Modelling sustainable intensification in Brazilian agriculture

At the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change COP15 (2009) Brazil presented ambitious commitments or Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), to reduce greenhouse gases emissions (GHGs) mitigation by 2020. At COP21 (2015), the country presented new commitments and a framework to achieve further mitigation targets by 2030 as so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Both NAMAs and INDCs focus on the land use change and agricultural sectors, but the INDCs include a commitment of zero illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. This research focuses on the contribution of the livestock sector to reducing GHGs through the adoption of sustainable intensification measures. A detailed linear programming model, called Economic Analysis of Greenhouse Gases for Livestock Emissions (EAGGLE), of beef production was developed to evaluate environmental trade-offs. The modelling encompasses pasture degradation and recovery processes, animal and deforestation emissions, soil organic carbon dynamics and upstream life-cycle inventory. The model was parameterized for the Brazilian Cerrado, Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes and further developed for farm-scale and regional-scale analysis. Different versions of the EAGGLE model was used to: (i) Evaluate the GHG mitigation potential and economic benefit of optimizing pasture management through the partitioning of initially uniform pasture area; (ii) to define abatement potential and cost-effectiveness of key mitigation measures applicable to the Brazilian Cerrado; (ii) to demonstrate the extent of cost-effective mitigation that can be delivered by the livestock sector as part of INDCs, and to show a result that underpins the national INDC target of zero deforestation; and (iv) to evaluate the consequences of reducing (or increasing) beef production on GHGs in the Cerrado. Counter-intuitively, a sensitivity analysis shows that reducing beef consumption could lead to higher GHG emissions, while increasing production could reduce total GHGs if livestock is decoupled from deforestation

Integration of foreign DNA during natural transformation of Acinetobacter sp. by homology-facilitated illegitimate recombination

The active uptake of extracellular DNA and its genomic integration is termed natural transformation and constitutes a major horizontal gene-transfer mechanism in prokaryotes. Chromosomal DNA transferred within a species can be integrated effectively by homologous recombination, whereas foreign DNA with low or no sequence homology would rely on illegitimate recombination events, which are rare. By using the nptII(+) gene (kanamycin resistance) as selectable marker, we found that the integration of foreign DNA into the genome of the Gram-negative Acinetobacter sp. BD413 during transformation indeed was at least 10(9)-fold lower than that of homologous DNA. However, integration of foreign DNA increased at least 10(5)-fold when it was linked on one side to a piece of DNA homologous to the recipient genome. Analysis of foreign DNA integration sites revealed short stretches of sequence identity (3–8 bp) between donor and recipient DNA, indicating illegitimate recombination events. These findings suggest that homologous DNA served as a recombinational anchor facilitating illegitimate recombination acting on the same molecule. Homologous stretches down to 183 nucleotides served as anchors. Transformation with heteroduplex DNA having different nucleotide sequence tags in the strands indicated that strands entered the cytoplasm 3′ to 5′ and that strands with either polarity were integrated by homologous recombination. The process led to the genomic integration of thousands of foreign nucleotides and often was accompanied by deletion of a roughly corresponding length of recipient DNA. Homology-facilitated illegitimate recombination would explain the introgression of DNA in prokaryotic genomes without the help of mobile genetic elements

Maternal Education, Divorce, and Changes in Economic Resources: Evidence from Germany

This study investigated the effects of divorce on educational gaps in mothers' economic resources. The results shed new light on two opposing theoretical positions that have informed research on social inequality in the consequences of divorce. Recent extensions of the 'diverging destinies' perspective posit that divorce is more consequential among the disadvantaged than among the privileged. The notion of 'divorce as an equalizer' posits the reverse. Based on data from the German SOEP, we estimated correlated random-effects models to examine educational gaps in divorce-related changes of mothers' household income and risk of poverty. The results are inconsistent with the diverging destinies perspective, as educational gaps in mothers' economic resources did not widen after divorce. Instead, we found partial support for the competing notion of divorce as an equalizer, as higher educated mothers experienced larger declines in household income. Educational gaps in the risk of poverty remained constant

Heteromeric Solute Carriers: Function, Structure, Pathology and Pharmacology

Solute carriers form one of three major superfamilies of membrane transporters in humans, and include uniporters, exchangers and symporters. Following several decades of molecular characterisation, multiple solute carriers that form obligatory heteromers with unrelated subunits are emerging as a distinctive principle of membrane transporter assembly. Here we comprehensively review experimentally established heteromeric solute carriers: SLC3-SLC7 amino acid exchangers, SLC16 monocarboxylate/H+ symporters and basigin/embigin, SLC4A1 (AE1) and glycophorin A exchanger, SLC51 heteromer Ost α-Ost β uniporter, and SLC6 heteromeric symporters. The review covers the history of the heteromer discovery, transporter physiology, structure, disease associations and pharmacology - all with a focus on the heteromeric assembly. The cellular locations, requirements for complex formation, and the functional role of dimerization are extensively detailed, including analysis of the first complete heteromer structures, the SLC7-SLC3 family transporters LAT1-4F2hc, b0,+AT-rBAT and the SLC6 family heteromer B0AT1-ACE2. We present a systematic analysis of the structural and functional aspects of heteromeric solute carriers and conclude with common principles of their functional roles and structural architecture