Predicting Impacts of Offshore Monoculture Farm Expansion in Ultra-Oligotrophic Waters of the Levantine Basin

The aim of this brief research report was to define the consequential shifts in biomass and trophic structure of an ecosystem surrounding an offshore monoculture fish farm in Israel. It attempts to clarify the impact of the industry expansion and input of artificial fish pellets on functional group biomasses. We account for the direct addition of artificial food pellets, the metabolic wastes from the caged fish in a mass-balance food web model (Ecopath), as well as the temporal expansion of the farm’s production capacity to 21,000 t over a 30-year period (Ecosim). In the static mass-balance model of the food web, the addition of the fish cages at its current production size of 1000 t does not adversely affect the system, and trophic energy transfer is still dependent on primary production versus the detrital pathway. The model suggests a semi-stable ecosystem with low trophic interactions. With time, the increase in fish farming at the site is characterized by an increase of all functional group biomasses at the site over the 30-year period. The accumulation in detritus most notably correlates to greater biomass for all benthic functional niches and their secondary consumers. It is, therefore, apt to develop an indicator species list to indicate negative site disturbance. In summary, the sediment column condition will be the main indicator for ecosystem stability, as well as the increase in apex predators that are attracted to the site from the accumulation of discards at the cage botto

Evolutionary Traits that Enable Scleractinian Corals to Survive Mass Extinction Events

Scleractinian “stony” corals are major habitat engineers, whose skeletons form the framework for the highly diverse, yet increasingly threatened, coral reef ecosystem. Fossil coral skeletons also present a rich record that enables paleontological analysis of coral origins, tracing them back to the Triassic (~241 Myr). While numerous invertebrate lineages were eradicated at the last major mass extinction boundary, the Cretaceous-Tertiary/K-T (66 Myr), a number of Scleractinian corals survived. We review this history and assess traits correlated with K-T mass extinction survival. Disaster-related “survival” traits that emerged from our analysis are: (1) deep water residing (>100 m); (2) cosmopolitan distributions, (3) non-symbiotic, (4) solitary or small colonies and (5) bleaching-resistant. We then compared these traits to the traits of modern Scleractinian corals, using to IUCN Red List data, and report that corals with these same survival traits have relatively stable populations, while those lacking them are presently decreasing in abundance and diversity. This shows corals exhibiting a similar dynamic survival response as seen at the last major extinction, the K-T. While these results could be seen as promising, that some corals may survive the Anthropocene extinction, they also highlight how our relatively-fragile Primate order does not possess analogous “survival” characteristics, nor have a record of mass extinction survival as some corals are capable

Ocean warming is the key filter for successful colonization of the migrant octocoral Melithaea erythraea (Ehrenberg, 1834) in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

Climate, which sets broad limits for migrating species, is considered a key filter to species migration between contrasting marine environments. The Southeast Mediterranean Sea (SEMS) is one of the regions where ocean temperatures are rising the fastest under recent climate change. Also, it is the most vulnerable marine region to species introductions. Here, we explore the factors which enabled the colonization of the endemic Red Sea octocoral Melithaea erythraea (Ehrenberg, 1834) along the SEMS coast, using sclerite oxygen and carbon stable isotope composition (delta O-18(SC) and delta C-13(SC)), morphology, and crystallography. The unique conditions presented by the SEMS include a greater temperature range (similar to 15 degrees C) and ultra-oligotrophy, and these are reflected by the lower delta C-13(SC) values. This is indicative of a larger metabolic carbon intake during calcification, as well as an increase in crystal size, a decrease of octocoral wart density and thickness of the migrating octocoral sclerites compared to the Red Sea samples. This suggests increased stress conditions, affecting sclerite deposition of the SEMS migrating octocoral. The delta(OSC)-O-18 range of the migrating M. erythraea indicates a preference for warm water sclerite deposition, similar to the native depositional temperature range of 21-28 degrees C. These findings are associated with the observed increase of minimum temperatures in winter for this region, at a rate of 0.35 +/- 0.27 degrees C decade(-1) over the last 30 years, and thus the region is becoming more hospitable to the IndoPacific M. erythraea. This study shows a clear case study of "tropicalization" of the Mediterranean Sea due to recent warming

Using Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotopes to Investigate the Impact of Desalination Brine Discharge on Marine Food Webs

Stable isotope ratios were used to trace the impact of anthropogenically derived brine from desalination plants on organisms at different trophic levels (primary producers and consumers) along the highly urbanized ultra-oligotrophic Israeli coast (southeast Mediterranean). Primary producer and consumer organisms were collected from two sampling stations at two desalination plants sites: an “Impacted station,” near the brine discharge outlets, and a “Control station” situated further offshore to the impacted zone. δ13C and δ15N values of both producers and consumers displayed minor variations between the impacted and control stations, indicating little effect of brine discharge on the coastal trophic structure. The coastal δ15N values were generally higher than those of similar pelagic communities of the southeastern Mediterranean. These were particularly high in benthic invertebrates and benthic carnivores (fish) from the southern site, where high anthropogenically N loads from ground water amelioration are discarded alongside the brine. The observed differences in the δ15N of the benthic components between the two study sites suggest that brine derived density plumes from desalination plants are a possible vector of nutrients to benthic communities. The results indicate that the benthic components were the most sensitive group to anthropogenic derived N pollution, and provide insight into site-specific processes

Evolutionary Traits that Enable Scleractinian Corals to Survive Mass Extinction Events

Scleractinian “stony” corals are major habitat engineers, whose skeletons form the framework for the highly diverse, yet increasingly threatened, coral reef ecosystem. Fossil coral skeletons also present a rich record that enables paleontological analysis of coral origins, tracing them back to the Triassic (~241 Myr). While numerous invertebrate lineages were eradicated at the last major mass extinction boundary, the Cretaceous-Tertiary/K-T (66 Myr), a number of Scleractinian corals survived. We review this history and assess traits correlated with K-T mass extinction survival. Disaster-related “survival” traits that emerged from our analysis are: (1) deep water residing (\u3e100 m); (2) cosmopolitan distributions, (3) non-symbiotic, (4) solitary or small colonies and (5) bleaching-resistant. We then compared these traits to the traits of modern Scleractinian corals, using to IUCN Red List data, and report that corals with these same survival traits have relatively stable populations, while those lacking them are presently decreasing in abundance and diversity. This shows corals exhibiting a similar dynamic survival response as seen at the last major extinction, the K-T. While these results could be seen as promising, that some corals may survive the Anthropocene extinction, they also highlight how our relatively-fragile Primate order does not possess analogous “survival” characteristics, nor have a record of mass extinction survival as some corals are capable

The Secretion of Streptomyces monbaraensis Transglutaminase From Lactococcus lactis and Immobilization on Porous Magnetic Nanoparticles

Microbial transglutaminase (MTG) from Streptomyces mobaraensis is an important enzyme widely applied in food processing for the improvement of protein properties by catalyzing the cross-linking of proteins. In this work we aimed at improving the production and enabling an easy and efficient purification process from culture supernatants. Thus, recombinant vectors, with either a constitutive promoter (Pp5) or an inducible promoter (PnisA), controlling the expression of the MTG gene fused to the signal peptide of Usp45 (SPusp45) were constructed and then expressed in Lactococcus lactis. After purification, 43.5 +/- 0.4 mg/L mature MTG-6His was obtained. It displayed 27.6 +/- 0.5 U/mg enzymatic activity cross-linking soy protein isolate effectively. The purified mature MTG was immobilized with magnetic porous Fe3O4 nanoparticles, which improved its activity up to 29.1 +/- 0.4 U/mg. The immobilized MTG maintained 67.2% of the initial activity after being recycled for 10 times. The high production and secretion of functional S. mobaraensis MTG from L. lactis and the magnetic immobilized MTG-6His onto Fe3O4 nanoparticles reported in this study would have potential industrial applications.This study was granted by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD0400600 and 2018YFD0400400), Key Scientific and Technological Project of Anhui Province of China (Nos. 17030701014 and 18030701146), Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (1708085QC65), the Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Tea Plant Biology and Utilization (SKLTOF20180107), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M651013)

Cationic polyelectrolytes: A new look at their possible roles as opsonins, as stimulators of respiratory burst in leukocytes, in bacteriolysis, and as modulators of immune-complex diseases (A review hypothesis)

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44497/1/10753_2004_Article_BF00915991.pd