Nutritional Value of Black Soldier Fly Grown on Abattoir Waste

Meat processing plants generate a range of solid and liquid wastes, including manure, paunch solids, and biological solids from wastewater treatment. There is growing interest in alternative technologies for treating abattoir waste, including using insects to transform waste into high-value products. Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae may be a competitive source of digestible amino acids and, depending on the protein digestibility, can be used as a replacement for fish meal, soybean meal or cottonseed meal in livestock and aquaculture rations. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of using different substrates and substrate mixes from abattoir waste streams on the nutritional quality of BSF harvested at two growth stages (larvae and prepupae). Protein digestibility was evaluated using an adapted pepsin digestion. Averaged across all substrates, there was no difference between growth stages in total protein content (43.7%). However, protein digestibility was higher for larvae (86.5%) than for prepupae (65.1%). The substrate used greatly influenced the nutritional composition of BSF. Prepupae protein content varied from 42 to 48% and protein digestibility varied from 42 to 80%, according to the substrate. Variation in larvae across substrates was greater than prepupae for protein content (34% to 53%) but much lower for digestibility (80% to 91%). Both substrate and growth stage altered the mineral composition of BSF prepupae and larvae. Iron levels varied from 79 (paunch) to 453 mg/kg DM (substrate containing blood), illustrating the plasticity of BSF. In conclusion, BSF can be used to transform abattoir waste into high-value products.

Single Cell Systems Analysis: Decision Geometry in Outliers

Anticer-therapeutics of the highest calibre currently focus on combinatorial targeting of specific oncoproteins and tumour suppressors. Clinical relapse depends upon intratumoral heterogeneity which serves as substrate variation during evolution of resistance to therapeutic regimens. The present review advocates single cell systems biology as the optimal level of analysis for remediation of clinical relapse. Graph theory approaches to understanding decision-making in single cells may be abstracted one level further, to the geometry of decision-making in outlier cells, in order to define evolution-resistant cancer biomarkers. Systems biologists currently working with omics data are invited to consider phase portrait analysis as a mediator between graph theory and deep learning approaches. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the tangible clinical needs of cancer patients may depend upon the adoption of higher level mathematical abstractions of cancer biology.

Spatial distribution of echinoderms in littoral area of Ambon Island, Eastern Indonesia

Setyastuti A, Purbiantoro W, Hadiyanto. 2018. Spatial distribution of echinoderms in littoral area of Ambon Island, EasternIndonesia. Biodiversitas 19: 1919-1925. Echinoderms samples were collected in Ambon Island as part of the marine resourceinventories designed to study the biodiversity of Maluku Archipelago. The purpose of this works was to investigate the abundance andgenus richness of echinoderms within the five sampling sites using single transect orthogonal to the coast consisted of 10-quadrat plot of5x5m, the distance between plots was 10m at each site. Furthermore, this study also aimed to understand the relation of substrate typeand community composition within those five sites. The substrate was classified into four types (sea-grass, macro-algae, sand, rocksand/or dead coral) noted by presence/absence mark at each plot. The differences in total abundance and genus richness among thosesites were analyzed using an Analysis of Deviance following a Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) fitted by Poisson and log link.However, in term of genus composition, the data were visualized using a Principal Coordination Analysis (PCoA) plots calculated fromBray-Curtis dissimilarity based on the log (x+1) transformed abundance data. A total of 910 individuals of echinoderms belonging to 19genera was successfully recorded. Total abundance of echinoderms was different significantly among sites (p<0.05). The most abundantechinoderms were collected from Tanjung Tiram, approximately 68.71 individuals/quadrat, which was almost 1.4 times than those inLiang and even 4 times than those in Suli. The genus composition between sites was significantly different (p<0.05). The composition ofsubstrate types among sites was not significantly different (p>0.05), however the composition of substrates correlated significantly withthe composition of echinoderms genus (p<0.05, rho=0.36). In conclusion, more complex the substrate variation in an area will affect thediversity and abundance of Echinoderms community therein.

Temporal fitness fluctuations in experimental Arabidopsis thaliana populations

Understanding the genetics of lifetime fitness is crucial to understand a species’ ecological preferences and ultimately predict its ability to cope with novel environmental conditions. Yet, there is a dearth of information regarding the impact of the ecological variance experienced by natural populations on expressed phenotypic and fitness differences. Here, we follow the natural dynamics of experimental A. thaliana populations over 5 successive plantings whose timing was determined by the natural progression of the plant’s life cycle and disentangle the environmental and genetic factors that drive plant ecological performance at a given locality. We show that, at the intermediate latitude where the experiment was conducted, a given genotype can experience different life cycles across successive seasons. Lifetime fitness across these seasons varied strongly, with a fall planting yielding 36-fold higher fitness compared to a spring planting. In addition, the actual life-stage at which plant overwinter oscillated across years, depending on the timing of the end of the summer season. We observed a rare but severe fitness differential after inadequate early flowering in one of the five planting. Substrate variation played a comparatively minor role, but also contributed to modulate the magnitude of fitness differentials between genotypes. Finally, reciprocal introgressions on chromosome 4 demonstrated that the fitness effect of a specific chromosomal region is strongly contingent on micro-geographic and seasonal fluctuations. Our study contributes to emphasize the extent to which the fitness impact of phenotypic traits and the genes that encode them in the genome can fluctuate. Experiments aiming at dissecting the molecular basis of local adaptation must apprehend the complexity introduced by temporal fluctuations because they massively affect the expression of phenotype and fitness differences.