Bacterium Sequenced Makes Rare Form Of Chlorophyll
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Arizona State University have sequenced the genome of a rare bacterium that harvests light energy by making an even rarer form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll d. Chlorophyll d absorbs “red edge,” near infrared, long wave length light, invisible to the naked eye. In so doing, the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina, competes with virtually no other plant or bacterium in the world for sunlight. As a result, its genome is massive for a cyanobacterium, comprising 8.3 million base pairs, and sophisticated. The genome is among the very largest of 55 cyanobacterial strains in the world sequenced thus far, and it is the first chlorophyll d -containing organism to be sequenced . Robert Blankenship. Ph.D., Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, and principal investigator of the project, said with every gene of Acaryochloris marina now sequenced and annotated, the immediate goal is to find the enzyme that causes a chemical structure change in chlorophyll d, making it different from primarily chlorophyll a, and b, but also from about nine other forms of chlorophyll. “The synthesis of chlorophyll by an organism is complex, involving 17 different steps in all,” Blankenship said. “Some place near the end of this process an enzyme transforms a vinyl group to a formyl group to make chlorophyll d. This transformation of chemical forms is not known in any other chlorophyll molecules.” Blankenship said he and his collaborators have some candidate genes they will test. They hope to insert these genes into an organism that makes just chlorophyll a. If the organism learns to synthesize chlorophyll d with one of the genes, the mystery of chlorophyll d synthesis will be solved, and then the excitement will begin. Blankenship and his colleagues from both institutions published a paper on their work in the Feb. 4, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and also involved collaborators from Australia and Japan. Three Washington University undergraduate students and one graduate student participated in the project, as well as other research personnel. Harvesting solar power through plants or other organisms that would be genetically altered with the chlorophyll d gene could make them solar power factories that generate and store solar energy. Consider a seven-foot tall corn plant genetically tailored with the chlorophyll d gene to be expressed at the very base of the stalk. While the rest of the plant synthesized chlorophyll a, absorbing short wave light, the base is absorbing “red edge” light in the 710 nanometer range. Energy could be stored in the base without competing with any other part of the plant for photosynthesis, as the rest only makes chlorophyll a. Also, the altered corn using the chlorophyll d gene could become a super plant because of its enhanced ability to harness energy from the sun. That model is similar to how Acaryochloris marina actually operates in the South Pacific, specifically Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Discovered just 11 years ago, the cyanobacterium lives in a symbiotic relationship with a sponge-like marine animal popularly called a sea squirt . The Acaryochloris marina lives beneath the sea squirt, which is a marine animal that lives attached to rocks just below the surface of the water. The cyanobacterium absorbs “red edge” light through the tissues of its pal the sea squirt. The genome, said Blankenship, is ” fat and happy. Acaryochloris marina lies down there using that far red light that no one else can use. The organism has never been under very strong selection pressure to be lean and mean like other bacteria are. It’s kind of in a sweet spot. Living in this environment is what allowed it to have such dramatic genome expansion.” Blankenship said that once the gene that causes the late-step chemical transformation is found and inserted successfully into other plants or organisms, that it could potentially represent a five percent increase in available light for organisms to use. “We now have genetic information on a unique organism that makes this type of pigment that no other organism does,” Blankenship said. “We don’t know what all the genes do by any means. But we’ve just begun the analysis. When we find the chlorophyll d enzyme and then look into transferring it into other organisms, we’ll be working to extend the range of potentially useful photosynthesis radiation.’
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Online Cruise Buyers Want Offline Help
Online travel companies say that potential travelers looking to book a cruise are more comfortable talking to human sales people than just purchasing costly trips on the Internet.read more
Google Search API Questioned Again
Industry pros have never been fully happy with the results they receive through Google’s Search API. read more
Bio-Crude Turns Cheap Waste Into Valuable Fuel
The bio-crude oil can be used to produce high value chemicals and biofuels, including both petrol and diesel replacement fuels. “By making changes to the chemical process, we’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world,” says Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences. “This makes it practical and economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central refinery, overcoming the high costs and greenhouse gas emissions otherwise involved in transporting bulky green wastes over long distances.” The process uses low value waste such as forest thinnings, crop residues, waste paper and garden waste, significant amounts of which are currently dumped in landfill or burned. “By using waste, our Furafuel technology overcomes the food versus fuel debate which surrounds biofuels generated from grains, corn and sugar,” says Dr Loffler. “The project forms part of CSIRO’s commitment to delivering cleaner energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by improving technologies for converting waste biomass to transport fuels.” The plant wastes being targeted for conversion into biofuels contain chemicals known as lignocellulose, which is increasingly favoured around the world as a raw material for the next generation of bio-ethanol. Lignocellulose is both renewable and potentially greenhouse gas neutral. It is predominantly found in trees and is made up of cellulose; lignin, a natural plastic; and hemicellulose. CSIRO and Monash University will apply to patent the chemical processes underpinning the conversion of green wastes to bio-crude oil once final laboratory trials are completed. The research to date is supported by funding from CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship program, Monash University, Circa Group and Forest Wood Products Australia.
New(ish) Gmail Reaching Speakers Of 37 Languages
There’s something seemingly futile about discussing language options; after all, anyone who’s reading this article already understands English. Still, we’re somewhat excited to report that Google is releasing a new version of Gmail in 37 languages.read more
Online Video, Men And Women
In a new study that looks at what types of online video people view, Nielsen Online found that women lean towards watching network television online and men favor user-generated content. Women are almost twice as likely as men to watch online video on TV networks Web sites, while on user- generated sites such as YouTube, men 18 to 34 were more than twice as likely as women in the same age group to watch videos.read more
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UA Optical Scientists Add New, Practical Dimension To Holography
University of Arizona optical scientists have broken a technological barrier by making three-dimensional holographic displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes. The holographic displays - which are viewed without special eyewear - are the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory ever to be developed, making them ideal tools for medical, industrial and military applications that require “situational awareness.” “This is a new type of device, nothing like the tiny hologram of a dove on your credit card,” UA optical sciences professor Nasser Peyghambarian said. “The hologram on your credit card is printed permanently. You cannot erase the image and replace it with an entirely new three-dimensional picture.” “Holography has been around for decades, but holographic displays are really one of the first practical applications of the technique,” UA optical scientist Savas Tay said. Dynamic hologram displays could be made into devices that help surgeons track progress during lengthy and complex brain surgeries, show airline or fighter pilots any hazards within their entire surrounding airspace, or give emergency response teams nearly real-time views of fast-changing flood or traffic problems, for example. And no one yet knows where the advertising and entertainment industries will go with possible applications, Peyghambarian said. “Imagine that when you walk into the supermarket or department store, you could see a large, dynamic, three-dimensional product display,” he said. It would be an attention-grabber. Tay, Peyghambarian, their colleagues from the UA College of Optical Sciences and collaborators from Nitto Denko Technical Corp., which is an Oceanside, Calif., subsidiary of Nitto Denko, Japan, report on the research in the Feb. 7 issue of the journal Nature. Their device basically consists of a special plastic film sandwiched between two pieces of glass, each coated with a transparent electrode. The images are “written” into the light-sensitive plastic, called a photorefractive polymer, using laser beams and an externally applied electric field. The scientists take pictures of an object or scene from many two-dimensional perspectives as they scan their object, and the holographic display assembles the two-dimensional perspectives into a three-dimensional picture. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which has funded Peyghambarian’s team to develop updatable holographic displays, has used holographic displays in the past. But those displays have been static. They did not allow erasing and updating of the images. The new holographic display can show a new image every few minutes. The four-inch by four-inch prototype display that Peyghambarian, Tay and their colleagues created now comes only in red, but the researchers see no problem with developing much larger displays in full color. They next will make one-foot by one-foot displays, then three-foot by three-foot displays. “We use highly efficient, low-cost recording materials capable of very large sizes, which is very important for life-size, realistic 3D displays,” Peyghambarian said. “We can record complete scenes or objects within three minutes and can store them for three hours.” The researchers also are working to write images even faster using pulsed lasers. “If you can write faster with a pulsed laser, then you can write larger holograms in the same amount of time it now takes to write smaller ones,” Tay said. “We envision this to be a life-size hologram. We could, for example, display an image of a whole human that would be the same size as the actual person.” Tay emphasized how important updatable holographic displays could be for medicine. “Three-dimensional imaging techniques are already commonly used in medicine, for example, in MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or CAT scan (Computerized Axial Tomography) techniques,” Tay said. “However, the huge amount of data that is created in three dimensions is still being displayed on two-dimensional devices, either on a computer screen or on a piece of paper. A great amount of data is lost by displaying it this way. So I think when we develop larger, full-color 3D holograms, every hospital in the world will want one.”
