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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 24, 2021 at 8:30am

Climate-friendly microbes chomp dead plants without releasing heat-trapping methane

A team of scientists  has identified an entirely new group of microbes quietly living in hot springs, geothermal systems and hydrothermal sediments around the world. The microbes appear to be playing an important role in the global carbon cycle by helping break down decaying plants without producing the greenhouse gas methane.

The new group, which biologists call a phylum, is named Brockarchaeota.

So far, Brockarchaeota have not been successfully grown in a laboratory or imaged under a microscope. Instead, they were identified by painstakingly reconstructing their genomes from bits of genetic material collected in samples from hot springs in China and hydrothermal sediments in the Gulf of California. The team used high-throughput DNA sequencing and innovative computational approaches to piece together the genomes of the newly described organisms. The scientists also identified genes that suggest how they consume nutrients, produce energy and generate waste.

The Brockarchaeota are part of a larger, poorly studied group of microbes called archaea. Until now, scientists thought that the only archaea involved in breaking down methylated compounds—that is, decaying plants, phytoplankton and other organic matter—were those that also produced the greenhouse gas methane.

They are using a novel metabolism that we didn't know existed in archaea. And this is very important because marine sediments are the biggest reservoir of organic carbon on Earth. These archaea are recycling carbon without producing methane. This gives them a unique ecological position in nature.

In addition to breaking down organic matter, these newly described microbes have other metabolic pathways that scientists speculate might someday be useful in applications ranging from biotechnology to agriculture to biofuels.

Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22736-6

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-climate-friendly-microbes-chomp-dead-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 12:12pm

Widespread lateral gene transfer among grasses

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 12:09pm

Natural GM: how plants and animals steal genes from other species to accelerate evolution

If species already modify their genes, why shouldn't we?

https://theconversation.com/natural-gm-how-plants-and-animals-steal...

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Most Women at High-Risk of Breast Cancer Are Unaware of Preventative Medicines

Many women who are genetically susceptible to breast cancer have no idea they can take preventative medication to reduce their risk of developing the disease, according to new research from Australia.

https://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/14/1/131

https://www.sciencealert.com/many-women-at-high-risk-of-breast-canc...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 11:10am

20% of groundwater wells around the world at risk of running dry, study says

If groundwater levels continue to decline as they have over the last several decades, new research suggests approximately one-fifth of groundwater wells around the world will be at risk of running dry.

Groundwater wells are the main source of water for roughly half the globe's population, but over the last half-century, many of the planet's major aquifers have suffered from mismanagement, growing human pressures and prolonged droughts.

The latest analysis, published Thursday in the journal Science, suggests millions of wells could run dry if aquifers continue to be depleted and regional water tables keep declining.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/418

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2021/04/22/groundwater-wells-globa...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 10:47am

Plastic: What we eat and breathe

Take a deep breath, drink a glass of water, eat a snack. If you do any of these things, it's likely that you are also inhaling and ingesting tiny particles of plastic, as much as a credit card's weight each week. Plastic pollution is everywhere, including in our bodies.

The industry also peddled the myth that recycling is the solution, even though it has long known that this is not economically viable. Today, we pay for recycling infrastructure and dutifully sort our waste into bins, even though only 10% of all plastic is recycled.

Individuals don't start pollution. The industry does. We must demand that they stop it.

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-plastic.html?utm_source=nwletter&...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 9:10am

A novel optical physics method to measure the expansion of the univ...

Quasars are extraordinarily distant celestial objects that throw off a massive amount of light, and astrophysicists use them to probe cosmological theories.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 9:08am

Eliminating resistant bacteria with nanoparticles

Novel nanoparticles developed by researchers  detect multi-resistant bacteria hiding in body cells and kill them. The scientists' goal is to develop an antibacterial agent that is effective where conventional antibiotics remain ineffective.

In the arms race "mankind against bacteria," bacteria are currently ahead of us. Our former miracle weapons, antibiotics, are failing more and more frequently when germs use tricky maneuvers to protect themselves from the effects of these drugs. Some species even retreat into the inside of human cells, where they remain "invisible" to the immune system. These particularly dreaded pathogens include multi-resistant staphylococci (MRSA), which can cause life-threatening diseases such as sepsis or pneumonia.

In order to track down the germs in their hideouts and eliminate them, a team of researchers  is now developing nanoparticles that use a completely different mode of action from conventional antibiotics: While antibiotics have difficulty in penetrating human cells, these nanoparticles can penetrate the membrane of affected cells. Once there, they can fight the bacteria.

They used cerium oxide, a material with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties in its nanoparticle form. The researchers combined the cerium oxide with a bioactive ceramic material known as bioglass and synthesized nanoparticle hybrids from the two materials.

In cell culture and using electron microscopy, they investigated the interactions between the hybrid nanoparticles, human cells and bacteria. When the scientists treated cells infected with bacteria with the nanoparticles, the bacteria inside the cells began to dissolve. However, if the researchers specifically blocked the uptake of the hybrid particles into the cells, the antibacterial effect was gone.

The particles' exact mode of action is not yet fully understood. It has been shown that other metals also have antimicrobial effects. However, cerium is less toxic to human cells than, for instance, silver. Scientists currently assume that the nanoparticles affect the cell membrane of the bacteria, creating reactive oxygen species that lead to the destruction of the germs. Since the cell membrane of human cells is structured differently than that of bacteria, our cells are not affected by this process.

The researchers think that resistance is less likely to develop against a mechanism of this kind. 

Martin T. Matter et al. Inorganic nanohybrids combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria hiding within human macrophages, Nanoscale (2021). DOI: 10.1039/d0nr08285f

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-resistant-bacteria-nanoparticles.html...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 9:02am

New material could better protect soldiers, athletes and motorists

Soldiers, athletes, and motorists could lead safer lives thanks to a new process that could lead to more efficient and re-useable protection from shock and impact, explosion, and vibration, according to a new study.

Pressurized insertion of aqueous solutions into water-repellent nanoporous materials, such as zeolites and metal-organic frame works, could help to create high-performance energy absorbing systems.

An international research team experimented with hydrothermally stable zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) with a 'hydrophobic' cage-like molecular structure—finding that such systems are remarkably effective energy absorbers at realistic, high-rate loading conditions, and this phenomenon is associated with the water clustering and mobility in nanocages.

High-rate nanofluidic energy absorption in porous zeolitic frameworks, Nature Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-021-00977-6

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-material-soldiers-athletes-motorists....

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 8:33am

Toxic masculinity: Y chromosome contributes to a shorter lifespan in male flies

Males may have shorter lifespans than females due to repetitive sections of the Y chromosome that create toxic effects as males get older. These new findings appear in a study published April 22 in PLOS Genetics.

In humans and other species with XY sex chromosomes, females often live longer than males. One possible explanation for this disparity may be repetitive sequences within the genome. While both males and females carry these repeat sequences, scientists have suspected that the large number of repeats on the Y chromosome may create a "toxic y effect" that shortens males' lives.

To test this idea, researchers studied male fruit flies from the species Drosophila miranda, which have about twice as much repetitive DNA as females and a shorter lifespan. They showed that when the DNA is in its tightly packed form inside the cells of young male flies, the repeat sections are turned off. But as the flies age, the DNA assumes a looser form that can activate the repeat sections, resulting in toxic side effects.

The new study demonstrates that Y chromosomes that are rich in repeats are a genomic liability for males. The findings also support a more general link between repeat DNA and aging, which currently, is poorly understood. Previous studies in fruit flies have shown that when repeat sections become active, they impair memory, shorten the lifespan and cause DNA damage. This damage likely contributes to aging's physiological effects, but more research will be needed to uncover the mechanisms underlying repeat DNA's toxic effects.

Nguyen AH, Bachtrog D (2021) Toxic Y chromosome: Increased repeat expression and age-associated heterochromatin loss in male Drosophila with a young Y chromosome. PLoS Genet 17(4): e1009438. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1009438

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-toxic-masculinity-chromosome-contribu...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 23, 2021 at 8:06am

Scientists glimpse signs of a puzzling state of matter in a superconductor

Unconventional superconductors contain a number of exotic phases of matter that are thought to play a role, for better or worse, in their ability to conduct electricity with 100% efficiency at much higher temperatures than scientists had thought possible—although still far short of the temperatures that would allow their wide deployment in perfectly efficient power lines, maglev trains and so on.

Now scientists have glimpsed the signature of one of those phases, known as pair-density waves or PDW, and confirmed that it's intertwined with another phase known as charge density wave (CDW) stripes—wavelike patterns of higher and lower electron density in the material.

Observing and understanding PDW and its correlations with other phases may be essential for understanding how superconductivity emerges in these materials, allowing electrons to pair up and travel with no resistance.

 H. Huang et al. Two-Dimensional Superconducting Fluctuations Associated with Charge-Density-Wave Stripes in La1.87Sr0.13Cu0.99Fe0.01O4, Physical Review Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.167001

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-scientists-glimpse-puzzling-state-sup...

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