Actors and factors - bridging social science findings and urban land use change modeling

Recent uneven land use dynamics in urban areas resulting from demographic change, economic pressure and the cities’ mutual competition in a globalising world challenge both scientists and practitioners, among them social scientists, modellers and spatial planners. Processes of growth and decline specifically affect the urban environment, the requirements of the residents on social and natural resources. Social and environmental research is interested in a better understanding and ways of explaining the interactions between society and landscape in urban areas. And it is also needed for making life in cities attractive, secure and affordable within or despite of uneven dynamics.\ud The position paper upon “Actors and factors – bridging social science findings and urban land use change modeling” presents approaches and ideas on how social science findings on the interaction of the social system (actors) and the land use (factors) are taken up and formalised using modelling and gaming techniques. It should be understood as a first sketch compiling major challenges and proposing exemplary solutions in the field of interest

The health benefits of dietary fibre

Background: Dietary fibre consists of non-digestible forms of carbohydrate, usually as polysaccharides that originate from plant-based foods. Over recent decades, our diet within Westernised societies has changed radically from that of our hominid ancestors, with implications for our co-evolved gut microbiota. This includes increased ingestion of ultra-processed foods that are typically impoverished of dietary fibre, and associated reduction in the intake of fibre-replete plant-based foods. Over recent decades, there has been a transformation in our understanding of the health benefits of dietary fibre. Objective: To explore the current medical literature on the health benefits of dietary fibre, with a focus on overall metabolic health. Data Sources: We performed a narrative review, based on relevant articles written in English from a PubMed search, using the terms ‘dietary fibre and metabolic health’. Results: In the Western world, our diets are impoverished of fibre. Dietary fibre intake associates with overall metabolic health (through key pathways that include insulin sensitivity) and a variety of other pathologies that include cardiovascular disease, colonic health, gut motility and risk for colorectal carcinoma. Dietary fibre intake also correlates with mortality. The gut microflora functions as an important mediator of the beneficial effects of dietary fibre, including the regulation of appetite, metabolic processes and chronic inflammatory pathways. Conclusions: Multiple factors contribute to our fibre-impoverished modern diet. Given the plethora of scientific evidence that corroborate the multiple and varied health benefits of dietary fibre, and the risks associated with a diet that lacks fibre, the optimization of fibre within our diets represents an important public health strategy to improve both metabolic and overall health. If implemented successfully, this strategy would likely result in substantial future health benefits for the population. View Full-Tex

Drop-in biofuel production using fatty acid photodecarboxylase from Chlorella variabilis in the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica.

Background: Oleaginous yeasts are potent hosts for the renewable production of lipids and harbor great potential for derived products, such as biofuels. Several promising processes have been described that produce hydrocarbon drop-in biofuels based on fatty acid decarboxylation and fatty aldehyde decarbonylation. Unfortunately, besides fatty aldehyde toxicity and high reactivity, the most investigated enzyme, aldehyde-deformylating oxygenase, shows unfavorable catalytic properties which hindered high yields in previous metabolic engineering approaches. Results: To demonstrate an alternative alkane production pathway for oleaginous yeasts, we describe the production of diesel-like, odd-chain alkanes and alkenes, by heterologously expressing a recently discovered light-driven oxidase from Chlorella variabilis (CvFAP) in Yarrowia lipolytica. Initial experiments showed that only strains engineered to have an increased pool of free fatty acids were susceptible to sufficient decarboxylation. Providing these strains with glucose and light in a synthetic medium resulted in titers of 10.9 mg/L of hydrocarbons. Using custom 3D printed labware for lighting bioreactors, and an automated pulsed glycerol fed-batch strategy, intracellular titers of 58.7 mg/L were achieved. The production of odd-numbered alkanes and alkenes with a length of 17 and 15 carbons shown in previous studies could be confirmed. Conclusions: Oleaginous yeasts such as Yarrowia lipolytica can transform renewable resources such as glycerol into fatty acids and lipids. By heterologously expressing a fatty acid photodecarboxylase from the algae Chlorella variabilis hydrocarbons were produced in several scales from microwell plate to 400 mL bioreactors. The lighting turned out to be a crucial factor in terms of growth and hydrocarbon production, therefore, the evaluation of different conditions was an important step towards a tailor-made process. In general, the developed bioprocess shows a route to the renewable production of hydrocarbons for a variety of applications ranging from being substrates for further enzymatic or chemical modification or as a drop-in biofuel blend

Functional characterization of polysaccharide utilization loci in the marine Bacteroidetes 'Gramella forsetii' KT0803

Members of the phylum Bacteroidetes are abundant in many marine ecosystems and are known to have a pivotal role in the mineralization of complex organic substrates such as polysaccharides and proteins. We studied the decomposition of the algal glycans laminarin and alginate by 'Gramella forsetii' KT0803, a bacteroidetal isolate from North Sea surface waters. A combined application of isotope labeling, subcellular protein fractionation and quantitative proteomics revealed two large polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs) that were specifically induced, one by alginate and the other by laminarin. These regulons comprised genes of surface-exposed proteins such as oligomer transporters, substrate-binding proteins, carbohydrate-active enzymes and hypothetical proteins. Besides, several glycan-specific TonB-dependent receptors and SusD-like substrate-binding proteins were expressed also in the absence of polysaccharide substrates, suggesting an anticipatory sensing function. Genes for the utilization of the beta-1,3-glucan laminarin were found to be co-regulated with genes for glucose and alpha-1,4-glucan utilization, which was not the case for the non-glucan alginate. Strong syntenies of the PULs of 'G. forsetii' with similar loci in other Bacteroidetes indicate that the specific response mechanisms of 'G. forsetii' to changes in polysaccharide availability likely apply to other Bacteroidetes. Our results can thus contribute to an improved understanding of the ecological niches of marine Bacteroidetes and their roles in the polysaccharide decomposition part of carbon cycling in marine ecosystems

High‐Saturated‐Fat Diet Increases Circulating Angiotensin‐Converting Enzyme, Which Is Enhanced by the rs4343 Polymorphism Defining Persons at Risk of Nutrient‐Dependent Increases of Blood Pressure

Background Angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) plays a major role in blood pressure regulation and cardiovascular homeostasis. Contrary to the assumption that ACE levels are stable, circulating ACE has been shown to be altered in obesity and weight loss. We sought to examine effects of a high‐saturated‐fat (HF) diet on ACE within the NUtriGenomic Analysis in Twins (NUGAT) study. Methods and Results Forty‐six healthy and nonobese twin pairs initially consumed a carbohydrate‐rich, low‐fat diet over a period of 6 weeks to standardize for nutritional behavior prior to the study, followed by 6 weeks of HF diet under isocaloric conditions. After 6 weeks of HF diet, circulating ACE concentrations increased by 15% (P=1.6×10−30), accompanied by an increased ACE gene expression in adipose tissue (P=3.8×10−6). Stratification by ACE rs4343, a proxy for the ACE insertion/deletion polymorphism (I/D), revealed that homozygous carriers (GG) of the variant had higher baseline ACE concentrations (P=7.5×10−8) and additionally showed a 2‐fold increase in ACE concentrations in response to the HF diet as compared to non‐ or heterozygous carriers (AA/AG, P=2×10−6). GG carriers also responded with higher systolic blood pressure as compared to AA/AG carriers (P=0.008). The strong gene‐diet interaction was confirmed in a second independent, cross‐sectional cohort, the Metabolic Syndrome Berlin Potsdam (MeSyBePo) study. Conclusions The HF‐diet‐induced increase of ACE serum concentrations reveals ACE to be a potential molecular link between dietary fat intake and hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The GG genotype of the ACE rs4343 polymorphism represents a robust nutrigenetic marker for an unfavorable response to high‐saturated‐fat diets. Clinical Trial Registration URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01631123

Urban Megatrends: Towards a European Research Agenda

The report presents the urban megatrends both worlwide and in Europe

Модель похибки вимірювального трансформатора напруги

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Aquatic adaptation of a laterally acquired pectin degradation pathway in marine gammaproteobacteria

Mobile genomic islands distribute functional traits between microbes and habitats, yet it remains unclear how their proteins adapt to new environments. Here we used a comparative phylogenomic and proteomic approach to show that the marine bacterium Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis ANT/505 acquired a genomic island with a functional pathway for pectin catabolism. Bioinformatics and biochemical experiments revealed that this pathway encodes a series of carbohydrate-active enzymes including two multimodular pectate lyases, PelA and PelB. PelA is a large enzyme with a polysaccharide lyase family 1 (PL1) domain and a carbohydrate esterase family 8 domain, and PelB contains a PL1 domain and two carbohydrate-binding domains of family 13. Comparative phylogenomic analyses indicate that the pathway was most likely acquired from terrestrial microbes, yet we observed multi-modular orthologues only in marine bacteria. Proteomic experiments showed that P. haloplanktis ANT/505 secretes both pectate lyases into the environment in the presence of pectin. These multi-modular enzymes may therefore represent a marine innovation that enhances physical interaction with pectins to reduce loss of substrate and enzymes by diffusion. Our results revealed that marine bacteria can catabolize pectin, and highlight enzyme fusion as a potential adaptation that may facilitate microbial consumption of polymeric substrates in aquatic environments