Soybean – The Interesting Legume

Soybean is an interesting plant. It provides a valuable protein source for human and animal consumption, it is an important feedstock for biodiesel production, and it interacts with soil-borne bacteria (Rhizobia) that capture atmospheric nitrogen and store it in the soil, a beneficial side-effect utilized during crop rotation. In an effort to unlock the full power of this plant, scientists have sequenced the soybean genome.

“Most people are familiar with sequencing of the human genome,” begins Jeremy Schmutz, faculty scientist at Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, a partner laboratory with the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI). “The soybean genome was sequenced to provide scientists a better understanding of plant productivity, complex biochemical pathways, such as oil production, and pest and pathogen resistance just like the human genome is helping scientists to understand human diseases.”

The scientific team, led by Schmutz, used a process called “whole genome shotgun” to sequence the entire genome as a single effort. “With this technique, we were able to sequence and order the genome at one time so the scientific community could go directly from the genome sequence to breeding new varieties of soybean” said Schmutz.

At first glance, the soybean genome is an impressive size - 1,115 mega -base pairs (Mbp) (1,115,000 base pairs) – about 1/3 the size of the human genome, which contains approximately 3,000 Mbp. But by plant standards, the soybean genome is relatively small and tractable for genomics research.

The soybean genome, like other plant genomes, displays a feature called polyploidy. Schmutz explains, “During seed generation, whole regions of the genome can be duplicated. These duplications can infer a competitive advantage to the plant allowing it to thrive.”

Angry Flies are used in the Explain Human Aggression

Recently, biologist David Anderson set out to learn whether flies, like bees, can get angry--part of a broader effort to study how animal behavior relates to genetics.

"Every time you swat a fly away from your hamburger, it seems to come back to the food more aggressively or persistently," Anderson said. "People might wonder about whether there's such a thing as an 'angry' fly, but no one would challenge the idea of an angry bee--especially someone who's been stung by one."

To test his hypothesis, Anderson--who currently has two projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator at Caltech--created an experiment modeled after the traditional "bees-at-the-picnic-table" scenario using Drosophila, the common fruit fly (or more accurately, the vinegar fly).

"We developed the 'puff-o-mat' apparatus, with the idea of putting some fly food at one end, and then blowing the flies away from the food with a gentle puff of air every time they got close to it," he said. "Then we measured whether the flies became more agitated and approached the food more aggressively after experiencing this frustrating experience several times."As it turned out, they didn't even need the food.

"To our surprise," Anderson said, "simply blowing the flies off their feet several times in a row was sufficient to get them riled up. So we decided to focus on that--the agitation response--because it was much simpler to set up without the food, and without starving the flies. The part with the food never made it into the final paper," he added, referring to a study published in the journal Nature in early December, 2009.

The flies showed a primitive emotion-like behavior. Prompted by a series of brisk air puffs delivered in rapid succession, the flies ran around their test chambers in a frantic manner, and kept it up for several minutes. Even after the flies had calmed down, they remained hypersensitive to a single air puff.

The research showed that Drosophila produces a pheromone--a chemical messenger--that promotes aggression, and directly linked it to specific neurons in the fly's antenna. Anderson and his colleagues believe that the findings ultimately may be relevant to the relationship between the neurotransmitter dopamine and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The brain of Drosophila contains about 20,000 neurons, and has long been considered a valuable system with which to study the genetic basis of learning, courtship, memory and circadian rhythms.

In recent years, Drosophila research has also been a powerful tool with which to study emotions. Most of the genes in the fruit fly are also in humans, including neurons that produce brain chemicals associated with several psychiatric disorders.

For example, in an earlier study, the researchers demonstrated how Drosophila hunkers down and stops moving in response to a steady wind--a sensory tool that could improve how the insects navigate during flight, and could help scientists learn more about the nervous system.
Anderson came to this field of research after amassing an impressive record studying the developmental biology of neural stem cells in mice. He decided he wanted to try something new. Switching scientific directions mid-career is always risky, it takes courage and a willingness to fail, but Anderson was game.

Resource http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/

Scientists dive to explore unique bacterial community

There’s not much in the ice-covered lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys to interest anglers looking to land the big one. But for scientists who want to know more about some of Earth’s earliest organisms — and, by extension, to recognize what life may look like on other planets — those unique ecosystems represent a useful portal to the past.

Indeed, the lack of fish or other animals high on the food chain has allowed the microorganisms that live within the lakes to flourish unmolested, developing into communities thick enough to accumulate in layers on the lake bottoms.

“The cool part is that you can see microbial ecosystems on a landscape scale. There aren’t too many places around the world where you can do that,” noted Dale Andersen, with the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe and principal investigator on a project to learn more about the microorganisms that dwell in Lake Joyce.

Lake Joyce — one of about a dozen perennially ice-crusted lakes spread throughout the valleys — is all the more unique in that it is one of only two known lakes in the region where the microbes have produced microbialites. These carbonate structures, composed of the same minerals that make up a coral reef, grow right in the layers of cyanobacteria, called microbial mats.

Andersen explained that his team, funded by NASA’s Exobiology Program and supported in the field by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is interested in learning more about the conditions that allow these organisms to grow and flourish in their dark and cold ecosystem. In turn, that information should shed light on the behavior of similar organisms billions of years ago.

“There are only a few places in the world where you can go to find living examples of those earlier ecosystems,” Andersen stressed. “The lakes in the Dry Valleys actually provide a very nice window back in time to compare notes, so to speak, with the fossil record.”

Andersen has made two previous trips to Lake Joyce, where he first discovered the carbonate structures growing from the microbial mat communities at about 20 meters depth. This will be the first extended study of the carbonate structures in a Dry Valleys lake, he said.

“The initial observations that we have are that the structures are pretty cool and there’s lots going on, but we don’t know much about them,” Andersen said.

“Each lake is totally different,” he added. “The external factors seem to be pushing the communities in different directions. That’s part of what makes these very unique ecosystems interesting to study — they’re essentially right next to one another and they’re each so very distinctive.”

New wind farm in Antarctica to help power U.S., New Zealand research stations

Electrical power generation has gotten a different spin for two Antarctic research bases. U.S. and New Zealand officials held an opening ceremony on Jan. 16 for a three-turbine wind farm recently built on Ross Island. U.S. Ambassador David Huebner and New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully officiated by video link with the site from New Zealand’s northern city of Auckland.

Live from Antarctica!
Check out the Antarctica New Zealand Wind Farm Web camera for a near real-time look at the turbines and the nearby sea ice.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also scheduled to attend the ceremony in Auckland, but was called away to help deal with the earthquake crisis in Haiti.

The wind farm will help power both McMurdo Station, the main research base for the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), and Antarctica New Zealand’s Scott Base. The two facilities, which support a range of polar research, are only about 2 miles apart and share logistical operations.
Each wind turbine can generate up to 330 kilowatts on a site called Crater Hill between McMurdo Station and Scott Base. Engineers estimate the wind farm will cut fuel consumption by about 240,000 gallons every year.

Wind-generated electricity will account for up to 15 percent of McMurdo Station’s annual electricity demand, but nearly all of Scott Base’s. Currently, both stations draw all of their electrical and heat demand from diesel generators and diesel-fired boilers.

Officials from the National Science Foundation, which manages the USAP, were expected to hold a separate ceremony to commemorate the green achievement on Jan. 20. NSF Director Arden Bement and NSF Office of Polar Programs Director Karl Erb were both to be in attendnace. Bement and Erb also attended a plaque dedication on the site of a former nuclear power plant that was shut down about 40 years ago — the one and only such facility built and operated in Antarctica.

Total cost of the wind turbine project was about $7.4 million, with New Zealand covering most of the cost as part of its contribution to the two countries’ shared logistics pool.USAP personnel upgraded roads and transported equipment to Crater Hill, as well as conducted site surveys and provided various supplies and equipment, to support the construction.If deemed successful, the wind farm may be expanded in other areas around Ross Island to further reduce McMurdo Station’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Bugs: Victims of Climate Change

If it were up to Jessica Hellmann, insects such as butterflies and beetles would wield just as much conservation clout as traditional conservation icons, such as polar bears, tigers and dolphins.

Why?
"Animals such as polar bears, tigers and dolphins are tremendously important, but mostly because they help define how we think about our relationship with the natural world," says Hellmann. "But when it comes to the functioning of ecosystems, insects are where it's at."

Why are insects so ecologically important? "They carry diseases, they pollinate and they have economic impacts on crops and timber," says Hellmann, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame. In fact, almost 80 percent of the world's crop plants require pollination, and the annual value of insect-pollinated crops in the U.S. is about $20 billion. What's more, most of the multicellular living organisms on Earth are insects.

They are also particularly sensitive to climate change--as invertebrates, they can't regulate their own body temperatures--making them "great little thermometers," Hellmann adds.
On the road again
How will those "great little thermometers" respond when climate change makes their habitats too hot or too dry for them?
Research conducted by Hellmann and Shannon Pelini, one of Hellmann's doctoral students, indicates that global warming may affect a single insect species differently throughout its various life stages, and that global warming affects different insect species in different ways.

Most importantly, as climate change progresses, some insects may become trapped--like fish out of water--in habitats that can no longer support them. The insects may therefore go extinct or lose genetically important segments of their populations. But other species, and no one knows which ones yet, may be able to reach cooler climates by moving north on their own.

Will such mobile species be able to survive on the unfamiliar plants living in their new habitats? To help answer that question, Pelini conducted laboratory experiments that involve exposing caterpillars of two butterfly species to climates and plants that occur across their ranges, and then monitoring the growth and survival rates of these groups.

She will soon announce in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) how populations of these two butterfly species that live at the edges of their ranges will be affected by climate change and the various factors that may limit or reduce their northward expansion.

Hellmann is currently following up on Pelini's research by surveying thousands of genes in the two butterfly species in order to identify the genes that are turned off or on by climate change. These studies are designed to reveal the genetic bases for the tolerance of some insect species to climate change and the intolerance of others.

Real hero: Farley Mowat

Born: 1921 Belleville, Ontario Canada

Why he’s an Environmental Star! While living in Saskatchewan, young Farley visited the Arctic and started his lifelong passion for the preservation of Canada’s wildlife. Farley is one of Canada’s most famous conservationists and storytellers.

Schooling: University of Toronto

Facts and Figures: Farley’s books have sold over 18 million copies worldwide in 24 languages. Owls in the Family is perhaps Farley’s most famous book. A story that many Canadians have read in school, it is a popular tale about a young boy, his pets and their adventures together and a great read!

Did you know?

Farley is the great-grand-nephew of Ontario premier Sir Oliver Mowat
At the age of 13, Mowat founded a nature newsletter called Nature Lore.

Most awesome thing about Farley Mowat:

He was inspired to write the 1963 book Never Cry Wolf after spending time living in the Arctic observing the lives of wolves. At the time people were concerned with the declining caribou populations and suspected that the wolves were eating the caribou. They decided that the best way to protect the caribou would be to kill some of the wolves. After months of observation Farley concluded that the opposite was true! The wolves actually strengthened the caribou tribe because the wolves mainly ate field mice and only ate old or sick caribou — killing off the weakest. Farley concluded that the hunters in the area were using the wolves as scapegoats for the decline of the caribous, when in fact they were the ones hunting and killing them.

About Deep Space Communications

One of the most important and predominant functions involved in the exploration of space is its communication system. This system is responsible for sending scientific data from spacecraft back to Earth. It also provides the capability of tracking the spacecraft and commanding it to take certain actions. Without an effective communications system a successful mission would not be possible.

The challenge of deep space communication has been the enormous range of distances that spacecraft have traveled in the past 50 years. Planetary spacecraft have reached distant planets tens of billions of miles from Earth, and have successfully performed their functions. The necessity of minimizing spacecraft mass presents a major challenge to communications system engineers, as engineers must consider the issues of providing power supply, antennae, and many other necessary devices and supporting elements for a communications system. Another important challenge is the extreme reliability required of the communications systems on the spacecraft. Once the spacecraft is launched, on-board failures can be repaired only by relying upon redundant and adaptive systems. Communication engineers must take into consideration such factors as system degradation, aging, and imperfect antenna positioning, as well as operations and data procedures.

In the past, spacecraft data return rates have been tens to hundreds of kilobits per second (kbps) and uplink command data rates have been limited to a few kbps. Recent missions such as MRO can transmit data to Earth at rates as high as 6 megabits per second. For more demanding missions in the near future, much higher data capabilities will be required.
DSN image

The Deep Space Network (DSN) operated for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), provides deep space communications, tracking of spacecraft, and performs many scientific experiments. Because future space missions promise to explore the far reaches of the solar system and beyond, the DSN would need to expand its technological and communications capabilities to meet greater science data return rates and the requirements of advanced spacecraft. For example, by one estimate, the DSN might have to support over twice the missions in 2020 as it supported in 2005, and the data rate from each mission could average at least a factor of 10 higher.

The DSN consists of antenna arrays in 3 locations around the world; near Madrid, Spain; near Canberra, Australia; the Goldstone facility in California’s Mojave Desert, and the command center at JPL in California. These facilities, approximately 120 degrees apart on Earth, provide constant coverage for a mission at critical times. Each facility has a number of antennae some of which can be operated as an array, including at least two 34-meter arrays, and a giant 70-meter array in each location. Use of the arrays is scheduled well in advance for all interplanetary missions as their use is in high demand.

To enable future critical space exploration missions, new technology investments are needed so that future programs will continue to be successful and affordable (i.e. no specific program can afford to bear the burden of the technology development by itself). JPL sponsors internal development of several deep space communications efforts.