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November 19, 2009
· Discovery shows how crops survive drought
· A ‘green revolution’ buds slowly in algae farming
· Senate closes in on new food safety legislation
· States vary in response to food-borne illnesses
· Fruits may hold key to preventing influenza
Discovery shows how crops survive drought
(UC Riverside) – Breakthrough research done earlier this
year by a plant cell biologist at the
Working on abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone produced naturally by plants, Sean Cutler’s laboratory showed in April 2009 how ABA helps plants survive by inhibiting their growth in times when water is unavailable – research that has important agricultural implications.
The Cutler lab, with contributions from a team of
international leaders in the field, showed that in drought conditions certain
receptor proteins in plants perceive
Now recent published studies show how those orders are
relayed at the molecular level.
“I believe Sean’s discovery is the most significant finding
in plant biology this year and will have profound effects on agriculture
worldwide,” said Natasha Raikhel, the director of UC
Riverside’s Center for Plant Cell Biology, of which Cutler is a member.
“Because the
In only months since Cutler’s discovery, six research papers in prestigious journals such as Science and Nature have been published that build on his work, a testament to the interest among plant scientists to nail down how exactly the stress signaling pathway works in plants. This intense activity in the field was expedited by Cutler’s willingness to share information with colleagues before his own research was published – an open approach that is at odds with the often cutthroat competition in hot scientific areas.
“This intense interest by the scientific community will certainly accelerate the development of new agrichemicals that can be used to control stress responses in crops, and I believe we need to work openly to tackle problems of such great importance,” said Cutler, an assistant professor of plant cell biology in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences. “There is also tremendous interest from industry, and we are moving closer to designing both improved chemicals that can control drought tolerance in crops and improved receptor proteins that can be used to enhance yield under drought conditions. Ultimately, my vision is to combine protein and chemical design to usher in a fundamentally new approach to crop protection. These recent papers are an important step towards realizing that goal.”
Determining how the chemical switch works
One of the six research papers that builds on Cutler’s work is published online Nov. 18 in Nature. The research, led by Jian-Kang Zhu, a professor of plant cell biology at UCR, fleshes out the domino pathway from the receptor down to the proteins that control plant growth.
“Freshwater is a precious commodity in agriculture,” Zhu said. “Drought stress occurs when there is not enough freshwater. We wanted to understand how plants cope with drought stress at the molecular level. Such an understanding is necessary if we want to improve the drought tolerance of crop plants through either genetic engineering or marker-assisted breeding.”
In their Nature paper, Zhu and his colleagues report on how they reconstituted in a test tube the process of information transfer from receptor to phosphatase, and all the way downstream to the protein that turns the gene on or off, and then ultimately to the gene itself.
“The
Zhu explained that in vivo studies (done in the living body
of the plant) involve thousands of proteins, which can complicate data
interpretation. By doing the study in vitro (outside the living body of the
plant) his lab avoids this problem, making it possible to determine the minimal
number of components necessary and sufficient for the
Next in its research, the Zhu lab will use the knowledge of
the
Zhu was joined in the research by Cutler and UCR’s Hiroaki Fujii, Viswanathan Chinnusamy, and
Zhu was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of
Health. Currently, he has an appointment also at the King Abdullah University
of Science and
The other five research papers that Cutler’s research
inspired discuss the molecular structure of the
A ‘green revolution’ buds slowly in algae farming
(The New York Times via ClimateWire) – Amid the charts on James Levin's bulletin board with titles like "Photosynthetic Carbon Fixation" there is a diagram that looks just like the others -- until Levin starts to explain it.
Levin is a biologist who researches algae for Kent Bioenergy. After seven years in the pharmaceutical
industry, he came to
But when he talks about this chart, he speaks of a different world.
"When you look at the so-called 'green revolution' that they talk about, when the production of corn increased by [an order of] magnitude, essentially it required two things," he said in an interview later.
In a hockey-stick shape, the graph traces corn yield from
the
"Similar to what occurred in the Green Revolution, where there was advances made both in traditional farming techniques and the adopting of new technology to farming," he said, "biofuels will probably follow a similar path."
Kent Bioenergy is one of more than 200 companies that are hoping one day to go commercial with algae-to-fuel technology. The idea of producing oil from algae for energy is drawing more and more interest, and recently, the eyes -- and money -- of big investors. The federal government is planning on funding at least one center dedicated to "algal/advanced biofuels," and everyone from the U.S. Navy to a documentary film crew has partnered with startups advancing the vision.
But despite the interest, experts say algae oil is not yet competitive.
Michael Melnick, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist who has founded an algae-to-fuel company, says it's because there is a world of difference between finding a workable technology in the lab -- where many companies have already produced tank-ready algae oil -- and growing it successfully and cheaply in the fields.
"Most of the numbers that you hear, I think, are exaggerated," he said, referring to level of production per acre, as well as cost figures, "because I don't think very many people have gotten this to scale."
"Ultimately this is farming that you're talking about," Melnick added. "You need to bring that perspective to bear, and that doesn't come easy to these young biotech companies. … There's all sorts of interesting things that can be done with microbes in terms of genetic engineering or microbiology, but unless you also bring the farming experience to it, you're going to fail out in the field."
At the whim of nature
A hundred miles east of
The land in the
Off this washboarded road is where
scientists from
Proponents of algae oil say that the technology will perform significantly better than older generations of biofuels -- that it will produce less greenhouse gas in its lifecycle, that it uses less land, that it can be grown anywhere -- bypassing the concerns about competition with food crops that have come to plague corn ethanol.
Some environmentalists say water availability could be a
problem for algae to fuel in the desert, though they say the issue has not been
explored in depth. But some algae-to-fuel companies are already looking at
using saltwater or wastewater -- from sources like the
Yet for all its promise, no algae-to-fuel company has gone commercial.
"Everything changes when you go outside," said Jim
Demattia, manager of the facility in the
Unexpected problems include other algae or microorganisms -- borne by the winds or the birds -- eating or outcompeting the cultivated algae ("equivalents of weeds," Melnick says). Temperature fluctuations could range high. There could be too much sun. "All the variables that farmers are constantly exposed to," Melnick says.
So going from the lab to the field, some strains live and others die. Demattia can brace for some forces -- for example, hold off on adding water when he expects rain -- and adjust for others, such as through tweaking fertilizer amounts. But some things he cannot help.
"Algae's a mystery," Demattia said. "It dies on you, you never know why it died. You just have it die overnight, and you'll come in and no one will know, even the guys who've been doing it for 30 years won't know what killed it. So there's still a lot more to learn."
The field is also where techniques for harvesting, drying and extracting oil from the algae are refined. Cynthia Warner, president of the San Diego-based startup Sapphire Energy, says that these steps are as crucial to cutting costs as selecting the right algae strains.
Leaving the petri dish for the aquafarm
Demattia spends his days between the petri dishes in the refrigerator in a warehouse-like building, a room glowing with green beakers and large vertical liquid-filled tubes, and the beating -- sometimes 120-degree-Fahrenheit -- sun outside, where a few dozen pools circulate water of different shades. In these structures, he is painstakingly scaling the algae up in stages.
Demattia estimates "it must be, like, 95 percent lab people" in the algae-to-fuel industry. "They try and make it sound like it's some biotech thing," he said. "When they build these huge farms, it's not gonna be a bunch of scientists in white coats here. It's gonna be aquafarm guys."
Demattia, who wears a straw hat
with a hole in the top, spent his early career in
He said that the most important techniques for growing algae properly, which will in turn cut costs, will come from experience in the field, as it happened for a neighboring plant that produces algae as a food supplement.
"You see stuff" out in the field, he said. "Sometimes it's just by accident."
Under a microscope, Demattia examines a rotifer -- a tiny, translucent animal -- swimming in a sea of green curls. The green curls are the blue-green algae with which Biolight is working, and Demattia says the rotifers will eat everything but blue-green algae. So they are perfect for pest control.
"We didn't develop the rotifer thing," he said. People have been cultivating algae for food for thousands of years, he said, and "biological control's been around forever."
Learning from the fish
Kent Bioenergy started as a fish farm in the 1970s as Aquatic Systems Inc. Last year, competition from foreign imports narrowed the company's profits, so they shut the fish business down, Levin said.
Levin was brought in three years back to research the question of whether a method the company was developing to kill bacterial disease in fish could be applied to human disease.
Funding for that research ran out and the company changed gears. But Levin's expertise in molecular biology is now being used on algae.
"It seemed that out of everything, it really had the most promise," Levin said regarding the company's decision to go into algae-to-fuel, compared to continuing to work in antibiotics, where "you don't really know if it's going to work."
Kent Bioenergy's forte on the
algae front lies in growing them, which it started doing 15 years ago to clean
wastewater from the fish, Levin said. Treating the water saved the company
money by cutting its need to buy new water. A decade ago
But he said the company's field experience gives it a leg up.
"We can do something that not everybody else can do," he said.
The farm is also located in the
For the most part,
From science to a 'new ballgame'
Susan Golden, a biologist at the
"For a lot of us, it's a real change," Golden said, referring to scientists who focus on blue-green algae in particular. "Instead of focusing on discovering something new, it's making something practical. That's a whole new ballgame."
Warner said that with oil selling for less than bottled water, the players in the game still have a long way to go before they will see their products replace petroleum on the market. She said that Sapphire's existing technology is already competitive, and the challenge is to scale up.
Three weeks ago, Stephen Mayfield, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and a leader in algae-to-fuel research, and colleagues at the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology submitted a grant application to the Department of Energy, which is dedicating $85 million of stimulus money to establishing at least one consortium for algae and other advance biofuels. Mayfield thinks 12 other teams applied.
An algae biomass conference beginning today is expected to draw 800 attendees, according to the Web site of the Algal Biomass Association.
By the end of the year, a capital firm based in San Diego plans to launch a prize competition, based on the X Prize, that will award $10 million to whoever produces the most finished diesel from algae per acre of land by 2013 for a cost of under $3 per gallon, with a minimum of 3,000 gallons, said Matt Peak, director of technology ventures at Prize Capital.
"I think it'll be slow in coming," said venture capitalist Melnick, regarding the bridging of algae science with farming. "But I expect to see a greater appreciation of that over the next two, three years."
Senate closes in on new food safety legislation
(Los Angeles Times) – A Senate committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a much-awaited overhaul of the Food and Drug Administration's food safety system, although it gave little hint of how it would pay for the sweeping changes.
The measure, like one passed in the House, would significantly upgrade the FDA's regulatory powers -- giving the agency the power to order a food recall instead of merely requesting that a producer institute one. In its version of the bill, the Senate panel added whistle-blower protections and unspecified grants to states to beef up food safety capabilities. It also would require the government to take into account organic agricultural standards and other factors when writing food safety rules.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said the measure was not likely to go to the Senate floor before early next year because healthcare legislation was a higher priority.
The push for reform comes after a series food-borne illness outbreaks in recent years -- involving peanuts, jalapeno peppers, cookie dough, spinach and other items.
Harkin said he wanted to get cost estimates for the legislation from the Congressional Budget Office before deciding how to propose paying for the expanded regimen of product tracking and inspections. But both he and Sen. Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.), the committee's ranking Republican, spoke against levying user fees on the food industry.
"If this is something for public protection, it's something we all should pay for," Harkin said.
The House-approved food safety bill would cost an estimated $3.7 billion over five years, partly paid for by a $500 annual fee on food processing facilities.
A leading consumer advocacy group urged Harkin to reconsider his opposition to such fees.
If the food safety budget comes solely from appropriations, said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, Congress might be tempted to cut it if a year or two goes by without significant food-caused illnesses.
"We feel like you need a dedicated revenue stream for this," Halloran said.
Scott Faber, vice president for federal affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., said his group -- which represents food, beverage and consumer products companies -- understood that the frequency of food facility inspections needed to be increased and was not necessarily opposed to user fees.
But the association, Faber said, would rather see such fees used for rebuilding the FDA's scientific research capacity because in the long run that is the best path to reducing outbreaks of illness.
States vary in response to food-borne illnesses
(stltoday.com) -- Food-borne illness outbreaks, caused by everything from spinach to peppers, have sickened hundreds in recent years and have snagged the public's attention. But a new report suggests that state health departments vary in their responses to produce-related outbreaks, causing delayed response times and more illnesses while driving up costs.
The Produce Safety Project, funded by the Pew Charitable
Trusts at
Produce-related illnesses are on the rise as more Americans consume fresh
vegetables and fruits. In the 1970s, produce was linked to less than one
percent of food-borne outbreaks. In the 1990s, that number rose to six percent.
"It is important to learn from our experience," said Jim O'Hara, director of
the Food Safety Project, in a statement. "So it is surprising that many states
are failing to ask about fruits and vegetables on their questionnaires given to
[food-borne] illness victims."
The report built on another one, released earlier this year by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that found health department resources vary greatly from state to state, but are generally underfunded.
This can mean that local and state public health officials, who are responsible for analyzing a person's exposure to possible pathogens by asking them a series of questions, thereby tracking an illness back to its source, are often pressed for time or are unprepared. This information collected at the local and state level becomes part of the aggregated data studied by federal agencies to find larger patterns.
"The lack of food attribution data and especially attribution to produce is
astounding considering the large
burden of illness in the
Rosenbaum, executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority, or S.T.O.P., which conducted the surveys. "And it all starts with finding out what the person ate. The public health system cannot find what it's not looking for or asking about. We certainly cannot fix the food safety system when we don't know exactly where and how the contaminated produce makes it into the marketplace and onto consumers' plates."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says food-borne pathogens of all types cause roughly 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths each year.
Fruits may hold key to preventing influenza
(UAB) – A new study by researchers at the
The study shows anti-oxidants – the same substances found in plant-based foods such as apples, grapes and strawberries – might hold the key in preventing the flu virus from wreaking havoc on the lungs.
"The recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza and the rapid spread of this strain across the world highlights the need to better understand how this virus damages the lungs and to find new treatments. Additionally, our research shows that anti-oxidants may prove beneficial in the treatment of flu," said study co-author Sadis Matalon.
Matalon and colleagues showed the flu virus damages lungs through its M2 protein, which attacks the cells that line the inner surfaces of the lungs -- epithelial cells.
Specifically, the M2 protein disrupts lung epithelial cells'' ability to remove liquid from inside the lungs, setting the stage for pneumonia and other lung problems.
The researchers made this discovery by conducting three sets of experiments using the M2 protein and the lung protein they damage.
End Transmission