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Tag: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  • Illinois expert available for Bat Week

    Illinois expert available for Bat Week

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    BYLINE: Lauren Quinn

    Newswise — URBANA, Ill. — Bats come out of the shadows during Bat Week (Oct. 24-31, 2023), an international awareness campaign that aims to educate the public about bat conservation in the week leading up to Halloween. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign bat expert Joy O’Keefe explains the threats to bats and how we can help.

    On environmental threats to bats:

    “Habitat loss is a big problem for bats. Most bats in the U.S. depend on forests for some portion of their lifecycle, as forests provide crucial foraging and roosting habitat. So, the loss of forests is a challenge bats have been contending with for a long time,” said O’Keefe, assistant professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Illinois Extension, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I. 

    O’Keefe also mentioned losses of migratory bats (and birds) due to wind turbines; declining insect populations that make up the diets of most North American bats; severe weather effects on bats due to climate change; and, of course, the devastating impacts of white-nose syndrome.

    On why we should care:

    “There’s not another mammalian group that comes close to being as cool as bats. They’re completely unique; they’re the only mammals capable of true powered flight and perform all sorts of cool feats like echolocation and navigating in the dark,” O’Keefe said. “Bats are just so diverse in form and function: the types of echolocation calls they use, the structures on their faces, their coloration, where they roost, and what they eat. The list just goes on and on.”

    O’Keefe noted bats perform essential ecosystem functions that benefit humans, including consuming hundreds of insects every night, many of which negatively impact crops, forest regeneration, and human health. Bats are also key pollinators and seed dispersers in some parts of the world and are important prey for many wild animals. 

    On how we can help:

    “Start by appreciating bats where you live. Ironically, Bat Week isn’t a good time to see bats in much of North America, as many have started their hibernation or are migrating south. But you should make plans to go out on a warm summer night next June, July, or August. You will surely see bats flying around your neighborhood,” O’Keefe said. “Make note of where they’re foraging and what features they’re attracted to and try to improve the availability of those types of habitats, like big trees, in your neighborhood. And then tell people about how awesome bats are.” 

    She said homeowners can plant native species to support the insect populations that feed bats. Turning lights off at night, offering sources of clean water, and advocating to protect local trees and forest habitats are additional beneficial steps, according to O’Keefe. Thinking of installing an artificial roost? Her research says homeowners should think twice.

    On bat appreciation:

    “People tend to be scared of bats because we fear what we don’t understand. For most people, they’re out of sight, out of mind until they are personified as a scary villain,” O’Keefe said. “But, by and large, bats are just doing us favors left and right, so we should appreciate them and not be scared of them.”

    O’Keefe said Bat Week and other awareness efforts appear to be making a dent in public sentiment around the misunderstood creatures. 

    “In the past 15 years, I’ve noticed that bat decorations have become decidedly more friendly. You used to see mostly scary bats with fangs, but now it’s more smiling, friendly bats,” she said. “Let’s be sure to depict how varied and wonderful they are this Halloween.”

    O’Keefe does research to understand bats’ biology, their roles in ecosystems, and how our conservation efforts may help or harm the unique creatures. To arrange an interview, contact [email protected]. 

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    College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • Illinois Researchers Prove That New Method Can Be Used to Measure Ozone Stress in Soybeans

    Illinois Researchers Prove That New Method Can Be Used to Measure Ozone Stress in Soybeans

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    BYLINE: Mike Koon

    Newswise — As the world focuses on not only solving the climate crisis but also sustaining the world’s food supply, researchers need tools to evaluate how atmospheric pollutants affect crops. Over the past decade, the agriculture community has turned to solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) measurements to detect stresses on plants.

    Plants absorb light from the sun to power photosynthesis, and the unused energy is emitted as heat and a tiny glow invisible to human eyes, termed fluorescence. Ever since the first global SIF map was generated in 2011, SIF has been used by researchers to investigate photosynthesis dynamics. For instance, it has been used to determine how high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) or elevated temperature affect a plant’s properties.

    Now a team from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the USDA Agricultural Research Service has used SIF to measure the effects of elevated ozone (O3) on soybean plants. The team published its findings in the Journal of Experimental Botany (https://academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jxb/erad356/7272702).

    “Researchers have found SIF to be a faster, safer, and noninvasive way to study photosynthesis,” noted Genghong Wu, the work’s first author and the former PhD student at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, under the supervision of Prof. Kaiyu Guan, the senior author of the work. “That is why it has become so popular. The novelty of this study is that for the first time, SIF was used to measure elevated ozone stress on soybeans in the field.”

    Ozone is a damaging air pollutant that is costly to farmers. The SoyFACE facility provides a testbed for studying the effects of ozone pollution in the field. It is managed by USDA ARS scientist and Prof. Lisa Ainsworth. For the current study, she designed the elevated O3 experiment with four plots as a control, and other four plots with higher amounts of O3. The team used a portable spectroscopic system placed about half meter above the plant canopy to take its measurements on both control and elevated O3 plots.They found that increased O3 levels resulted in a decrease in SIF, by as much as 36 percent during the late growing season.

    Other processes associated with photosynthesis, such as electron transport and leaf-gas exchange, were simultaneously measured along with SIF. “As we observed those levels decrease with higher ozone levels, it confirmed to us that a decrease in SIF is a sign of stress,” Ainsworth said.

    Although SIF is directly related to photosynthesis — the process by which plants absorb light and turn it into chemical energy — it isn’t the only factor to influence SIF. But Wu notes that plant photosynthesis, combined with measures of the size of the plants[MAD3], can give farmers a good estimate of yield.

    One of the advantages of SIF is that it is scalable. Wu is currently studying in Germany with colleagues, who use aircraft flying 1 kilometer off the ground to evaluate SIF’s effects on an entire field. Alongside Prof. Kaiyu Guan, the Founding Director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center and a fellow investigator on this study, Wu hopes to use the method to track photosynthesis in regions around the world from a satellite orbiting the Earth.

    “We want to use SIF to estimate or to monitor the dynamics of photosynthesis on a regional or global scale,” Wu reiterated. “To do that, we need to also further understand the mechanistic relationship between SIF and photosynthesis.”

    The experiments that these colleagues did at SoyFACE to link SIF to air pollution are helping build that mechanistic understanding.

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    College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • Machine learning tool simplifies one of the most widely used reactions in the pharmaceutical industry

    Machine learning tool simplifies one of the most widely used reactions in the pharmaceutical industry

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    BYLINE: Tracy Crane, Department of Chemistry

    Newswise — In the past two decades, the carbon-nitrogen bond forming reaction, known as the Buchwald-Hartwig reaction, has become one of the most widely used tools in organic synthesis, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry given the prevalence of nitrogen in natural products and pharmaceuticals. This powerful reaction has revolutionized the way nitrogen-containing compounds are made in academic and industrial laboratories, but it requires lengthy, time-consuming experimentation to determine the best conditions for a highly effective reaction.

    Now, Illinois researchers in collaboration with chemists at Hoffman La-Roche, a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland, have developed a machine learning tool that predicts in a matter of minutes the best conditions for a high-yielding reaction with no lengthy experimentation.

    In a recently published article in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.adg2114), Illinois chemistry professor Scott Denmark and Ian Rinehart, a recent PhD graduate in the Denmark lab, describe how they developed, trained, and tested their machine learning model to drastically accelerate the identification of substrate-adaptive conditions for this palladium–catalyzed carbon-nitrogen bond forming reaction.

    Denmark said this reaction is a very general transformation so there is much structural diversity among reactant pairings and a lot of “levers to pull” to make it work.

    “And that’s what we have figured out,” Denmark said.

    User guides and cheat sheets have evolved in the nearly 30 years since this reaction was discovered, and they can provide some direction, Rinehart explained, but experimentation is often necessary. Basically, a trial-and-error process in a lab.

    “It’s a problem that everyone in the pharmaceutical industry recognized was ripe for intervention by informatics methods,” Denmark said. “Lots of people have tried to use the US Patent and Trademark Office or Chemical Abstracts™ or other huge databases to try to model to make predictive tools for this one very important reaction. But they haven’t been able to do very well because the information in the literature is just not very reliable.”

    The design and construction of their machine learning tool required the generation of an experimental dataset that explores a diverse network of reactant pairings across a set of reaction conditions. A large scope of C–N couplings was actively learned by neural network models by using a systematic process to design experiments.

    The challenge for a project like this, Denmark said, was the amount of potential data to collect and the thousands and thousands of experiments required to build a database of information for modeling.

    “One of Ian’s biggest contributions was figuring out the workflow to decide what experiments to do to get a valid predictive model with about 3,500 experiments and still be able to make predictions without an enormous database,” Denmark said.

    They also experimentally validated the predictions from the machine learning tool.

    “We tested them and found with pretty good statistics that the conditions were producing compounds when we expected,” Denmark said.

    The researchers report that their models showed good performance in experimental validation: Ten products were isolated in more than 85 percent yield from a range of couplings with out-of-sample reactants designed to challenge the models.

    Rinehart said they taught machine learning models to have a kind of chemical intuition like what an expert has.

    “So, we have now run or talked about so many of these couplings that we have a good intuition about what’s going to happen, but someone who hadn’t run hundreds or thousands of these might not have a good first guess. We have taught a model at a much more granular level [than user guides] to have an intuition. It’s not perfect. But that’s kind of the point. It doesn’t have to be. It just has to get you to the answer faster,” Rinehart said.

    And the coolest part, Rinehart explained, is that intuition gets honed over time as more people use the machine learning tool. The developed workflow continually improves the prediction capability of the tool as the corpus of data grows.

    “It’s an exciting time as data science merges with chemistry,” Denmark said. “And this is the perfect marriage. A lot of people recognized this, but no one has done it, at least not in a meaningful way that is experimentally validated.”

    The Denmark group is creating a cloud-based version of the workflow to enable scientists around the world to use this tool which will continuously add data to improve the model as more structurally diverse substrates are tested and different catalysts and conditions are added to the database.

    Rinehart said the code is public and on an open-source license, so anyone can download and use it. Also, he is currently working on a more user-friendly interface that will allow someone to draw the two molecules they want to react, copy and paste them into the program, and get predictions in minutes instead of hours, depending on the complexity of the molecules.

    “I think it’s really exciting to do something like that,” Rinehart said. “We don’t often publish a paper and put out a tool in the public domain that people can use in the field. People in academic labs like ours could use this tool and get an answer faster in their own research.”

     

    Funding for this project was provided through the National Science Foundation (NSF) (grant no. CHE 1900617) and the Molecule Maker Lab Institute, an AI Research Institutes program on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus that is supported by the NSF under grant no. CHE 2019897.

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    College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • New Grant to Optimize Gut Microbes, Boost Health Benefits of Broccoli

    New Grant to Optimize Gut Microbes, Boost Health Benefits of Broccoli

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    BYLINE: Lauren Quinn

    Newswise — URBANA, Ill. — Love it or hate it, broccoli is chock-full of health-promoting chemicals linked to heart health, cancer prevention, immune function, weight management, and more. However,  some people are less efficient than others at unlocking those chemical benefits. A research team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests gut microbe communities may be responsible for the variation. With a new grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the team plans to identify which microbes maximize the benefits of broccoli and other brassica vegetables. 

    Gut microbes only factor in when we eat cooked broccoli. When eating the vegetable raw, healthy compounds — and a bitter taste — are unleashed with every gnash of our teeth, the result of a chemical reaction activated by physical damage. Eliminating the bitterness is easy; we just have to cook it. But cooking inactivates the enzyme involved in the reaction, myrosinase. Thankfully, some microbes manufacture their own version of myrosinase, making it possible for them to complete the reaction in the gut with varying levels of efficiency. 

    “Gut bacteria can metabolize glucosinolates in broccoli to isothiocyanates (ITCs), the bioactive compounds with known health benefits, but they can also break glucosinolates into other inactive materials that do nothing for us. We’re focusing on the flux between these metabolic outcomes and how we can potentially steer that flux towards ITCs and away from the non-bioactive products,” said Michael Miller, principal investigator of the grant and professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I.

    The first step is identifying which bacteria are involved and how efficiently they produce ITCs versus non-beneficial compounds. Miller’s team has a study underway in mice, a model system that can provide clues for future human studies. He is feeding the mice broccoli and kale, both cooked and uncooked, to understand the chemical and microbial dynamics of the system. 

    Once ITCs are unlocked — whether in the mouth or the gut — they trigger bitter-taste receptors in cell membranes, starting a series of reactions that produce hormones affecting glucose homeostasis and the perception of fullness.

    “We actually have bitter taste receptors all the way down, not just in our mouths, but in our colon and small intestine, too,” Miller said. “The goal of our work is to show that the bitter compounds (ITCs) made by gut bacteria from metabolizing broccoli trigger bitter taste receptors in the gut and impact satiety, causing mice to eat less.”

    Once he identifies bacterial superstars that maximize ITC production for anti-cancer and weight management benefits, Miller says custom probiotics could be developed to help level the playing field for people with lower-efficiency microbial communities. He also predicts his research will inform recommendations about whether raw or cooked broccoli (or kale) might be more useful for weight loss.

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    College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • Could microplastics in soil introduce drug-resistant superbugs to the food supply?

    Could microplastics in soil introduce drug-resistant superbugs to the food supply?

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    BYLINE: Lauren Quinn

    Newswise — URBANA, Ill. — Like every industry, modern farming relies heavily on plastics. Think plastic mulch lining vegetable beds, PVC pipes draining water from fields, polyethylene covering high tunnels, and plastic seed, fertilizer, and herbicide packaging, to name a few. In a new review article, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers say these plastics are now widely dispersed in agricultural soils in the form of microplastics and nanoplastics. 

    That’s not necessarily new; microplastics have been found in nearly every ecosystem and organism on Earth. The twist, according to the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) researchers, is that micro- and nanoplastics in agricultural soil could contribute to antibiotic resistant bacteria with a ready route into our food supply.

    “Plastic itself may not be very toxic, but it can act as a vector for transmitting pathogenic and antimicrobial resistant bacteria into the food chain,” said study author Jayashree Nath, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition in ACES. “This phenomenon is not very well known to people, so we wanted to raise awareness.”

    If the link between microplastics and antibiotic resistance is less than obvious, here’s how it works. First, plastics are an excellent adsorbent. That means chemical substances and microscopic organisms love to stick to plastic. Chemicals that would ordinarily move through soil quickly — things like pesticides and heavy metals — instead stick around and are concentrated when they encounter plastics. Similarly, bacteria and other microorganisms that occur naturally in soil preferentially congregate on the stable surfaces of microplastics, forming what are known as biofilms. 

    When bacteria encounter unusual chemical substances in their new home base, they activate stress response genes that incidentally help them resist other chemicals too, including, sometimes, antibiotics. And when groups of bacteria attach to the same surface, they have a habit of sharing these genes through a process called horizontal gene transfer. Nanoplastics, which can enter bacterial cells, present a different kind of stress, but that stress can have the same outcome. 

    “Bacteria have been evolving genetic mechanisms to cope with stress for millions of years. Plastic is a new material bacteria have never seen in nature, so they are now evoking these genetic tool sets to deal with that stress,” said co-author Pratik Banerjee, associate professor in FSHN and Illinois Extension specialist. “We have also shown bacteria may become more virulent in the presence of plastics, in addition to becoming more resistant to antimicrobials.”

    Gene transfer between bacteria on microplastics has been documented in other environments, particularly water. So far, the phenomenon is only hypothetical in agricultural soil, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Nath and Banerjee are currently running laboratory studies to document gene transfer.

    “Soil is an under-researched area in this field,” Banerjee said. “We have an obligation to understand what’s going on in soil, because what we suspect and what we fear is that the situation in soil could be even worse than in water. 

    “One of the technical problems is that soil is a very difficult medium to handle when it comes to fishing out microplastics. Water is so easy, because you can simply filter the microplastic out,” Banerjee added. “But we have made some good headway thanks to Jayashree and our collaboration with the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.”

    The authors point out many foodborne pathogens make it onto produce from their native home in the soil, but nanoplastics and antibiotic resistant bacteria could be small enough to enter roots and plant tissues — where they are impossible to wash away. While nanoplastics have been documented in and on crops, the field of study is still new and it’s not well known how often this occurs. Banerjee’s research group plans to tackle that question as well.

    Ultimately, microplastics are here to stay. After all, they persist in the environment for centuries or longer. The authors say it’s time to understand their impacts in the soil and our food system, raise awareness, and push toward biodegradable plastic alternatives. 

    The study, “Interaction of microbes with microplastics and nanoplastics in the agroecosystems—impact on antimicrobial resistance,” is published in Pathogens [DOI: 10.3390/pathogens12070888]. Authors include Jayashree Nath, Jayita De, Shantanu Sur, and Pratik Banerjee. The research was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the USDA.

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    College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • Study: Hearing AIDS May Slow Cognitive Decline for at-Risk Adults

    Study: Hearing AIDS May Slow Cognitive Decline for at-Risk Adults

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    Newswise — A new study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that hearing aids might slow cognitive decline for at-risk older adults with hearing loss.

    Sadie Braun, audiologist and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, said she’ll incorporate these findings into her counseling with patients.

    “For people who have any sort of high risk for cognitive decline such as dementia (or) Alzheimer’s, this study tells us that those individuals should get hearing aids as soon as they need them,” Braun said. “The average person waits 5 to 7 years or more to get hearing aids once they know they have a hearing loss.”

    The study, co-led by Dr. Frank Lin of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, analyzed cognitive performance for groups of older adults (ages 70 to 84) with untreated hearing loss.

    Participants were randomly assigned to either the control group that received counseling on disease prevention, or to the intervention group, which received regular audiology treatment and hearing aids.

    Researchers followed up with participants every six months for three years. For participants at lower risk of cognitive decline, hearing aid interventions showed no significant effect on cognitive function. But for participants with high risk for dementia, cognitive decline slowed by 48 percent over the three-year period.

    “That’s a pretty amazing statistic to me,” Braun said. “We’ve known there was a correlation between hearing loss and cognitive decline, but there were a lot of unknowns regarding the exact nature of that correlation as well as whether hearing aids or other treatments could have a positive impact.”

    The connection between hearing loss and dementia is well-documented, but the “why” is still up for research inquiry, Braun said. Regardless, the finding adds to the growing list of reasons for adults to check their hearing sooner rather than later.

    Long-term speech understanding can improve the earlier a patient uses hearing aids, Braun said.

    “Cognitive health is something that people really care about,” Braun said. “I think this is going to cause more people to be more concerned about a mild or moderate hearing loss.”

    For at-risk adults and anyone interested in checking their hearing, Braun recommends a visit to an audiologist.

    The Audiology and Speech Language Pathology Clinic at 2001 S. Oak Street in Champaign is open to all patients, regardless of affiliation to the University of Illinois and accepts some insurance plans. It is operated by the College of Applied Health Sciences’ Department of Speech and Hearing Science.

    New patients are required to schedule an appointment by calling 217-333-2205 or emailing [email protected].

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    College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • University of Illinois names new director of Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services

    University of Illinois names new director of Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services

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    Newswise — Heather Stout will join the College of Applied Health Sciences as the Director of Operations and Services with the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) in August. She will assume the responsibilities that have been so ably handled for the past few years by interim director Dr. Kim Collins, who will retire at the end of June.

    Heather currently serves as the Accessibility and Wellness Programs Coordinator in the St. Louis University School of Law. Her career has focused on equal access and inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education, and includes positions as Director/Associate Dean of the Disability Resource Center at Purdue, assistant director of The Learning Center/Disability Resources at Washington University, program director of disability services at St. Louis University, coordinator of disability services at UIC, and workplace possibilities consultant with Excel Managed Care and Disability. She earned an undergraduate degree in psychology at The Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she completed several internships with DRES. She also has advanced training in rehabilitation counseling with deaf and hard of hearing adults, office ergonomics, and applied suicide intervention skills.

    Maureen Gilbert, Assistant Director, Non-Academic Support and Coordinator of the Campus Life division of DRES, will provide additional administrative support beginning today, and will serve as interim director during the transitional period.

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    College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • For Father’s Day: Role of fathers in families and their effects on children

    For Father’s Day: Role of fathers in families and their effects on children

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    BYLINE: Lauren Quinn

    Experts in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently published an article showing children whose fathers engage in constructive conflict resolution with mothers have greater socioemotional skills in preschool than kids whose dads engage in destructive conflict. The paper, published in the Journal of Family Psychology [DOI: 10.1037/fam0001102], is part of a greater body of work by authors Karen Kramer, Qiujie Gong, and Kelly Tu, part of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) in ACES.   

    On their recent paper: 

    “Fathers who reported using more constructive conflict resolution – like open communication and reaching compromise, as opposed to hitting, criticizing, or throwing things – showed more involvement and warmth toward their kids, compared to their counterparts,” said lead author and HDFS doctoral student Qiujie Gong.

    Co-author and HDFS associate professor Karen Kramer, added, “Fathers using constructive conflict resolution led to more parental involvement, which led to more positive child development. Destructive conflict has the opposite effect on kids.”

    On fathers more generally:

    “Fathers are key to gender equality. If we are to truly achieve gender equality, fathers would have to step up and get involved in taking care of children, family members, and household chores as much as women. Equality should not only be a part of paid work – it should also be in unpaid work,” Kramer said.

    Kramer’s previous studies have touched on paternity leave, including paid parental leave, as well as at-home father families and other aspects of family life.   

    Gong added, “Fathers are just as important as mothers in shaping children’s life. Their unique role in child development should not be underestimated. At the same time, it is also essential to recognize the challenges fathers may face and provide them with the necessary support. By supporting both parents and promoting positive interparental relationship, children would be able to thrive and flourish in a healthy family environment.”

    Gong’s previous studies have touched on the effects of parenting programs, relationship quality among African American couples, and more. Kramer and Gong also collaborated on a study looking at parental involvement among first- and second-generation Latin Americans.

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  • Researchers track antimicrobial resistance in E. coli isolated from swine

    Researchers track antimicrobial resistance in E. coli isolated from swine

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    BYLINE: Ananya Sen

    Newswise — The spread of drug-resistant microbes has become a global health concern that threatens our ability to treat infections. The widespread use of antimicrobials in livestock, such as swine farms, exacerbates this problem. Therefore, we need surveillance systems to monitor these microbes to support the public health authorities. To this end, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have tracked the antimicrobial resistance of Escherichia coli isolated from swine.

    Antimicrobials are essential for preventing and treating infections in humans and animals. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, 70% of all antibiotic sales in the US are used for livestock production. However, microbes change over time to combat these chemicals, eventually becoming resistant. As a result, infections become harder to treat. Concerningly, these resistant organisms can spread from farm animals to humans, creating a bigger health crisis.

    The researchers focused on E. coli since these bacteria are ubiquitous in the intestinal tract of humans and pigs, and they are good indicators to test whether meat and meat products have been contaminated. E. coli can also acquire and transfer resistance genes to other bacteria in the intestinal tract, making them ideal for monitoring programs of livestock and humans.

    “It is important to monitor the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in the swine industry because in 2022 the US was the third largest producer and consumer of swine meat and products, after the European Union and China,” said Hamid Reza Sodagari, a postdoctoral research associate in the Varga lab. “Although it is a big problem, to the best of our knowledge this paper is the first surveillance study in the US that looks at antimicrobial resistance in E. coli from swine at slaughter.”

    The study used publicly available surveillance data of cecal samples, which were collected from the intestine after slaughter. The researchers focused on market swine and sows in the US between 2013 and 2019, and used the data compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service under the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for Enteric Bacteria program.

    “Federal agencies often don’t have the manpower to carry out such long-term and detailed analyses. Alternatively, for most researchers such studies are challenging because usually they track samples on a smaller scale. In this paper, however, we were able to look at more than 3,000 samples across several years,” said Csaba Varga, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine and a faculty member in the “Infection Genomics for One Health” research theme within the campus’s Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.

    Using different statistical methods, the researchers found that since 2013, the number of antimicrobials to which E. coli is resistant has either remained steady or increased over the years. In particular, the resistance to ceftriaxone, an important antimicrobial drug in both human and veterinary medicine, increased from 0.8% in 2013 to 7.7% in 2019. Even though these numbers are not high compared to the resistance to other antimicrobials, the increasing trend is concerning.

    “We don’t know why there is an increasing trend. It may be caused by mobile genetic elements, which can transfer antimicrobial resistance from one bacterium to another. We need to do further research at the molecular level to understand the reason for the increase,” Sodagari said.

    “We are not blaming anyone for this problem. Our study is meant to show that there is an issue and that surveillance systems are very important to show the changes in resistance,” Varga said. “By gathering this data, we hope that the public health authorities will be able to develop mitigation strategies.”

    The study “Evaluating Antimicrobial Resistance Trends in Commensal Escherichia coli Isolated from Cecal Samples of Swine at Slaughter in the United States, 2013-2019” was published in Microorganisms and can be found at 10.3390/microorganisms11041033.

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    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Professor Ting Lu Jointly Presented With €1 Million Future Insight Prize for Converting Waste Into Food

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Professor Ting Lu Jointly Presented With €1 Million Future Insight Prize for Converting Waste Into Food

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    URBANA, Ill., July 13, 2021 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Ting Lu, a professor of bioengineering at The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign received the 2021 Future Insight Prize. Established by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, the Future Insight Prize aims to stimulate innovative solutions to solve some of humanity’s greatest problems and to realize dreams for a better tomorrow in the areas of health, nutrition and energy. The prize comes with €1 million ($1.19 million) of research funding to incentivize winners whose work has enabled significant progress towards making this vision a reality.

    This year, the theme of the Future Insight Prize is food generation with a target to convert non-edible biomass to edible biomass. Lu shared the prize with Stephen Techtmann, an associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University. The duo were presented with the prize by Mrs. Anja Karliczek, the Federal Minister of Education and Research of Germany, and Dr. Belén Garijo, the Chair of the Executive Board and CEO of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, during the 2021 Future Insight Days conference. Lu and Techtmann are recognized for their work, which uses microbes and chemicals to break down end-of-life plastics and transform them into edible food.

    “The winners of this year’s Future Insight Prize have created a ground-breaking technology with the potential to generate a safe and sustainable source of food while reducing the environmental harms associated with plastic waste and traditional agricultural methods,” said Garijo. “We congratulate Ting Lu and Stephen Techtmann for their promising research, and hope that the Future Insight Prize will help to accelerate their efforts.”

    Food is the most essential need for humans. However, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are 690 million people around the world who suffer from hunger. This problem is exacerbated by reductions of arable land, population growth, and threats to food production such as from the COVID-19 pandemic. The other pressing challenge is plastic pollution. Plastics are pervasive in modern society and each year, the world produces 380 million tons of new plastics. The UN Environment Programme published that 79% of all plastic waste is accumulated in the natural environment, which causes serious adverse impacts on the environment, wildlife and human health. By converting plastic waste to edible food, Lu and Techtmann strive to tackle food insecurity and plastic pollution, the two grand challenges of our modern society, simultaneously.

    Lu’s research at Illinois focuses on microbial synthetic biology. “Combining experimentation with modeling, my lab harnesses engineered gene circuits to program microbial cell functionalities for a variety of novel biotechnological applications, such as food generation in this case,” said Lu.

    Techtmann is an environmental microbiologist who studies microbial communities in diverse natural environments. His lab studies how complex microbial communities can cooperate to perform functions of industrial interest.

    “Our complementary expertise allows us to take plastic waste and turn it into something valuable,” Lu said.

    The core of the duo’s technology is to utilize synthetic microbial consortia – a combination of natural and rationally engineered microorganisms – for efficient conversion of waste to readily edible food. In addition, they use synthetic biology approaches to augment probiotics to improve food quality by increasing nutritional contents, improving the resistance to foodborne pathogens and further adding personalized therapeutic benefits.

    “I’m truly honored to receive the prize,” Lu said. “I’m also deeply grateful to Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany for creating such a visionary award and for providing resources and encouragement that allow us to advance the research.”

    With the prize, the duo plan to continue their research by enabling a fully biological solution for PET plastic conversion, augmenting the biosafety and health-promoting contents of food and further expanding the technology to additional plastics or other types of waste for food generation.

    “When I first started my own lab at Illinois, I wanted to work on something that’s both intellectually challenging and societally impactful. Food generation is such a topic,” said Lu, “As bioengineers, we are called to use science and technology in service of humanity by improving human health and nutrition. It’s a real privilege to use my knowledge and to partner with other researchers to tackle harrowing issues.” 

    Lu has a long-standing interest in food generation. In addition to this waste-to-food project, he has worked on the engineering of probiotic lactic acid bacteria that are involved in cheese and yogurt fermentation to reduce foodborne pathogens, increase food storage, and confer therapeutic effects. Lu has also participated in the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project, an international effort led by professors Stephen Long and Donald Ort at the University of Illinois and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and the UK Government’s Department for International Development. The goal of the RIPE project is to increase agricultural production worldwide by improving photosynthesis efficiency, thereby helping to reduce hunger and poverty.

    The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is renowned for innovation in food sciences. Established in 1876, the Morrow Plots are the oldest experimental crop field in America and research there was instrumental in gaining knowledge on crop rotation, soil nutrient depletion and the effect of synthetic and natural fertilizers. The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), where Lu conducts some of his work, directly overlooks these plots that have been a source of inspiration for him.

    In addition to the department of bioengineering and IGB, Lu is affiliated with the department of physics, the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

    About The Grainger College of Engineering

    The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is one of the world’s top-ranked engineering institutions, and a globally recognized leader in engineering education, research, and public engagement. With a diverse, tight-knit community of faculty, students and alumni, Grainger Engineering sets the standard for excellence in engineering, driving innovation in the economy and bringing revolutionary ideas to the world. Through powerful research and discovery, our faculty, staff, students and alumni are changing our world and making advances once only dreamed about, including the MRI, LED, ILIAC, Mosaic, YouTube, flexible electronics, electric machinery, miniature batteries, imaging the black hole, and flight on Mars. The world’s brightest minds from The Grainger College of Engineering tackle today’s toughest challenges. And they are building a better, cooler and safer tomorrow. Visit https://grainger.illinois.edu for more information.

    About Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

    Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, operates across healthcare, life science and electronics. Around 58,000 employees work to make a positive difference to millions of people’s lives every day by creating more joyful and sustainable ways to live. From advancing gene-editing technologies and discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to enabling the intelligence of devices – the company is everywhere. In 2020, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, generated sales of € 17.5 billion in 66 countries.

    The company holds the global rights to the name and trademark “Merck” internationally. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the business sectors of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany operate as EMD Serono in healthcare, MilliporeSigma in life science, and EMD Electronics. Since its founding in 1668, scientific exploration and responsible entrepreneurship have been key to the company’s technological and scientific advances. To this day, the founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed company.

    Media Contact
    The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Huan Song (Department of Bioengineering)
    huansong@illinois.edu

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    Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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