scholarly journals Biofortification of Rice Grains for Increased Iron Content

2021 ◽  
pp. 471-486
Author(s):  
Jerlie Mhay Matres ◽  
Erwin Arcillas ◽  
Maria Florida Cueto-Reaño ◽  
Ruby Sallan-Gonzales ◽  
Kurniawan R. Trijatmiko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rice Genome ◽  
World Population ◽  
Metal Transporter ◽  
Safety Assurance ◽  
Multiple Genes ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
Rice Consumption ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Breeding Target

AbstractDietary iron (Fe) deficiency affects 14% of the world population with significant health impacts. Biofortification is the process of increasing the density of vitamins and minerals in a crop, through conventional breeding, biotechnology approaches, or agronomic practices. This process has recently been shown to successfully alleviate micronutrient deficiency for populations with limited access to diverse diets in several countries (https://www.harvestplus.org/). The Fe breeding target in the HarvestPlus program was set based on average rice consumption to fulfil 30% of the Estimated Average Requirement of Fe in women and children. In this review, we present the reported transgenic approaches to increase grain Fe. Insertion of a single or multiple genes encoding iron storage protein, metal transporter, or enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of metal chelator in the rice genome was shown to be a viable approach to significantly increase grain-Fe density. The most successful approach to reach the Fe breeding target was by overexpression of multiple genes. Despite this success, a significant effort of 8–10 years needs to be dedicated from the proof of concept to varietal release. This includes large-scale plant transformation, event selection, collection of data for premarket safety assurance, securing biosafety permits for consumption and propagation, and collection of data for variety registration.

scholarly journals ESD Ideas: Photoelectrochemical carbon removal as negative emission technology

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias M. May ◽  
Kira Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
World Population ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Low Carbon Economy ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Negative Emission ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Negative Emission Technologies

Abstract. The pace of the transition to a low-carbon economy – especially in the fuels sector – is not high enough to achieve the 2 ∘C target limit for global warming by only cutting emissions. Most political roadmaps to tackle global warming implicitly rely on the timely availability of mature negative emission technologies, which actively invest energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it permanently. The models used as a basis for decarbonization policies typically assume an implementation of such large-scale negative emission technologies starting around the year 2030, ramped up to cause net negative emissions in the second half of the century and balancing earlier CO2 release. On average, a contribution of −10 Gt CO2 yr−1 is expected by 2050 (Anderson and Peters, 2016). A viable approach for negative emissions should (i) rely on a scalable and sustainable source of energy (solar), (ii) result in a safely storable product, (iii) be highly efficient in terms of water and energy use, to reduce the required land area and competition with water and food demands of a growing world population, and (iv) feature large-scale feasibility and affordability.

scholarly journals Ideas: Photoelectrochemical carbon removal as negative emission technology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias M. May ◽  
Kira Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
World Population ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Low Carbon Economy ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Negative Emission ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Negative Emission Technologies

Abstract. The pace of the transition to a low-carbon economy – especially in the fuels sector – is not high enough to achieve the 2 °C target limit for global warming by only cutting emissions. Most political roadmaps to tackle global warming implicitly rely on the timely availability of mature negative emission technologies, which actively invest energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it permanently. The models used as a basis for decarbonisation policies typically assume an implementation of such large-scale negative emission technologies starting around the year 2030, ramped up to cause net negative emissions in the second half of the century and balancing earlier CO2 release. On average, a contribution of −10 Gt CO2/year is expected by 2050.(Anderson and Peters, 2016) A viable approach for negative emissions should (i) rely on an unlimited source of energy (solar), (ii) result in a safely storable product (e.g. liquid or solid, not gaseous), (iii) be highly efficient in terms of water and energy use, to reduce the required land area and competition with water and food demands of a growing world population and (iv) be large-scale feasibility and affordability.

The Potential of Photoelectrochemical Carbon Sinks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias May ◽  
Kira Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
High Temperature ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Carbon Sink ◽  
Solar Fuels ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Low Sensitivity

Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to limit global warming to 1.5-2C above preindustrial levels. Yet the rate of decarbonisation is currently too low to achieve this. Policy-relevant scenarios therefore rely on the permanent removal of CO<sub>2</sub> from the atmosphere. However, none of the envisaged technologies has demonstrated scalability to the decarbonization targets for the year 2050. In this analysis, we show that artificial photosynthesis for CO<sub>2</sub> reduction may deliver an efficient large-scale carbon sink. This technology is mainly developed towards solar fuels and its potential for negative emissions has been largely overlooked. With high efficiency and low sensitivity to high temperature and illumination conditions, it could, if developed towards a mature technology, present a viable approach to fill the gap in the negative emissions budget.<br>

The Potential of Photoelectrochemical Carbon Sinks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias May ◽  
Kira Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
High Temperature ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Carbon Sink ◽  
Solar Fuels ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Low Sensitivity

Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to limit global warming to 1.5-2C above preindustrial levels. Yet the rate of decarbonisation is currently too low to achieve this. Policy-relevant scenarios therefore rely on the permanent removal of CO<sub>2</sub> from the atmosphere. However, none of the envisaged technologies has demonstrated scalability to the decarbonization targets for the year 2050. In this analysis, we show that artificial photosynthesis for CO<sub>2</sub> reduction may deliver an efficient large-scale carbon sink. This technology is mainly developed towards solar fuels and its potential for negative emissions has been largely overlooked. With high efficiency and low sensitivity to high temperature and illumination conditions, it could, if developed towards a mature technology, present a viable approach to fill the gap in the negative emissions budget.<br>

scholarly journals Flavonoid-Modifying Capabilities of the Human Gut Microbiome—An In Silico Study

Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 2688
Author(s):  
Tobias Goris ◽  
Rafael R. C. Cuadrat ◽  
Annett Braune
Keyword(s):  
Gut Microbiome ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Health Impact ◽  
Gut Bacteria ◽  
Human Gut ◽  
Positive Health ◽  
Human Gut Microbiome ◽  
Nutritional Recommendations ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
A Minor

Flavonoids are a major group of dietary plant polyphenols and have a positive health impact, but their modification and degradation in the human gut is still widely unknown. Due to the rise of metagenome data of the human gut microbiome and the assembly of hundreds of thousands of bacterial metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), large-scale screening for potential flavonoid-modifying enzymes of human gut bacteria is now feasible. With sequences of characterized flavonoid-transforming enzymes as queries, the Unified Human Gastrointestinal Protein catalog was analyzed and genes encoding putative flavonoid-modifying enzymes were quantified. The results revealed that flavonoid-modifying enzymes are often encoded in gut bacteria hitherto not considered to modify flavonoids. The enzymes for the physiologically important daidzein-to-equol conversion, well studied in Slackiaisoflavoniconvertens, were encoded only to a minor extent in Slackia MAGs, but were more abundant in Adlercreutzia equolifaciens and an uncharacterized Eggerthellaceae species. In addition, enzymes with a sequence identity of about 35% were encoded in highly abundant MAGs of uncultivated Collinsella species, which suggests a hitherto uncharacterized daidzein-to-equol potential in these bacteria. Of all potential flavonoid modification steps, O-deglycosylation (including derhamnosylation) was by far the most abundant in this analysis. In contrast, enzymes putatively involved in C-deglycosylation were detected less often in human gut bacteria and mainly found in Agathobacter faecis (formerly Roseburia faecis). Homologs to phloretin hydrolase, flavanonol/flavanone-cleaving reductase and flavone reductase were of intermediate abundance (several hundred MAGs) and mainly prevalent in Flavonifractor plautii. This first comprehensive insight into the black box of flavonoid modification in the human gut highlights many hitherto overlooked and uncultured bacterial genera and species as potential key organisms in flavonoid modification. This could lead to a significant contribution to future biochemical-microbiological investigations on gut bacterial flavonoid transformation. In addition, our results are important for individual nutritional recommendations and for biotechnological applications that rely on novel enzymes catalyzing potentially useful flavonoid modification reactions.

scholarly journals Arabidopsis Genes Essential for Seedling Viability: Isolation of Insertional Mutants and Molecular Cloning

Genetics ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 159 (4) ◽  
pp. 1765-1778
Author(s):  
Gregory J Budziszewski ◽  
Sharon Potter Lewis ◽  
Lyn Wegrich Glover ◽  
Jennifer Reineke ◽  
Gary Jones ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Protein Translocation ◽  
Gene Families ◽  
Mutant Phenotype ◽  
Lethal Mutant ◽  
A Genome ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
High Level ◽  
Mutant Lines ◽  
Genome Scale

Abstract We have undertaken a large-scale genetic screen to identify genes with a seedling-lethal mutant phenotype. From screening ~38,000 insertional mutant lines, we identified &gt;500 seedling-lethal mutants, completed cosegregation analysis of the insertion and the lethal phenotype for &gt;200 mutants, molecularly characterized 54 mutants, and provided a detailed description for 22 of them. Most of the seedling-lethal mutants seem to affect chloroplast function because they display altered pigmentation and affect genes encoding proteins predicted to have chloroplast localization. Although a high level of functional redundancy in Arabidopsis might be expected because 65% of genes are members of gene families, we found that 41% of the essential genes found in this study are members of Arabidopsis gene families. In addition, we isolated several interesting classes of mutants and genes. We found three mutants in the recently discovered nonmevalonate isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway and mutants disrupting genes similar to Tic40 and tatC, which are likely to be involved in chloroplast protein translocation. Finally, we directly compared T-DNA and Ac/Ds transposon mutagenesis methods in Arabidopsis on a genome scale. In each population, we found only about one-third of the insertion mutations cosegregated with a mutant phenotype.

scholarly journals Alterations of mesenchymal stromal cells in cerebrospinal fluid: insights from transcriptomics and an ALS clinical trial

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley A. Krull ◽  
Deborah O. Setter ◽  
Tania F. Gendron ◽  
Sybil C. L. Hrstka ◽  
Michael J. Polzin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Cerebrospinal Fluid ◽  
Growth Factors ◽  
Mesenchymal Stromal Cells ◽  
Stromal Cells ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Therapeutic Benefit ◽  
Protein Levels ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
Intrathecal Space

Abstract Background Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have been studied with increasing intensity as clinicians and researchers strive to understand the ability of MSCs to modulate disease progression and promote tissue regeneration. As MSCs are used for diverse applications, it is important to appreciate how specific physiological environments may stimulate changes that alter the phenotype of the cells. One need for neuroregenerative applications is to characterize the spectrum of MSC responses to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) environment after their injection into the intrathecal space. Mechanistic understanding of cellular biology in response to the CSF environment may predict the ability of MSCs to promote injury repair or provide neuroprotection in neurodegenerative diseases. Methods In this study, we characterized changes in morphology, metabolism, and gene expression occurring in human adipose-derived MSCs cultured in human (hCSF) or artificial CSF (aCSF) as well as examined relevant protein levels in the CSF of subjects treated with MSCs for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Results Our results demonstrated that, under intrathecal-like conditions, MSCs retained their morphology, though they became quiescent. Large-scale transcriptomic analysis of MSCs revealed a distinct gene expression profile for cells cultured in aCSF. The aCSF culture environment induced expression of genes related to angiogenesis and immunomodulation. In addition, MSCs in aCSF expressed genes encoding nutritional growth factors to expression levels at or above those of control cells. Furthermore, we observed a dose-dependent increase in growth factors and immunomodulatory cytokines in CSF from subjects with ALS treated intrathecally with autologous MSCs. Conclusions Overall, our results suggest that MSCs injected into the intrathecal space in ongoing clinical trials remain viable and may provide a therapeutic benefit to patients.

scholarly journals Global sequence characterization of rice centromeric satellite based on oligomer frequency analysis in large-scale sequencing data

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (17) ◽  
pp. 2101-2108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiří Macas ◽  
Pavel Neumann ◽  
Petr Novák ◽  
Jiming Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rice Genome ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Satellite Repeat ◽  
Frequency Spectra ◽  
Consensus Sequences ◽  
Chip Sequencing ◽  
Conserved Sequence ◽  
Centromeric Satellite

Abstract Motivation: Satellite DNA makes up significant portion of many eukaryotic genomes, yet it is relatively poorly characterized even in extensively sequenced species. This is, in part, due to methodological limitations of traditional methods of satellite repeat analysis, which are based on multiple alignments of monomer sequences. Therefore, we employed an alternative, alignment-free, approach utilizing k-mer frequency statistics, which is in principle more suitable for analyzing large sets of satellite repeat data, including sequence reads from next generation sequencing technologies. Results: k-mer frequency spectra were determined for two sets of rice centromeric satellite CentO sequences, including 454 reads from ChIP-sequencing of CENH3-bound DNA (7.6 Mb) and the whole genome Sanger sequencing reads (5.8 Mb). k-mer frequencies were used to identify the most conserved sequence regions and to reconstruct consensus sequences of complete monomers. Reconstructed consensus sequences as well as the assessment of overall divergence of k-mer spectra revealed high similarity of the two datasets, suggesting that CentO sequences associated with functional centromeres (CENH3-bound) do not significantly differ from the total population of CentO, which includes both centromeric and pericentromeric repeat arrays. On the other hand, considerable differences were revealed when these methods were used for comparison of CentO populations between individual chromosomes of the rice genome assembly, demonstrating preferential sequence homogenization of the clusters within the same chromosome. k-mer frequencies were also successfully used to identify and characterize smRNAs derived from CentO repeats. Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

scholarly journals Contamination of Asian herbal drugs : Need for its critical evaluation

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.K. Gupta ◽  
G. Prasad ◽  
A.K. Chopra ◽  
D.R. Khanna
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Chemical Components ◽  
Severe Adverse Effect ◽  
World Population ◽  
Herbal Drugs ◽  
Human Pathogens ◽  
Dual Action

Herbal drugs have been used as remedies for the treatment of large number of humans, ailments since ancient times as the traditional medicine system; India has a glorious past, having first documented record of fully developed medical science known as Ayurveda written by several ancient Rishi’s. Major groups of indigenous system of medicine are based on herbal drugs. A survey made by WHO indicated that about 80% of the world population relies on herbal drugs. Herbal drugs are becoming more popularized and important even in the developednations with hope of their non-toxicity and may play a role of substitute to overcome the problems of multi drug resistant pathogens. Cultivation of drug plants has been started in large scale without considering the land quality and in certain cases irrigation with waste water. Application of different fungicides, pesticides in that specific field or in neighboring fields may be directly deposited superficially or may be absorbed by the plant system. Therefore in the present situation possibilities of the Asian herbal drugs, contaminated with large number of toxic components cannot be ignored which may severely hurt human life in place of healing or curing.These contaminants may be either alone or in combination and may be originated intrinsically, extrinsically and deliberately. Certain contaminants may be highly toxic and may cause severe adverse effect in the human system. Some of the important contaminants are the heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, copper and pesticides. Adulteration of modern drugs to enhance drug potency and heterogenous microbial population including human pathogens may contaminate both raw and powdered herbal drugs. Among these contaminants, microbial contamination seems more severe and may be due to their dual action on the drug i.e. utilization of medicinally important chemical components as nutrients and in certain cases by producing certain mycotoxins, which may be even carcinogenic under certain conditions . Critical evaluation of both raw and powdered herbal drugs for contaminants is the urgent need of the time in order to provide safety measures in herbal health care medicine.

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