Morphogenetic signaling in growing tissues

During the development of multicellular organisms, organs grow to well-defined shapes and sizes. The proper size and patterning of tissues are ensured by signaling molecules as e.g. morphogens. Secreted from a restricted source, morphogens spread into the adjacent target tissue where they form a graded concentration profile. Upon binding of the morphogens to receptors on the cell surfaces, the morphogenetic signal is transduced inside the cell via the phosphorylation of transcription factors, which subsequently regulate the expression of different target genes. Thus, cell fates are determined by the local concentration of such morphogens. In this work, we investigate three key aspects of morphogenetic signaling processes in growing tissues. First, we study the mechanics of tissue growth via cell division and cell death. We examine the rearrangements of cells on large scales and times by developing a continuum theory which describes the growing tissue as an active complex fluid. In our description we include anisotropic stresses generated by oriented cell division, and we show that average cellular trajectories exhibit anisotropic scaling behaviors. Our description is used to study experimentally measured shape changes of the developing wing disk of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Second, we focus on the spreading of morphogens in growing tissues. We show that the flow field of cell movements due to oriented cell division and cell death causes a drift term in the morphogen transport equation, which captures the stretching and dilution of the concentration profile. Comparing our theoretical results to recent experiments in the Drosophila wing disk, we find that the transport of the morphogen Dpp is mainly intracellular. We moreover show that the decay length of the Dpp gradient increases during development as a result of changing degradation rate and diffusion coefficient, whereas the drift of molecules due to growth is negligible. Thus growth does not affect the decay length of the gradient, but the decay length of the gradient might affect the tissue growth rate as discussed in this work. Finally, we develop a microscopic theoretical description of the intracellular transduction machinery of morphogenetic signals within an individual cell. Our description captures the kinetics of the trafficking of proteins between different cellular compartments in response to receptor-bound signaling molecules. Analyzing experimental data at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction, we show that the morphogenetic signaling is modulated by synaptic signaling via neuronal action potentials

Kinetics of Morphogen Gradient Formation

In the developing fly wing, secreted morphogens such as Decapentaplegic (Dpp) and Wingless (Wg) form gradients of concentration providing positional information. Dpp forms a longer-range gradient than Wg. To understand how the range is controlled, we measured the four key kinetic parameters governing morphogen spreading: the production rate, the effective diffusion coefficient, the degradation rate, and the immobile fraction. The four parameters had different values for Dpp versus Wg. In addition, Dynamin-dependent endocytosis was required for spreading of Dpp, but not Wg. Thus, the cellular mechanisms of Dpp and Wingless spreading are different: Dpp spreading requires endocytic, intracellular trafficking

Global carbon budget 2022

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize data sets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based data products. The terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2021, EFOS increased by 5.1% relative to 2020, with fossil emissions at 10.1±0.5GtCyr-1 (9.9±0.5GtCyr-1 when the cement carbonation sink is included), and ELUC was 1.1±0.7GtCyr-1, for a total anthropogenic CO2 emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 10.9±0.8GtCyr-1 (40.0±2.9GtCO2). Also, for 2021, GATM was 5.2±0.2GtCyr-1 (2.5±0.1ppmyr-1), SOCEAN was 2.9 ±0.4GtCyr-1, and SLAND was 3.5±0.9GtCyr-1, with a BIM of -0.6GtCyr-1 (i.e. the total estimated sources were too low or sinks were too high). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2021 reached 414.71±0.1ppm. Preliminary data for 2022 suggest an increase in EFOS relative to 2021 of +1.0% (0.1% to 1.9%) globally and atmospheric CO2 concentration reaching 417.2ppm, more than 50% above pre-industrial levels (around 278ppm). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959-2021, but discrepancies of up to 1GtCyr-1 persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extratropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the strength of the ocean sink over the last decade. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget and the progress in understanding of the global carbon cycle compared with previous publications of this data set. The data presented in this work are available at 10.18160/GCP-2022 (Friedlingstein et al., 2022b)

Evolving and sustaining ocean best practices and standards for the next decade

The oceans play a key role in global issues such as climate change, food security, and human health. Given their vast dimensions and internal complexity, efficient monitoring and predicting of the planet's ocean must be a collaborative effort of both regional and global scale. A first and foremost requirement for such collaborative ocean observing is the need to follow well-defined and reproducible methods across activities: from strategies for structuring observing systems, sensor deployment and usage, and the generation of data and information products, to ethical and governance aspects when executing ocean observing. To meet the urgent, planet-wide challenges we face, methods across all aspects of ocean observing should be broadly adopted by the ocean community and, where appropriate, should evolve into "Ocean Best Practices." While many groups have created best practices, they are scattered across the Web or buried in local repositories and many have yet to be digitized. To reduce this fragmentation, we introduce a new open access, permanent, digital repository of best practices documentation (oceanbestpractices.org) that is part of the Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS). The new OBPS provides an opportunity space for the centralized and coordinated improvement of ocean observing methods. The OBPS repository employs user-friendly software to significantly improve discovery and access to methods. The software includes advanced semantic technologies for search capabilities to enhance repository operations. In addition to the repository, the OBPS also includes a peer reviewed journal research topic, a forum for community discussion and a training activity for use of best practices. Together, these components serve to realize a core objective of the OBPS, which is to enable the ocean community to create superior methods for every activity in ocean observing from research to operations to applications that are agreed upon and broadly adopted across communities. Using selected ocean observing examples, we show how the OBPS supports this objective. This paper lays out a future vision of ocean best practices and how OBPS will contribute to improving ocean observing in the decade to come

Global Carbon Budget 2022

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize data sets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO$_2$ emissions (E$_{FOS}$) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (E$_{LUC}$), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO$_2$ concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (G$_{ATM}$) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO$_2$ sink (S$_{OCEAN}$) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based data products. The terrestrial CO$_2$ sink (S$_{LAND}$) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (B$_{IM}$), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2021, E$_{FOS}$ increased by 5.1 % relative to 2020, with fossil emissions at 10.1 ± 0.5 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr$^{−1}$ when the cement carbonation sink is included), and E$_{LUC}$ was 1.1 ± 0.7 GtC yr$^{−1}$, for a total anthropogenic CO$_2$ emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 10.9 ± 0.8 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (40.0 ± 2.9 GtCO$_2$). Also, for 2021, G$_{ATM}$ was 5.2 ± 0.2 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (2.5 ± 0.1 ppm yr$^{−1}$), S$_{OCEAN}$ was 2.9  ± 0.4 GtC yr$^{−1}$, and S$_{LAND}$ was 3.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr$^{−1}$, with a B$_{IM}$ of −0.6 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (i.e. the total estimated sources were too low or sinks were too high). The global atmospheric CO$_2$ concentration averaged over 2021 reached 414.71 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2022 suggest an increase in E$_{FOS}$ relative to 2021 of +1.0 % (0.1 % to 1.9 %) globally and atmospheric CO$_2$ concentration reaching 417.2 ppm, more than 50 % above pre-industrial levels (around 278 ppm). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2021, but discrepancies of up to 1 GtC yr$^{−1}$ persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO$_2$ fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO$_2$ flux in the northern extratropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the strength of the ocean sink over the last decade. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget and the progress in understanding of the global carbon cycle compared with previous publications of this data set. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2022 (Friedlingstein et al., 2022b)

Evolving and sustaining ocean best practices and standards for the next decade

The oceans play a key role in global issues such as climate change, food security, and human health. Given their vast dimensions and internal complexity, efficient monitoring and predicting of the planet’s ocean must be a collaborative effort of both regional and global scale. A first and foremost requirement for such collaborative ocean observing is the need to follow well-defined and reproducible methods across activities: from strategies for structuring observing systems, sensor deployment and usage, and the generation of data and information products, to ethical and governance aspects when executing ocean observing. To meet the urgent, planet-wide challenges we face, methods across all aspects of ocean observing should be broadly adopted by the ocean community and, where appropriate, should evolve into “Ocean Best Practices.” While many groups have created best practices, they are scattered across the Web or buried in local repositories and many have yet to be digitized. To reduce this fragmentation, we introduce a new open access, permanent, digital repository of best practices documentation (oceanbestpractices.org) that is part of the Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS). The new OBPS provides an opportunity space for the centralized and coordinated improvement of ocean observing methods. The OBPS repository employs user-friendly software to significantly improve discovery and access to methods. The software includes advanced semantic technologies for search capabilities to enhance repository operations. In addition to the repository, the OBPS also includes a peer reviewed journal research topic, a forum for community discussion and a training activity for use of best practices. Together, these components serve to realize a core objective of the OBPS, which is to enable the ocean community to create superior methods for every activity in ocean observing from research to operations to applications that are agreed upon and broadly adopted across communities. Using selected ocean observing examples, we show how the OBPS supports this objective. This paper lays out a future vision of ocean best practices and how OBPS will contribute to improving ocean observing in the decade to come

Morphogenetic signaling in growing tissues

During the development of multicellular organisms, organs grow to well-defined shapes and sizes. The proper size and patterning of tissues are ensured by signaling molecules as e.g. morphogens. Secreted from a restricted source, morphogens spread into the adjacent target tissue where they form a graded concentration profile. Upon binding of the morphogens to receptors on the cell surfaces, the morphogenetic signal is transduced inside the cell via the phosphorylation of transcription factors, which subsequently regulate the expression of different target genes. Thus, cell fates are determined by the local concentration of such morphogens. In this work, we investigate three key aspects of morphogenetic signaling processes in growing tissues. First, we study the mechanics of tissue growth via cell division and cell death. We examine the rearrangements of cells on large scales and times by developing a continuum theory which describes the growing tissue as an active complex fluid. In our description we include anisotropic stresses generated by oriented cell division, and we show that average cellular trajectories exhibit anisotropic scaling behaviors. Our description is used to study experimentally measured shape changes of the developing wing disk of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Second, we focus on the spreading of morphogens in growing tissues. We show that the flow field of cell movements due to oriented cell division and cell death causes a drift term in the morphogen transport equation, which captures the stretching and dilution of the concentration profile. Comparing our theoretical results to recent experiments in the Drosophila wing disk, we find that the transport of the morphogen Dpp is mainly intracellular. We moreover show that the decay length of the Dpp gradient increases during development as a result of changing degradation rate and diffusion coefficient, whereas the drift of molecules due to growth is negligible. Thus growth does not affect the decay length of the gradient, but the decay length of the gradient might affect the tissue growth rate as discussed in this work. Finally, we develop a microscopic theoretical description of the intracellular transduction machinery of morphogenetic signals within an individual cell. Our description captures the kinetics of the trafficking of proteins between different cellular compartments in response to receptor-bound signaling molecules. Analyzing experimental data at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction, we show that the morphogenetic signaling is modulated by synaptic signaling via neuronal action potentials

Morphogenetic signaling in growing tissues

During the development of multicellular organisms, organs grow to well-defined shapes and sizes. The proper size and patterning of tissues are ensured by signaling molecules as e.g. morphogens. Secreted from a restricted source, morphogens spread into the adjacent target tissue where they form a graded concentration profile. Upon binding of the morphogens to receptors on the cell surfaces, the morphogenetic signal is transduced inside the cell via the phosphorylation of transcription factors, which subsequently regulate the expression of different target genes. Thus, cell fates are determined by the local concentration of such morphogens. In this work, we investigate three key aspects of morphogenetic signaling processes in growing tissues. First, we study the mechanics of tissue growth via cell division and cell death. We examine the rearrangements of cells on large scales and times by developing a continuum theory which describes the growing tissue as an active complex fluid. In our description we include anisotropic stresses generated by oriented cell division, and we show that average cellular trajectories exhibit anisotropic scaling behaviors. Our description is used to study experimentally measured shape changes of the developing wing disk of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Second, we focus on the spreading of morphogens in growing tissues. We show that the flow field of cell movements due to oriented cell division and cell death causes a drift term in the morphogen transport equation, which captures the stretching and dilution of the concentration profile. Comparing our theoretical results to recent experiments in the Drosophila wing disk, we find that the transport of the morphogen Dpp is mainly intracellular. We moreover show that the decay length of the Dpp gradient increases during development as a result of changing degradation rate and diffusion coefficient, whereas the drift of molecules due to growth is negligible. Thus growth does not affect the decay length of the gradient, but the decay length of the gradient might affect the tissue growth rate as discussed in this work. Finally, we develop a microscopic theoretical description of the intracellular transduction machinery of morphogenetic signals within an individual cell. Our description captures the kinetics of the trafficking of proteins between different cellular compartments in response to receptor-bound signaling molecules. Analyzing experimental data at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction, we show that the morphogenetic signaling is modulated by synaptic signaling via neuronal action potentials

A regional pCO2 climatology of the Baltic Sea

Based on direct surface pCO2 observation and a model-based extrapolation technique, we established a regional pCO2 climatology of the Baltic Sea. Observations from June 2003 to Dec. 2021 are obtained from the SOCAT version 2022 data collection and largely based on ICOS DE-SOOP Finnmaid data. The extrapolation technique uses model-based patters of variability to create observational data-constrained, gap- and discontinuity-free mapped fields including local error estimates without the need for or dependence on ancillary data (like, e.g., satellite sea surface temperature maps). Details on the pCO2 climatology and the model-based extrapolation technique are found in Bittig et al. (2023). Here we make the corresponding dataset available with monthly climatological pCO2 value as well as a linear pCO2 time trend for the Baltic Sea domain. Both value and trend are provided with their error estimate and are centered on the 15th of each month. Besides, the long-term trend 2003-2021 in pCO2 as well as its error estimate is given