Transdisciplinary participatory-action-research from questions to actionable knowledge for sustainable viticulture development

Viticulture negatively impacts the environment, biodiversity, and human health; however, despite the widely acknowledged challenges that this intensive agricultural activity poses to sustainable development, measures to reduce its invasiveness are constantly being deferred or rebuffed. Constraints to change are linked to vine cultivation methods, the impacts of climate change on vine resilience and disease sensitivity, and socio-economic models, as well as growing criticisms from society. Research and training have thus far failed to provide solutions or mobilise stakeholders on a large scale. Such resistance to sustainable practices development calls into question the effectiveness of knowledge production systems and relations between scientists, winegrowers, and society: Have scientific disciplines overly isolated themselves from each other and from the wider society to the point of losing the capacity to incorporate alternative forms of knowledge and reasoning and achieve collaborative action? Herein, we describe our findings from a participatory action research project that began in Westhalten, France, in 2013 and ultimately spread to Switzerland and Germany over the next 6 years. We show that participatory action research can mobilise long-term collaborations between winegrowers, NGOs, advisers, elected officials, members of civil society, and researchers, despite differing visions of viticulture and the environment. The epistemological framework of this research promotes consensus-building by valuing complexity and dissensus in knowledge and reasoning such that all actors are involved in experimentation and the production of results. From these findings, consensus statements were collectively elaborated in qualitative and quantitative registers. Once acknowledged by the scientific community, these consensus statements became shareable knowledge. We propose that this renewed interdisciplinarity associating the human and social sciences with agronomic and biological sciences in collaboration with stakeholders produces actionable knowledge that mobilises and engages winegrowers to conceive and implement sustainable viticulture on a transnational scale

Comparative genome and transcriptome analyses of the social amoeba Acytostelium subglobosum that accomplishes multicellular development without germ-soma differentiation

Background Social amoebae are lower eukaryotes that inhabit the soil. They are characterized by the construction of a starvation-induced multicellular fruiting body with a spore ball and supportive stalk. In most species, the stalk is filled with motile stalk cells, as represented by the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum, whose developmental mechanisms have been well characterized. However, in the genus Acytostelium, the stalk is acellular and all aggregated cells become spores. Phylogenetic analyses have shown that it is not an ancestral genus but has lost the ability to undergo cell differentiation. Results We performed genome and transcriptome analyses of Acytostelium subglobosum and compared our findings to other available dictyostelid genome data. Although A. subglobosum adopts a qualitatively different developmental program from other dictyostelids, its gene repertoire was largely conserved. Yet, families of polyketide synthase and extracellular matrix proteins have not expanded and a serine protease and ABC transporter B family gene, tagA, and a few other developmental genes are missing in the A. subglobosum lineage. Temporal gene expression patterns are astonishingly dissimilar from those of D. discoideum, and only a limited fraction of the ortholog pairs shared the same expression patterns, so that some signaling cascades for development seem to be disabled in A. subglobosum. Conclusions The absence of the ability to undergo cell differentiation in Acytostelium is accompanied by a small change in coding potential and extensive alterations in gene expression patterns

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-

Linking the knowledge and reasoning of dissenting actors fosters a bottom-up design of agroecological viticulture

Wine growing has a high economic value globally, and vineyards, with their centenarian grape varieties, are an integral part of our societies. Yet with the use of spraying to control pathogens and weeds, mainstream viticulture has become a big pesticide consumer. Criticism of this conventional type of viticulture and its environmental/health impacts is increasing strongly throughout society. Until now, mainstream 'top-down' scientific-technical developments have focused on breeding for new varieties and on designing new agronomic models. In parallel, organic and biodynamic practices have been developing alternatives. Either way, changes do not develop on the expected time scale. We posit that the diversity of actors concerned, from winegrowers to technical advisers, consumer associations, conservationists, elected representatives, citizens, and scientists, all contribute to the perpetuation of a constrained situation, through their differences in perspectives and practices, positions, knowledge, and reasoning. To untangle this situation, we brought together these dissenting actors. With a view to resolving the epistemological challenges, we then characterized four types of knowledge, along with the reasoning in play, and designed a tetrahedral model to legitimize and inter-relate them. This tetrahedron supported co-construction of a collective epistemology after a paradigm shift, in which the dissensus became a resource on numerous occasions. We then highlighted masked double-bind situations and went further, developing a seven-step Argonaut to conduct the project. New practices were designed, to do away with herbicides and develop ecological grassing. They were implemented on a large scale in vineyards, within a short time frame, while enhancing the value of a neighbouring nature reserve. Projects currently underway in Switzerland, Germany, and France suggest that differences in knowledge are enriching, and yet that the reasoning at play fit with our tetrahedron model. We thus show that dissenting actors can dissolve agronomic/economic/ecological dilemmas, while acting under uncertainty, and foster agroecology development

Upc2p and Ecm22p, Dual Regulators of Sterol Biosynthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Sterol levels affect the expression of many genes in yeast and humans. We found that the paralogous transcription factors Upc2p and Ecm22p of yeast were sterol regulatory element (SRE) binding proteins (SREBPs) responsible for regulating transcription of the sterol biosynthetic genes ERG2 and ERG3. We defined a 7-bp SRE common to these and other genes, including many genes involved in sterol biosynthesis. Upc2p and Ecm22p activated ERG2 expression by binding directly to this element in the ERG2 promoter. Upc2p and Ecm22p may thereby coordinately regulate genes involved in sterol homeostasis in yeast. Ecm22p and Upc2p are members of the fungus-specific Zn[2]-Cys[6] binuclear cluster family of transcription factors and share no homology to the analogous proteins, SREBPs, that are responsible for transcriptional regulation by sterols in humans. These results suggest that Saccharomyces cerevisiae and human cells regulate sterol synthesis by different mechanisms

Defence responses of grapevine cultivars to powdery mildew: Ontogenic resistance versus genetic resistance

International audienceThe most sustainable management of resistant varieties involves understanding which defence mechanisms the plant uses according to its resistance genes and stage of development and how effective these mechanisms are. Three grapevine varieties were compared for their susceptibility versus resistance to powdery mildew: Vitis vinifera 'Cabernet Sauvignon' (CS) and two hybrids, 'Artaban' and 'Prior'. Four different leaf ages were collected from 2-year-old grafted grapevines planted in pot or in vineyard, and several variables were assessed for each leaf: (a) morphological and physiological indicators, (b) pathogenicity traits: spore germination, infection ef?ciency, mycelial growth and sporulation, and (c) gene expression using a high-throughput quantitative reverse transcription PCR method to inform about plant defence status and functioning of primary metabolism. A significant decrease in germination and sporulation with increasing leaf age were observed for the three varieties: Prior showed a susceptibility similar to that of CS, whereas Artaban was fully resistant with no sporulation. Genes highlighted as markers of the variety were involved in defence (VvPR3, VvPR4 overexpressed in Artaban, VvPR4bis, VvAlli2 in Prior) or in primary metabolism (repression of VvCitS in Artaban, VvCHI in Prior, overexpression of VvCAD2, VvGST3 in Prior). After inoculation, more defence genes, especially PR proteins, were overexpressed in the oldest leaves as potential components of ontogenic resistance. PR proteins accounted for 25% of total disease variation. Phenylpropanoid and ethylene pathways were leaf age-dependent. The statistical method used highlighted the contributions of the genotypic expression involved in genetic (cultivar) and ontogenic (leaf age) resistances and of the metabolic pathways to the disease