PERENNIAL CROPS FOR BIO-FUELS AND CONSERVATION

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and provision of socioeconomic benefits. Short rotation woody crops, like hybrid poplar and willow, grow rapidly and can reach 15-25 feet in height after only three years. Currently, non-irrigated yields can be sustained at about 5 dry tons/acre/year and are increasing as plant breeding, nutrient management, and weed control advances are made. The high hemi-cellulose and cellulose content of woody biomass result in favorable net energy conversion ratios of 1:11 when co-fired with coal and 1:16 when undergoing gasification. Directing this wood fiber into bio-fuels would benefit both the energy sector and forest and farm landowners, while providing an array of conservation benefits and ecological services. The amount of biofuel that can be sustainably produced each year from perennial crops is potentially very large. The next Farm Bill affords an opportunity to insure that this potential can be more fully realized

PERENNIAL CROPS FOR BIO-FUELS AND CONSERVATION

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and provision of socioeconomic benefits. Short rotation woody crops, like hybrid poplar and willow, grow rapidly and can reach 15-25 feet in height after only three years. Currently, non-irrigated yields can be sustained at about 5 dry tons/acre/year and are increasing as plant breeding, nutrient management, and weed control advances are made. The high hemi-cellulose and cellulose content of woody biomass result in favorable net energy conversion ratios of 1:11 when co-fired with coal and 1:16 when undergoing gasification. Directing this wood fiber into bio-fuels would benefit both the energy sector and forest and farm landowners, while providing an array of conservation benefits and ecological services. The amount of biofuel that can be sustainably produced each year from perennial crops is potentially very large. The next Farm Bill affords an opportunity to insure that this potential can be more fully realized

PERENNIAL CROPS FOR BIO-FUELS AND CONSERVATION

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and provision of socioeconomic benefits. Short rotation woody crops, like hybrid poplar and willow, grow rapidly and can reach 15-25 feet in height after only three years. Currently, non-irrigated yields can be sustained at about 5 dry tons/acre/year and are increasing as plant breeding, nutrient management, and weed control advances are made. The high hemi-cellulose and cellulose content of woody biomass result in favorable net energy conversion ratios of 1:11 when co-fired with coal and 1:16 when undergoing gasification. Directing this wood fiber into bio-fuels would benefit both the energy sector and forest and farm landowners, while providing an array of conservation benefits and ecological services. The amount of biofuel that can be sustainably produced each year from perennial crops is potentially very large. The next Farm Bill affords an opportunity to insure that this potential can be more fully realized

Genetic variants associated with mosaic Y chromosome loss highlight cell cycle genes and overlap with cancer susceptibility.

The Y chromosome is frequently lost in hematopoietic cells, which represents the most common somatic alteration in men. However, the mechanisms that regulate mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY), and its clinical relevance, are unknown. We used genotype-array-intensity data and sequence reads from 85,542 men to identify 19 genomic regions (P < 5 × 10-8) that are associated with mLOY. Cumulatively, these loci also predicted X chromosome loss in women (n = 96,123; P = 4 × 10-6). Additional epigenome-wide methylation analyses using whole blood highlighted 36 differentially methylated sites associated with mLOY. The genes identified converge on aspects of cell proliferation and cell cycle regulation, including DNA synthesis (NPAT), DNA damage response (ATM), mitosis (PMF1, CENPN and MAD1L1) and apoptosis (TP53). We highlight the shared genetic architecture between mLOY and cancer susceptibility, in addition to inferring a causal effect of smoking on mLOY. Collectively, our results demonstrate that genotype-array-intensity data enables a measure of cell cycle efficiency at population scale and identifies genes implicated in aneuploidy, genome instability and cancer susceptibility.This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under Application Number 9905. This work was supported by the UK Medical Research Council (Unit Programme numbers MC_UU_12015/1 and MC_UU_12015/2). Research in the S. Jackson laboratory is funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK; programme grant C6/A18796), with Institute core funding provided by CRUK (C6946/A14492) and the Wellcome Trust (WT092096). S. Jackson receives salary from the University of Cambridge, supplemented by CRUK