unlock the box and read the instructions inside to understand what’s in interstitial fluid and what the potentials are for exploiting it,” he said.

    Friedel and Thompson worked with co-author Heikenfeld, UC’s James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy, the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and Southeast Missouri State University.

    The study was funded through grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

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  • Incorporation of water molecules into layered materials impacts ion storage capability

    Incorporation of water molecules into layered materials impacts ion storage capability

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    Newswise — Investigating the interplay between the structure of water molecules that have been incorporated into layered materials such as clays and the configuration of ions in such materials has long proved a great experimental challenge. But researchers have now used a technique elsewhere commonly used to measure extremely tiny masses and molecular interactions at the nano level to observe these interactions for the first time.

    Their research was published in Nature Communications on Oct. 28, 2022.

    Many materials take a layered form at the microscopic or nano-scale. When dry, clays for example resemble a series of sheets stacked upon each other. When such layered materials encounter water however, that water can be confined and integrated into the gaps or holes—or, more accurately, the ‘pores’—between layers.

    Such ‘hydration’ can also occur when water molecules or their constituent elements, notably a hydroxide ion (a negatively charged ion combining a single oxygen and single hydrogen atom) are integrated into the crystalline structure of the material. This type of material, a ‘hydrate’, is not necessarily ‘wet’ even though water is now part of it. Hydration can also substantially change the original material’s structure and properties.

    In this ‘nanoconfinement’, the hydration structures—how water molecules or their constituent elements arrange themselves—determine the ability of the original material to store ions (positively or negatively charged atoms or groups of atoms).

    This storage of water or charge means that such layered materials, from conventional clays to layered metal oxides—and, crucially, their interactions with water—have widespread applications, from water purification to energy storage.

    However, studying the interplay between this hydration structure and the configuration of ions in the ion storage mechanism of such layered materials has proven to be a great challenge. And efforts at analyzing how these hydration structures change over the course of any movement of these ions (‘ion transport’) are even more difficult.

    Recent research has shown that such water structures and interactions with the layered materials play an important role in giving the latter their high ion-storage capacities, all of which in turn depends upon how flexible the layers that host the water are. In the space between layers, any pores that are not filled with ions get filled with water molecules instead, helping to stabilize the layered structure.

    “Put another way, the water structures are sensitive to how the interlayer ions are structured,” said Katsuya Teshima, corresponding author of the study and a materials chemist with the Research Initiative for Supra-Materials at Shinshu University. “And while this ion configuration in many different crystal structures controls how many ions can be stored, such configurations until now had rarely been systematically investigated.”

    So Teshima’s group looked to ‘quartz crystal microbalance with energy dissipation monitoring’ (QCM-D) to assist with their theoretical calculations. QCM-D is essentially an instrument that works like a balance scale that can measure extremely tiny masses and molecular interactions at the nano level. The technique can also measure tiny changes in energy loss.

    The researchers used QCM-D to demonstrate for the first time that the change in the structure of water molecules confined in the nano-space of layered materials can be experimentally observed.

    They did this by measuring the “hardness” of the materials. They investigated the layered double hydroxides (LDHs) of a class of negatively charged clay. They found that the hydration structures were associated with the hardening of the LDHs when any ion exchange reaction happens (a swapping of one kind of ion with a different type of ion but with the same change).

    “In other words, any change in ion interaction originates with the change in the hydration structure that occurs when ions are incorporated into the nano-space,” added Tomohito Sudare, a collaborator on the study now with the University of Tokyo.

    In addition, the researchers found that the hydration structure is highly dependent on the charge density (the amount of charge per unit of volume) of the layered material. This in turn is largely what governs the ion storage capacity.

    The researchers now hope to apply these measurement methods together with the knowledge of the hydration structure of ions to devise new techniques for improving the ion-storage capability of layered materials, potentially opening new avenues for ion separation and sustainable energy storage.

    ###

     

    About Shinshu University:

    Shinshu University is a national university founded in 1949 located nestling under the Japanese Alps in Nagano known for its stunning natural landscapes. Our motto, “Powered by Nature – strengthening our network with society and applying nature to create innovative solutions for a better tomorrow” reflects the mission of fostering promising creative professionals and deepening the collaborative relationship with local communities, which leads up to our contribution to regional development by innovation in various fields. We’re working on providing solutions for building sustainable society through interdisciplinary research fields: material science (carbon, fiber and composites), biomedical science (for intractable diseases and preventive medicine) and mountain science, and aiming to boost research and innovation capability through collaborative projects with distinguished researchers from the world. For more information visit our website or follow us on Twitter @ShinshuUni for our latest news.

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  • Vertical electrochemical transistor pushes wearable electronics forward

    Vertical electrochemical transistor pushes wearable electronics forward

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    Newswise — A transdisciplinary Northwestern University research team has developed a revolutionary transistor that is expected be ideal for lightweight, flexible, high-performance bioelectronics.

    The electrochemical transistor is compatible with blood and water and can amplify important signals, making it especially useful for biomedical sensing. Such a transistor could enable wearable devices for onsite signal processing, right at the biology-device interface. Potential applications include measuring heartbeat and levels of sodium and potassium in blood as well as eye motion for studying sleep disorders.

    “All modern electronics use transistors, which rapidly turn current on and off,” said Tobin J. Marks, a co-corresponding author of the study. “Here we use chemistry to enhance the switching. Our electrochemical transistor takes performance to a totally new level. You have all the properties of a conventional transistor but far higher transconductance (a measure of the amplification it can deliver), ultra-stable cycling of the switching properties, a small footprint that can enable high density integration, and easy, low-cost fabrication.”

    Marks is a world leader in the fields of materials science and organic electronics. He is the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalytic Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of materials science and engineering and chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering.

    The vertical electrochemical transistor is based on a new kind of electronic polymer and a vertical, instead of planar, architecture. It conducts both electricity and ions and is stable in air. The design and synthesis of new materials and the transistor’s fabrication and characterization required the collaborative expertise of chemists, materials scientists and biomedical engineers.

    Marks led the research team along with Antonio Facchetti, research professor of chemistry at Weinberg; Wei Huang, now a professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China; and Jonathan Rivnay, professor of biomedical engineering at the McCormick School.

    “This exciting new type of transistor allows us to speak the language of both biological systems, which often communicate via ionic signaling, and electronic systems, which communicate with electrons,” Rivnay said. “The ability of the transistors to work very efficiently as ‘mixed conductors’ makes them attractive for bioelectronic diagnostics and therapies.”

    This study detailing the efficient electrochemical transistor and an accompanying News & Views article were published this week by the journal Nature.

    “With their vertical architecture, our electrochemical transistors can be stacked one on top of another,” Facchetti said. “Thus, we can make very dense electrochemical complementary circuits, which is impossible for the conventional planar electrochemical transistors.”

    To make more reliable and powerful electronic circuits, two types of transistors are needed: p-type transistors that carry positive charges and n-type transistors that carry negative charges. These types of circuits are called complementary circuits. The challenge researchers have faced in the past is that n-type transistors are difficult to build and are typically unstable.

    This is the first work to demonstrate electrochemical transistors with similar and very high performance for both types (p+n) electrochemical transistors. This resulted in the fabrication of very efficient electrochemical complementary circuits. 

    The study is entitled “Vertical organic electrochemical transistors for complementary circuits.” Huang, Jianhua Chen and Yao Yao are co-first authors.

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    Northwestern University

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  • Turning a poison into food

    Turning a poison into food

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    Newswise — Methanogens are microorganisms that produce methane when little or no oxygen is present in their surroundings. Their methane production – for example in the digestive tract of ruminants – is relevant for global carbon cycling, as methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, but can also be used as an energy source to heat our houses.

    A toxic base for growth

    The object of the study now published in Nature Chemical Biology are two marine heat-loving methanogens: Methanothermococcus thermolithotrophicus (lives in geothermally heated sediments at around 65 °C) and Methanocaldococcus jannaschii (prefers deep-sea volcanos with around 85 °C). They obtain their cellular energy by producing methane and receive sulfur for growth in form of sulfide, that is present in their environments.  While sulfide is a poison for most organisms, it is essential for methanogens and they can tolerate even high concentrations of it. However, their Achilles’ heel is the toxic and reactive sulfur compound sulfite, which destroys the enzyme needed to make methane. In their environments, both investigated organisms are occasionally exposed to sulfite, for example, when oxygen enters and reacts with the reduced sulfide. Its partial oxidation results in the formation of sulfite, and thus the methanogens need to protect themselves. But how can they do this?

    A molecular snapshot of the process

    Marion Jespersen and Tristan Wagner from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, together with Antonio Pierik from the University of Kaiserslautern, now provide a snapshot of the enzyme detoxifying the sulfite. This butterfly-shaped enzyme ist known as the F420-dependent sulfite reductase or Fsr. It is capable of turning sulfite into sulfide – a safe source of sulfur that the methanogens require for growth. In the current study, Jespersen and her colleagues describe how the enzyme works. “The enzyme traps the sulfite and directly reduces it to sulfide, which can be incorporated, for example, into amino acids”, Jespersen explains (see figure). “As a result, the methanogen doesn’t get poisoned and even uses the product as its sulfur source. They turn poison into food!”

    It sounds simple. But in fact, Jespersen and her colleagues found that they were dealing with a fascinating and complicated overlap. “There are two ways of sulfite reduction: dissimilatory and assimilatory”, Jespersen explains. “The organism under study uses an enzyme that is built like a dissimilatory one, but it uses an assimilatory mechanism. It combines the best of both worlds, one could say, at least for its living conditions.”

    It is assumed that the enzymes from both the dissimilatory and the assimilatory pathway have evolved from one common ancestor. “Sulfite reductases are ancient enzymes that have a major impact on the global sulfur and carbon cycles”, adds Tristan Wagner, head of the Max Planck Research Group Microbial Metabolism at the Max Planck Institute in Bremen. “Our enzyme, the Fsr, is probably a snapshot of this ancient primordial enzyme, an exciting look back in evolution.”

    Biotechnological applications in view

    The Fsr not only opens up evolutionary implications but also allows us to better understand the fascinating world of marine microbes. Methanogens that can grow only on sulfite circumvent the need to use the dangerous sulfide, their usual sulfur substrate. “This opens opportunities for safer biotechnological applications to study these important microorganisms. An optimal solution would be to find a methanogen that reduces sulfate, which is cheap, abundant, and a completely safe sulfur source”, says Wagner. In fact, this methanogen already exists, it is Methanothermococcus thermolithotrophicus. The researchers hypothesized that Fsr orchestrates the last reaction of this sulfate reduction pathway, because one of its intermediates would be sulfite. “Our next challenge is to understand how it can transform sulfate to sulfite, to get a complete picture of the capabilities of these miracle microbes.”

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    Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

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  • Beyond Mendel: FinnGen study sheds new light on well-established theories of genetic inheritance

    Beyond Mendel: FinnGen study sheds new light on well-established theories of genetic inheritance

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    Newswise — A large-scale biobank-based study performed in Finland has discovered several new disease genes as well as new insights on how known genetic factors affect disease. The study highlights an underappreciated complexity in the dosage effects of genetic variants.

    An international team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Helsinki and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard examined the effects of 44,370 genetic variants on more than 2000 diseases in almost 177,000 Finnish biobank participants. The study focused on so-called coding genetic variants, i.e. variants that are known to change the protein product of the gene. 

    The results of the study, published in Nature on January 18, 2023, convey that the reality of genetic inheritance is more complex than the Mendelian inheritance laws taught in biology classes all around the world.

    What is special about the study, apart from the size of the data set, is that the team  searched at scale specifically for diseases that one only gets if one inherited a dysfunctional genetic variant from both parents (recessive inheritance). 

    “Researchers usually only search for additive effects when they try to find common genetic variants that influence disease risk. It is more challenging to identify recessively inherited effects on diseases as you need very large sample sizes to find the rare occasions where individuals have two dysfunctional variants”, explains Dr Henrike Heyne, first author of the study from the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM, University of Helsinki (now group leader at HPI, Germany). 

    However, the extensive FinnGen study sample, collected from Finland, offers an ideal setting for such studies. The Finnish population has experienced several historical events that have led to a reduction of the population size and also been relatively isolated from other European populations. For this reason, a subset of dysfunctional and therefore potentially disease-causing genetic variants are present at higher frequencies, making the search for new rare disease associations of recessive inheritance easier.

    Acknowledging this benefit, the researchers performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on 2,444 diseases derived from national healthcare registries, testing both additive and recessive inheritance models. 

    As a result, the team was able to detect known and novel recessive associations across a broad spectrum of traits such as retinal dystrophy, adult-onset cataract, hearing loss and female infertility that would have been missed with the traditional additive model.

    “Our study showed that the search for recessive effects in genome-wide association studies can be worthwhile, especially if somewhat rarer genetic variants are included, as is the case in the FinnGen study”, says Henrike Heyne. 

    In addition, the dataset has provided a new perspective on the inheritance of known disease variants. For rare disease genes, inheritance is traditionally almost exclusively described as recessive or dominant. The study shows, however, that the reality is somewhat more diverse. 

    The researchers found, for example, that some variants that are known to cause genetic disease with recessive inheritance also have some attenuated effects when only one disease-causing variant is present, which other studies confirm. They also find genetic variants with beneficial effects (protecting from heart arrhythmia or protecting from hypertension) in genes that are associated with severe disease. 

    These results demonstrate that the so-called Mendelian laws based on the experiments with peas done in 1856, in a monastery garden near Brno (today Czech Republic) by the monk Gregor Mendel do not fully capture all aspects of inheritance of rare diseases.

    “With the increased usage of carrier screening in the general population, whereby many individuals are learning that they are carriers for multiple pathogenic variants, understanding which of those variants may have mild health effects could be incredibly important for these individuals”, says Heidi Rehm, an author on the paper and Professor of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Medical Director of the Broad Clinical Lab. 

    The study could contribute to the integration of the traditionally separate but more and more overlapping scientific fields that study either the effect of rare genetic variants on rare disease or the effect of common genetic variants on common disease. The results demonstrate how large biobank studies, particularly in founder populations such as Finland, can broaden our understanding of the sometimes more complex dosage effects of genetic variants on disease.

    “This study highlights the importance of integrating the large-scale biobank approach with detailed insights that emerge from rare disease studies. A more complete understanding of the role of genetic variation in each gene only emerges when we take account of all of the perspectives and insights from diverse study designs”, says Mark Daly, senior author on the paper and Director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) and faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute.

    Original publication: Mono- and biallelic variant effects on disease at biobank scale. H. O. Heyne, J. Karjalainen, K. J. Karczewski, S. M. Lemmelä, W. Zhou, FinnGen, A. S. Havulinna, M. Kurki, H. L. Rehm, A. Palotie, M. J. Daly. Nature 2023, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05420-7. 

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    University of Helsinki

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  • Vaccination gets a boost when people know their neighbors are doing it

    Vaccination gets a boost when people know their neighbors are doing it

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    Newswise — AUSTIN, Texas — Just as a highly transmissible variant prompts officials to extend COVID-19 emergency status, one of the largest surveys ever conducted shows people are more willing to get vaccinated when health workers reveal how many others are doing so.

    The massive global survey spawned two papers — one recently published in Nature Human Behavior and another in Nature Communications—showing people greatly underestimate vaccine uptake — both worldwide and in their own communities. “Our study shows that accurate information about what most other people are doing can substantially increase intentions to accept a COVID-19 vaccine,” says Avinash Collis, co-author and assistant professor of information, risk, and operations management at The University of Texas McCombs School of Business.

    Key Takeaways:

    • Public health campaigns are more convincing when they focus on the percentage of people receiving vaccinations, as opposed to the dangers of refusing vaccination.
    • People all over the world severely underestimate vaccine uptake in their communities, in part because of wide coverage of vaccine hesitancy.
    • “But once they know that the majority has already received or are going to get the vaccine, they feel safer to get the vaccine,” says Collis.
    • The survey also found local health workers are the most trusted source of COVID-19 information, but in most countries, they don’t serve as public information sources. Politicians do — and they are the least trusted.
    • Facebook provided the survey sample and ads, yielding a record-setting 2 million responses in 67 countries.
    • The survey is a joint effort of The University of Texas at Austin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, the World Health Organization, Johns Hopkins University and Meta.
    • Other academics are now using this data in their own vaccination research — including studies on vaccination campaigns and political trust in Latin America, understanding drivers of vaccine hesitancy in South Asia, and promoting hand-washing in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, more than 40 peer reviewed papers have been published by other research teams using this data.

    Read the McCombs Big Ideas story.

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    University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

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  • Climate Change Likely to Uproot More Amazon Trees

    Climate Change Likely to Uproot More Amazon Trees

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    Newswise — Tropical forests are crucial for sucking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But they’re also subject to intense storms that can cause “windthrow” – the uprooting or breaking of trees. These downed trees decompose, potentially turning a forest from a carbon sink into a carbon source.

    A new study finds that more extreme thunderstorms from climate change will likely cause a greater number of large windthrow events in the Amazon rainforest. This is one of the few ways that researchers have developed a link between storm conditions in the atmosphere and forest mortality on land, helping fill a major gap in models.

    “Building this link between atmospheric dynamics and damage at the surface is very important across the board,” said Jeff Chambers, a senior faculty scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and director of the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE)-Tropics project, which performed the research. “It’s not just for the tropics. It’s high-latitude, low-latitude, temperate-latitude, here in the U.S.”

    Researchers found that the Amazon will likely experience 43% more large blowdown events (of 25,000 square meters or more) by the end of the century. The area of the Amazon likely to see extreme storms that trigger large windthrows will also increase by about 50%. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications on Jan. 6.

    “We want to know what these extreme storms and windthrows mean in terms of the carbon budget and carbon dynamics, and for carbon sinks in the forests,” Chambers said. While downed trees slowly release carbon as they decompose, the open forest becomes host to new plants that pull carbon dioxide from the air. “It’s a complicated system, and there are still a lot of pieces of the puzzle that we’re working on. In order to answer the question more quantitatively, we need to build out the land-atmosphere links in Earth system models.”  

    To find the link between air and land, researchers compared a map of more than 1,000 large windthrows with atmospheric data. They found that a measurement known as CAPE, the “convective available potential energy,” was a good predictor of major blowdowns. CAPE measures the amount of energy available to move parcels of air vertically, and a high value of CAPE often leads to thunderstorms. More extreme storms can come with intense vertical winds, heavy rains or hail, and lightning, which interact with trees from the canopy down to the soil.

    “Storms account for over half of the forest mortality in the Amazon,” said Yanlei Feng, first author on the paper. “Climate change has a lot of impact on Amazon forests, but so far, a large fraction of the research focus has been on drought and fire. We hope our research brings more attention to extreme storms and improves our models to work under a changing environment from climate change.”

    While this study looked at a future with high carbon emissions (a scenario known as SSP-585), scientists could use projected CAPE data to explore windthrow impacts in different emissions scenarios. Researchers are now working to integrate the new forest-storm relationship into Earth system models. Better models will help scientists explore how forests will respond to a warmer future – and whether they can continue to siphon carbon out of the atmosphere or will instead become a contributor.

    “This was a very impactful climate change study for me,” said Feng, who completed the research as a graduate student researcher in the NGEE-Tropics project at Berkeley Lab. She now studies carbon capture and storage at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University. “I’m worried about the projected increase in forest disturbances in our study and I hope I can help limit climate change. So now I’m working on climate change solutions.” 

    NGEE-Tropics is a ten-year, multi-institutional project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

    ###

    Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

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  • Ten-minute scan enables detection and cure of the commonest cause of high blood pressure

    Ten-minute scan enables detection and cure of the commonest cause of high blood pressure

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    Newswise — Doctors at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Hospital, and Cambridge University Hospital, have led research using a new type of CT scan to light up tiny nodules in a hormone gland and cure high blood pressure by their removal. The nodules are discovered in one-in-twenty people with high blood pressure.

    Published today in Nature Medicine, the research solves a 60-year problem of how to detect the hormone producing nodules without a difficult catheter study that is available in only a handful of hospitals, and often fails. The research also found that, when combined with a urine test, the scan detects a group of patients who come off all their blood pressure medicines after treatment.

    128 people participated in the study of a new scan after doctors found that their Hypertension (high blood pressure) was caused by a steroid hormone, aldosterone. The scan found that in two thirds of patients with elevated aldosterone secretion, this is coming from a benign nodule in just one of the adrenal glands, which can then be safely removed. The scan uses a very short-acting dose of metomidate, a radioactive dye that sticks only to the aldosterone-producing nodule. The scan was as accurate as the old catheter test, but quick, painless and technically successful in every patient. Until now, the catheter test was unable to predict which patients would be completely cured of hypertension by surgical removal of the gland. By contrast, the combination of a ‘hot nodule’ on the scan and urine steroid test detected 18 of the 24 patients who achieved a normal blood pressure off all their drugs.

    The research, conducted on patients at Barts Hospital, Cambridge University Hospital, and Guy’s and St Thomas’s, and Universities of Glasgow and Birmingham, was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Medical Research Council (MRC) partnership, Barts Charity, and the British Heart Foundation.

    Professor Morris Brown, co-senior author of the study and Professor of Endocrine Hypertension at Queen Mary University of London, said: “These aldosterone-producing nodules are very small and easily overlooked on a regular CT scan. When they glow for a few minutes after our injection, they are revealed as the obvious cause of Hypertension, which can often then be cured. Until now, 99% are never diagnosed because of the difficulty and unavailability of tests. Hopefully this is about to change.”

    Professor William Drake, co-senior author of the study and Professor of Clinical Endocrinology at Queen Mary University of London, said: “This study was the result of years of hard work and collaboration between centres across the UK. Much of the ‘on the ground’ energy and drive came from the talented research fellows who, in addition to doing this innovative work, gave selflessly of their time and energy during the national pandemic emergency. The future of research in this area is in very safe hands.”

    In most people with Hypertension (high blood pressure), the cause is unknown, and the condition requires life-long treatment by drugs. Previous research by the group at Queen Mary University discovered that in 5-10% of people with Hypertension the cause is a gene mutation in the adrenal glands, which results in excessive amounts of the steroid hormone, aldosterone, being produced. Aldosterone causes salt to be retained in the body, driving up the blood pressure. Patients with excessive aldosterone levels in the blood are resistant to treatment with the commonly used drugs for Hypertension, and at increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

    ENDS

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    Queen Mary University of London

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  • Paving the way toward a cure? Study reports new insights into role of proteins in HIV latency

    Paving the way toward a cure? Study reports new insights into role of proteins in HIV latency

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    Newswise — Understanding HIV latency at the molecular level is crucial for efforts to eliminate the viral scourge that causes AIDS. Latent infected cell reservoirs—where the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) hides and persists in the bodies of infected patients in a kind of silent standby mode—are the reason why antiretroviral treatments never wipe out the virus.

    In a nutshell, these latent reservoirs of HIV act as the biggest obstacle to curing the disease. 

    Now, in a rigorous new study led by uOttawa Faculty of Medicine virologist Dr. Marc-André Langlois, researchers are describing an against-the-grain discovery that is a potential game changer in the field. It has the potential to show the way forward for HIV cure research.

    Published today in Nature Communications, the findings demonstrate that a family of host proteins long thought of as purely antiviral are sometimes also helping latent HIV find safe harbor in patients’ bodies.

    Using cutting-edge technology and methodical assays in this project started in 2016, Dr. Langlois and his collaborators describe the impact of host-encoded proteins called APOBEC3 (A3). These proteins possess the ability to potently mutate viral DNA and restrict retroviruses like HIV as well as other types of viruses. But his team’s latest findings suggest that these proteins can also play another role outside of their traditional evolutionary one – and it’s not always in a patient’s favor.

    “We’re showcasing a new mechanism by which HIV can become latent – and it can become latent through the action of our host proteins that are there to protect us. But in fact, these proteins can end up helping the virus maintain its stealthiness in the body,” says Dr. Langlois, a full professor at the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine and Chair in Pandemic Viruses and Preparedness Research.

    “This is an important finding because these proteins were always perceived of as protectors that were on our side. But our work shows there are instances where they appear to have unintended consequences, and one of these unintended consequences is helping HIV become latent. And HIV latency is the biggest hurdle to a cure,” he says.

    This raises major questions: Is the action of these proteins ultimately more beneficial or more counterproductive in the case of HIV, a virus that favors a latency phenotype? Can a drug be developed down the line to prevent the action of A3 proteins so the cellular and anatomical reservoir of latently infected cells is reduced?

    These are the kind of explorations that Dr. Langlois and his team will be examining moving forward.

    “Yes, we can keep HIV under tight control with antiretroviral drugs – and those drugs work wonderfully. But they’re not a cure. We are striving for a cure, and we think part of the countermeasures following an exposure will be to block the activity of A3 proteins to inhibit HIV latency,” says Dr. Langlois, who is also executive director of CoVaRR-Net, a network of interdisciplinary researchersnorth_eastexternal link created to assist the Canadian government’s strategy to address the threat of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. 

    “We’ve done the first demonstration that this mechanism—something that wasn’t on the radar and goes against mainstream thought—is really happening. So this is the first layer of evidence, and we’ll be building on it with follow-up studies.”

    For this study, Dr. Langlois and his uOttawa Faculty of Medicine team focused on infection experiments. They provided samples to collaborators at the University of Western Ontario, who provided the “viral deep sequencing” expertise mapping where the virus inserts itself in the human genome after infection. The research was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant.

    Now demonstrated in vitro in the lab, and to some extent in patient samples, Dr. Langlois wants to take it to the next level with animal models. And while the overarching impact of the A3 proteins’ influence on HIV integration site profiles is unclear at this stage, his research team is committed to exploring potential answers.

    The stakes of this research are high. Since its emergence as a new immunodeficiency syndrome in the early 1980s, HIV-AIDs has been one of the globe’s most serious health challenges. There’s been remarkable progress battling the virus, yet there are over 38 million people living with HIV worldwide, and tens of millions of people have died of HIV-related illnesses since the epidemic began.

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    University of Ottawa

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  • Lab lights way to simple chemical synthesis

    Lab lights way to simple chemical synthesis

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    Newswise — HOUSTON – (Jan. 6, 2023) – Inexpensive iron salts are a key to simplifying the manufacture of essential precursors for drugs and other chemicals, according to scientists at Rice University.

    They’ve refined the process of producing diazides, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. Iron salts along with processes called radical ligand transfer and ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) make it affordable and environmentally friendly.

    Rice synthetic chemist Julian West and co-lead authors Kang-Jie (Harry) Bian and Shih-Chieh Kao, both graduate students in his lab, report in Nature Communications that illuminating their reagents with visible light allows them to form diazides in conditions that are far more gentle than current industrial processes that usually involve high heat and corrosive acids.

    Diazides are molecules with two amine groups that can be functionalized, meaning they can easily react with other molecules. Depending on how they’re constructed, they can be the basis of many useful compounds.

    In a recent study, West and his group used radical ligand transfer (or “radical rebound”) to add two functional groups to a single alkene, organic molecules drawn from petrochemicals that contain at least one carbon-carbon double bond.

    The technique, along with iron-mediated ligand-to-metal charge transfer, came in handy as they built similar precursors called vicinal diazides out of common feedstocks.

    “It only uses two reagents, iron nitrate and TMS azide, which every synthetic lab will have,” said West, an assistant professor of chemistry whose lab strives to simplify drug manufacturing. “Basically, you mix them together in a common solvent and shine light on it. Most every pharmaceutical lab will have LED lights. So basically they’ll just pull things off the shelf.”

    West said radical ligand transfer was inspired by biology, “including the enzymes in our own livers. There are enzymes in nature that transfer atoms or fragments of molecules to a radical to make a new bond that can help build up bigger molecules. We were excited to explore the potential of that one step in the last study.

    “In this project, now that we’ve established how that works, we can start to combine it with new steps to make something different,” he said. “The funny thing is, like with everything in organic chemistry, nature appreciated a long time ago that this can be really useful.”

    Both LMCT and radical ligand transfer happen, one after the other, when the reagents and solution are illuminated in ambient conditions. The lab learned to maximize the process through flow chemistry, running the solution through a looping tube and lighting just that tube.

    “The reaction happens in the part where you shine the light,” West said. “That way we can process more than a single batch, and also have much more control over the amount of light it’s getting by speeding up or slowing down the flow.

    “It’s dead easy to dump the salts in the flask and shine a light on it, but if you want to make a lot, or make it better, flow works really well,” he said. 

    “We think it will be helpful for labs that want an easy way to make this kind of product, especially if they don’t have the time to fine tune and fight with getting these other methods to work well,” West said.

    Study co-authors include Rice undergraduates David Nemoto Jr. and Xiaowei Chen.

    The research was supported by Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RR190025), the National Institutes of Health (GM142738) and the Welch Foundation (C-2085).

    -30-

    Peer-reviewed paper:

    “Photochemical diazidation of alkenes enabled by ligand-to-metal charge transfer and radical ligand transfer” | Nature Communications | DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35560-3

    Kang-Jie Bian, Shih-Chieh Kao, David Nemoto Jr., Xiao-Wei Chen and Julian G. West

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35560-3.pdf

    Images for download:

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-1-web.jpg
    CAPTION: A mild solution containing reagents passes through an illuminated loop in a Rice University laboratory. The lab has developed a photochemical process to simplify the synthesis of drug and chemical precursors known as diamines. (Credit: West Research Lab/Rice University)

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-2-web.jpg
    CAPTION: This illuminated loop rig helps Rice University chemists use flow photochemistry to produce diamines, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. (Credit: West Research Lab/Rice University)

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-3-web.jpg
    CAPTION: The synergistic cooperation of ligand-to-metal charge transfer and radical ligand transfer produces diamines, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. Rice University chemists introduced their light-driven process in Nature Communications. (Credit: West Research Lab/Rice University)

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-4a-web.jpg
    CAPTION: From left, Rice University graduate students Kang-Jie (Harry) Bian and Shih-Chieh Kao and undergraduate student David Nemoto Jr. who, along with undergraduate Xiaowei Chen (inset), developed a light-driven method to synthesize diamines to simplify drug and chemical design. (Credit: Rice University)

    https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1212_DIAMINES-5-WEB-JULIAN-WEST.jpg
    CAPTION: Julian West is the Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator and an assistant professor in Rice University’s Department of Chemistry. (Credit: Rice University)

    Related stories:

    Process to customize molecules does double duty – June 22, 2022
    https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/process-customize-molecules-does-double-duty

    Manganese makes its mark in drug synthesis – Oct. 5, 2021
    https://news.rice.edu/news/2021/manganese-makes-its-mark-drug-synthesis

    NIH grant will help streamline chemical synthesis – Jul. 5, 2021 https://news.rice.edu/news/2021/nih-grant-will-help-streamline-chemical-synthesis

    Cerium sidelines silver to make drug precursor – Feb. 26, 2021
    https://news.rice.edu/news/2021/cerium-sidelines-silver-make-drug-precursor

    Links:

    West Research Group: https://www.westchem.org

    Department of Chemistry: https://chemistry.rice.edu/

    Wiess School of Natural Sciences: https://naturalsciences.rice.edu

    This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

    Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

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    Rice University

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  • Fathoming the hidden heatwaves that threaten coral reefs

    Fathoming the hidden heatwaves that threaten coral reefs

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    Newswise —   In April to May 2019, the coral reefs near the French Polynesian island of Moorea in the central South Pacific Ocean suffered severe and prolonged thermal bleaching. The catastrophe occurred despite the absence of El Niño conditions that year, intriguing ocean scientists around the world.

        An international research team led by Prof. Alex WYATT of the Department of Ocean Science at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has investigated this surprising and paradoxical coral bleaching episode. The unexpected event was related to the passage of anti-cyclonic eddies that elevated sea levels and concentrated hot water over the reef, leading to an underwater marine heatwave that was largely hidden from view at the surface. The findings have recently been published in Nature Communications.  

        Most studies of coral bleaching patterns rely on sea-surface measures of water temperatures, which cannot capture the full picture of threats from ocean heating to marine ecosystems, including tropical coral reefs. These surface measurements conducted over broad areas with satellites are valuable, yet are unable to detect heating below the surface that influences communities living in waters deeper that the shallowest few metres of the ocean.

        Prof. Wyatt and colleagues analyzed data collected at Moorea over 15 years from 2005 to 2019, taking advantage of a rare combination of remotely sensed sea-surface temperatures and high-resolution, long-term in-situ temperatures and sea level anomalies. Results showed that the passage of anti-cyclonic eddies in the open ocean past the island raised sea levels and pushed internal waves down into deeper water. Internal waves travel along the interface between the warm surface layer of the ocean and cooler layers below, and, in a previous study also led by Prof. Wyatt, have been shown to provide frequent cooling of coral reef habitats. The present research shows that, as a result of the anti-cyclones, internal wave cooling was shut down in early 2019, as well as during some earlier heatwaves.  This led to unexpected heating over the reef, which in turn caused large-scale coral bleaching and subsequent mortality. Unfortunately for local reef biodiversity, the extensive coral death in 2019 has offset the recovery of coral communities that had been occurring around Moorea for the last decade.

        A notable observation, in contrast to the 2019 heatwave, was that the reefs in Moorea did not undergo significant bleaching mortality in 2016, despite the prevailing super El Niño that brought warm conditions and decimated many shallow reefs worldwide. The new research demonstrates the importance of collecting temperature data across the range of depths that coral reefs occupy because the capacity to predict coral bleaching can be lost with a focus only on surface conditions. Sea-surface temperature data would predict moderate bleaching in both 2016 and 2019 at Moorea. However, direct observations showed that there was only ecologically insignificant bleaching in 2016, with heating that was short in duration and restricted to shallow depths. The severe and prolonged marine heatwave in 2019 would have been overlooked if researchers only had access to sea-surface temperature data, and the resulting catastrophic coral bleaching may have been incorrectly ascribed to causes other than heating.

        “The present study highlights the need to consider environmental dynamics across depths relevant to threatened ecosystems, including those due to the passage of underwater ocean weather events.  This kind of analysis depends on long-term, in situ data measured across ocean depths, but such data is generally lacking,” Prof. Wyatt said.  

        “Our paper provides a valuable mechanistic example for assessing the future of coastal ecosystems in the context of changing ocean dynamics and climates.”

        This HKUST-led research was conducted in collaboration with a team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, the University of California Santa Barbara, California State University, Northbridge, and Florida State University. The data underlying this study were made possible by coupled long-term physical and ecological observations conducted at the Moorea Coral Reef Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. The long-term analyses conducted here, and the concurrent monitoring of physical conditions and biological dynamics across the full range of depths of island and coastal marine communities, is a model for future research that aims to protect vulnerable living resources in the ocean. 

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    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

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