A more environmentally-friendly and sustainable method of producing the useful chemical 1,2,4-butanetriol has been discovered. The Kobe University team were the first in the world to utilize a method involving the direct fermentation of xylose in rice straw using an engineered yeast strain to produce 1,2,4-butanetriol. In the course of conducting this research, the team successfully overcame two bottlenecks to maximize the production.
In a paper in Science this week, Penn researchers report the first detailed molecular characterization of how every cell changes during animal embryonic development. The work, led by the laboratories of Perelman School of Medicine's John I. Murray, the School of Arts and Sciences' Junhyong Kim, and Robert Waterston of the University of Washington (UW), used the latest technology in the emergent field of single cell biology to profile more than 80,000 cells in the embryo of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
Tropical Storm 14W has been moving through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean for several days and has now been renamed Faxai. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the newly renamed storm and took the temperature of Faxai's clouds and storms.
NASA's Terra satellite used infrared light to analyze the strength of storms in the remnants of Tropical Storm Faxai. Infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.
A study by an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Arlington published in the Journal of Marketing shows that marketers of relatively high-priced products should consider keeping prices high, as many consumers associate high price with high quality.
Narayanan Janakiraman, UTA assistant professor of marketing in the College of Business, said these same consumers equate lower prices with lower quality.
One of the planet's most active ecosystems is one most people rarely encounter and scientists are only starting to explore. The open ocean contains tiny organisms -- phytoplankton -- that perform half the photosynthesis on Earth, helping generate oxygen for animals on land.
A study by University of Washington oceanographers, published this summer in Nature Microbiology, looks at how photosynthetic microbes and ocean bacteria use sulfur, a plentiful marine nutrient.
The global health community is working to eliminate trachoma, a bacterial disease that causes blindness. Researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have analyzed the costs of surveys that must track trachoma levels as part of these elimination efforts.
Infection with parasitic helminths can reduce the susceptibility of T-cells to HIV-1 infection, according to a study published September 5 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Esther de Jong of the University of Amsterdam and William Paxton of the University of Liverpool, and colleagues.
Researchers have successfully sequenced the first genome of an individual from the Harappan civilization, also called the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). The DNA, which belongs to an individual who lived four to five millennia ago, suggests that modern people in India are likely to be largely descended from people of this ancient culture. It also offers a surprising insight into how farming began in South Asia, showing that it was not brought by large-scale movement of people from the Fertile Crescent where farming first arose.
Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a method to significantly extend the life of gene circuits used to instruct microbes to do things such as produce and deliver drugs, break down chemicals and serve as environmental sensors.
TORONTO, September 5, 2019 - York University researchers have made a precise measurement of the size of the proton - a crucial step towards solving a mystery that has preoccupied scientists around the world for the past decade.