20 research outputs found
Type and extent of trans-disciplinary co-operation to improve food security, health and household environment in low and middle income countries: systematic review
Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Dr Steve Turner and Dr Adam Price for their insightful comments that improved the manuscript. We would like to thank Heather Clark and Bimbola Kalejaiye for their help in data extraction. We are also grateful to Melanie Bickerton and Dr Amudha Poobalan for their systematic review advice.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Anaerobiosis revisited: growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae under extremely low oxygen availability
The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae plays an important role in biotechnological applications, ranging from fuel ethanol to recombinant protein production. It is also a model organism for studies on cell physiology and genetic regulation. Its ability to grow under anaerobic conditions is of interest in many industrial applications. Unlike industrial bioreactors with their low surface area relative to volume, ensuring a complete anaerobic atmosphere during microbial cultivations in the laboratory is rather difficult. Tiny amounts of O2 that enter the system can vastly influence product yields and microbial physiology. A common procedure in the laboratory is to sparge the culture vessel with ultrapure N2 gas; together with the use of butyl rubber stoppers and norprene tubing, O2 diffusion into the system can be strongly minimized. With insights from some studies conducted in our laboratory, we explore the question ‘how anaerobic is anaerobiosis?’. We briefly discuss the role of O2 in non-respiratory pathways in S. cerevisiae and provide a systematic survey of the attempts made thus far to cultivate yeast under anaerobic conditions. We conclude that very few data exist on the physiology of S. cerevisiae under anaerobiosis in the absence of the anaerobic growth factors ergosterol and unsaturated fatty acids. Anaerobicity should be treated as a relative condition since complete anaerobiosis is hardly achievable in the laboratory. Ideally, researchers should provide all the details of their anaerobic set-up, to ensure reproducibility of results among different laboratories.
A correction to this article is available online at http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/131930/
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-9036-
The 1877–1878 El Niño episode: associated impacts in South America
Artículo de publicación ISIAt times when attention on climate issues is strongly focused on the
assessment of potential impacts of future climate change due to the intensification of
the planetary greenhouse effect, it is perhaps pertinent to look back and explore the
consequences of past climate variability. In this article we examine a large disruption
in global climate that occurred during 1877–1878, when human influence was negligible.
The mechanisms explaining this global disturbance are not well established, but
there is considerable evidence that the major El Niño episode that started by the end
of 1876 and peaked during the 1877–1878 boreal winter contributed significantly to it.
The associated regional climate anomalies were extremely destructive, particularly
in the Northern Hemisphere, where starvation due to intense droughts in Asia,
South-East Asia and Africa took the lives of more than 20 million people. In
South America regional precipitation anomalies were typical of El Niño events, with
rainfall deficit and droughts in the northern portion of the continent as well as in
northeast Brazil and the highlands of the central Andes (Altiplano). In contrast,
anomalously intense rainfall and flooding episodes were reported for the coastal areas of southern Ecuador and Northern Perú, as well as along the extratropicalWest
coast of the continent (central Chile, 30◦ S–40◦ S), and in the Paraná basin in the
southeast region. By far the most devastating impacts in terms of suffering and loss
of life occurred in the semiarid region of northeast Brazil where several hundreds
of thousands of people died from starvation and diseases during the drought that
started in 1877.This research was sponsored in Chile by
Conicyt research grants Fondecyt N◦ 1000445 and N◦ 1040326, and ACT-19