Culture

A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could change the way scientists look at one of the most essential enzymes in medicine in hopes of designing better and more cost-effective drugs in the future.

Enzymes are molecules that speed up chemical reactions inside cells. The human body is home to thousands of enzymes that perform vital functions such as the digestion of fat and the breakdown of sugar into glucose.

The paper, co-authored by UT Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology Associate Professor Nitin Jain and student Sara Lemmonds, who has since graduated, looks closely at Cytochrome P450, an enzyme that occurs naturally in the body and other environments. This enzyme is critical in metabolizing over 90 percent of all pharmaceutical drugs.

When a drug is administered, it is usually not used up entirely by the body, and the residual excess can become toxic. "It is P450's job to bind with the leftover drug in the liver to ensure that it is safely excreted," explained Lemmonds.

Scientists know that P450 has another remarkable feature: it can remain stable under very high heat. The same enzyme has been found in bacteria in hot springs and volcanic deposits and has been observed to function normally despite extreme temperatures.

The UT researchers are honing in on the enzyme's heat tolerance.

"The chemical reactions produced by human P450 enzymes are more efficient when they occur at increasing temperatures," said Jain.

Up until now, scientists believed that P450's tolerance to heat had its origin in its rigid structure. However, Jain and Lemmonds's study suggests that these proteins may be quite flexible.

"By better understanding the relationship between flexibility and high temperature, scientists can engineer improved P450 enzymes targeted at biotechnology applications and designing better drugs for humans, producing them en masse and making them more cost effective," Jain said.

For the study, researchers collected thermophilic bacteria--those that thrive at temperatures between 106 and 262 degrees Farenheit--from hot springs and isolated the P450 enzyme.

They subjected the isolated enzymes to spectroscopy and neutron scattering, two techniques based in magnetism, to help illuminate the link between flexibility and thermal stability.

"There could be other enzymes that are as flexible at higher temperatures than P450, or that can become as flexible through simple mutations. If so, knowledge gained from future studies on them could then be used to target specific processes in the body, treat disease, or make new chemical products," said Lemmonds.

The evolution of barn swallows, a bird ubiquitous to bridges and sheds around the world, might be even more closely tied to humans than previously thought, according to new study from the University of Colorado Boulder.

The research, published this week in Molecular Ecology, offers preliminary insight suggesting that the barn swallow and its subspecies evolved alongside--but independently from--humans. These new results make it one of the only known species, in addition to microscopic organisms like bacteria or viruses, to have developed in such a way, upending previous assumptions that barn swallows evolved prior to human settlement.

"Humans could be a really big part of the story," said Rebecca Safran, a co-author of the study and an ecology and evolutionary biology (EBIO) associate professor at CU Boulder. "There's very few studies that can point to the exact influence of humans, and so here, this coincidence of human expansion and permanent settlement and the expansion of a group that relies really, really heavily on humans is compelling."

Barn swallows are found across the northern hemisphere and are characterized by their mud-cup nests that are built nearly exclusively on human-made structures. Despite their prevalence, however, not much is known about their evolutionary history, the timing of their expansion from northern Africa (where they originated) or how the six subspecies evolved so physically and behaviorally different yet remain almost genetically identical.

Previous studies published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London and Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution looked into these questions and found that the different subspecies split early, well before human settlement.

This new study, however, gave the topic a fresh look by examining the whole genome of 168 barn swallows from the two sub-species farthest apart on an evolutionary scale: H. r. savignii in Egypt (a non-migratory species that lives along the Nile) and H. r. erythrogaster in North America (a species found throughout North America that migrates seasonally to South America).

These data--which are on the order of 100,000 times bigger than the previous dataset used--were then analyzed with more sophisticated computational resources and methods than previously available. This allowed researchers to get a more complete picture that places the timing of barn swallow differentiation or speciation (i.e., when the barn swallow subspecies separated) closer to that of when humans began to build structures and settlements.

"The previous studies were playing with the idea of potential impact on population sizes due to humans," said Chris Smith, a graduate student in EBIO and the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology program, and the study's lead author. "Our results suggest a much more substantial link with humans."

These new preliminary findings also suggest that this evolutionary link may have been forged through a "founder event," which is when a small number of individuals in a species take over a new environment and are able to expand their new population there thanks to an availability of resources and an absence of competitors. For barn swallows, this event may have occurred rapidly when they moved into a new, relatively empty environment: alongside humans.

"Everyone is always wondering how do you study speciation? It's been viewed as this long-term, million-year (process), but in barn swallows, we are not talking about differentiation within several thousands of years," said Safran. "Things are really unfolding rather rapidly."

Smith concurred: "It's interesting to study speciation in the beginning steps."

New research led by Lijun Song, associate professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, and graduate student Phillip Pettis suggests that knowing people in high and diverse positions may be good or bad for your health. The culprit? Economic inequality.

Song studies the relationship between a person's health and the socioeconomic status of their social contacts--what's called "accessed" status. The idea is that we all have a personal network--consisting of family, friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances and others--and the status of our social contacts can impact our lives through our relationships with them.

She and Pettis analyzed nationally representative data from comprehensive social surveys simultaneously taken in the United States, Taiwan and urban China to see whether a person's accessed status might impact whether they experienced a health issue in the previous year serious enough to keep them from participating in their daily routines for more than a week.

Accessed status can impact our health in interesting ways. Higher-status people tend to be healthier in general--they often are more knowledgeable and conscious about health, have more time and money to invest in a healthy lifestyle, experience less chronic stress and have greater access to medical care, among other positive things. Those are benefits that can extend to their social contacts, too--something called social capital theory.

"But we find that accessed status has a dark side, and we want to understand why," Song said. In two of the three societies she studied--the United States and China--being connected to higher- and diverse-status people was actually associated with more health disruptions, not less. That's an unexpected finding, and one that's not well understood.

To explain it, Song has proposed a new theory to explain the negative impacts of high accessed socioeconomic status on health, called social cost theory. Its main features include negative social comparison, receipt of detrimental resources and networking costs. An example of negative social comparison might be developing negative psychological feelings, such as anxiety or a sense of failure, and poor health habits, such as smoking, when comparing themselves with those in better-off situations, while an example of a detrimental resource might be unwanted intrusion in their affairs. A networking cost is simply the additional effort, such as time, money and energy, that goes into establishing and maintaining valuable high-status relationships.

Social burdens like these may make it harder for a sick person to get the support they need to get better faster.

So why does having higher- and diverse-status connections help in some societies and not in others? Economic inequality appears to play a role. Taiwan has relatively low economic inequality, and of the three societies studied, it is the only one that suggests the good outweighs the bad. The United States and China have much higher degrees of economic inequality, and show the reverse.

Song said it was important to note that the fact that China and Taiwan have different outcomes is interesting because they are both collectivistic societies, while the United States is an individualistic one. This suggests that future research should be cautious when applying collectivism-individualism models to questions of accessed status and health. Song and Pettis also caution that future longitudinal work is needed to understand the causal direction of and the direct mechanisms behind these effects. Additionally, future larger-scale comparative research is also needed to understand variations across different societies and cultures.

When animals graze, they affect the environment. They keep meadows open, their faeces fertilize the soil, and forests yield to cultivated landscapes.

But what effect does grazing have on overall biomass? Does grazing affect carbon capture too? How many plants survive and what kind?

A group of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to find out.

"This can tell us something about carbon sequestration in mountain plants, and how grazers affect it," says Mia Vedel Sørensen in the Department of Biology. She recently earned her doctorate on the topic.

Weird cages

In 2013, the researchers set up 48 wire cages at various locations near Hjerkinn village in the Dovre mountains. These were grazing areas where sheep dominate and have the occasional company of moose, lemmings, field mice, ptarmigan and a few reindeer passing through.

Researchers placed the cages in a meadow, a heath and a Salix shrub landscape with several different willow species.

The weird cages - or exclosures - were designed to keep out resident herbivores so that the researchers could eventually compare the vegetation inside and outside them.

The following year, in 2014, the researchers planted willow cuttings (Salix) to simulate shrub expansion.

For the past few decades, shrub vegetation has taken over parts of the mountain where heather and meadows were more common thirty years ago. However, grazing can slow down - and potentially even reverse - this expansion.

Research often takes time, and the researchers had to wait until the summer of 2015 to measure the different effects of their planting and cages. They recently presented their results in BMC Ecology.

So what did they find?

"We only found significant effects of the treatments in the heath community. The biomass there increased where the herbivores were kept out," says Vedel Sørensen.

In other words, they found that on the heath, growth was better inside the protected cages than outside, where the sheep wandered around a lot. They did not see the same effects in the meadow or shrub landscapes.

"That surprised us to begin with," she says.

Heath is the least attractive pastureland for the sheep. You would think the animals would have a greater impact on the grassy meadows or the area with the juicy shrubs, but no.

"But it actually did turn out to make sense," says Sørensen.

Perhaps the grazing was better elsewhere, but the sheep still liked being on the heath. This was their favourite place to relax and chew their cud.

And where the sheep relax the most, they also defecate the most, which nourishes the plants and increases growth. In addition, the animals have an impact by trampling the vegetation. This gave some of the plants inside the cages a huge advantage and resulted in a greater difference between the protected and unprotected plant growth.

Shrub expansion may have effect

The researchers thus found that planting the shrubs showed no effects on the ecosystem, but that does not mean that the shrub expansion doesn't matter. Shrubs provide more shade, which in turn can affect other plants.

"We figure it's premature to judge these effects, and that this area will provide some interesting results later," says Vedel Sørensen. She hopes that either she or others can follow up on these trials in a few years.

In an earlier study, Vedel Sørensen showed that meadows sequester the most carbon and heath the least of the three landscape types investigated. This project is part of a larger project called ECOSHRUB, which is led by Professor Bente Jessen Graae and Associate Professor Richard Strimbeck from NTNU.

Bottom Line: While the presence of common breast cancer mutations was indicative of increased breast cancer risk, the presence of certain rare mutations was indicative of increased risk from interval breast cancers and death.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Author: Jingmei Li, PhD, senior research scientist at the Genome Institute of Singapore

Background: "It is not enough just to know which markers can predict an increase in breast cancer risk," said Li. "We also need to know which biomarkers can identify women with increased risk of aggressive interval cancers that are not usually detected during routine mammography screening."

Interval breast cancers are detected between mammography screenings; these cancers are often aggressive and have a poor prognosis. "About 20 percent of women who partake in routine mammography screening will be diagnosed with interval breast cancer," explained Li. "More sensitive methods to predict and detect these lethal cancers are sorely needed."

How the Study Was Conducted: Li and colleagues analyzed data from over 5,000 breast cancer patients diagnosed between 2001 and 2008 through the Stockholm-Gotland Regional Breast Cancer quality register. The researchers studied associations with tumor characteristics and survival outcomes for patients with rare protein-truncating variants (PTVs) in 31 cancer predisposition genes, including BRCA1/2. Additionally, the researchers developed a polygenic risk score (PRS) through the weighted sum of all known common breast cancer variants, which was also correlated with tumor characteristics and overall survival.

Because interval cancers are not identified through routine mammography screenings, Li and colleagues analyzed the mode of detection for cancers driven by rare PTVs or common variants. A proportion of interval cancers may include tumors that were missed from routine mammography. Because dense tissue is one of the main reasons for masked tumors, women were stratified into risk categories based on percent breast density (low risk

Results: Of the 5,099 breast cancer patients analyzed, 597 carried PTVs. These patients were younger, had more aggressive tumor phenotypes, and had 1.65 times the risk of death from breast cancer compared to those who did not carry PTVs. After excluding 92 women that carried mutations to BRCA1/2 from this cohort, women with PTVs had 1.76 times the risk of death from breast cancer compared to those without PTVs.

Analysis of 5,077 women who did not carry mutations to BRCA1/2 revealed that a higher PRS was associated with less aggressive tumor characteristics. Notably, no significant survival differences were associated with increases in PRS.

"Polygenic risk score is a good marker for breast cancer prediction," noted Li. "However, there is not enough evidence to show that this score can also predict death from breast cancer."

Among women with low breast density, those who carried PTV mutations were 1.96 times as likely to be diagnosed with interval breast cancers compared to women who did not carry PTV mutations. Further, among women with low breast density, those who carried non-BRCA1/2 PTV mutations still had 1.89 times increased risk compared to women who did not carry PTV mutations. In contrast, women with low breast density and a higher PRS had a 23 percent decreased risk for developing interval breast cancer.

Author's Comments: "Both rare and common variants can predict breast cancer risk," said Li. "Our study shows that different variants are associated with different kinds of breast cancer, and that women carrying rare variants have a higher risk of developing interval breast cancers and have worse overall survival compared to women with common mutations."

An insect larva found in the caves of Intervales State Park, an Atlantic Rainforest remnant in the municipality of Ribeirão Grande, São Paulo State, Brazil, was initially of no interest to the research group led by biochemist Vadim Viviani, a professor at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Sorocaba. The researchers are investigating bioluminescence, the capacity of living organisms to produce their own light.

Nevertheless, the larva of Neoditomyia, a genus of non-luminescent cave worms, proved to be a promising object of study. Although it does not emit light similar to that of other insects of the family Keroplatidae (fungus gnats) in the order Diptera (true flies), this insect produces luciferin, a molecule indispensable for the bioluminescent members of the family.

The discovery is the first of its kind in the Neotropics and has just been published in the journal Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences.

The other 15 species of Keroplatidae that produce luciferin are found in the Appalachian Mountains (USA, one species), New Zealand (eight), Australia (one) and Eurasia (five). All are bioluminescent.

"If what we found here produces luciferin without emitting light, it's possible that the molecule has another biochemical function of which we're unaware," Viviani told.

The cave worm larva found in the Atlantic Rainforest biome does not emit light because its luciferin is only one of the components required to do so. Luciferin is a small molecule that emits light when oxidized (exposed to oxygen). For luciferin to be oxidized and emit light, however, an animal must also produce luciferase, an enzyme that catalyzes the bioluminescent reaction.

This keroplatid's cousins in the northern hemisphere and Oceania produce both molecules and therefore emit light, as do fireflies, glow-worms, and other insects.

The molecular structures of luciferin and luciferase in dipterans and fireflies are completely different and do not react with each other to emit light. Only luciferin and luciferase produced by the same organism can react to emit light.

To determine whether the substance found in the cave worm larva was indeed luciferin, the researchers mixed it with purified luciferase from Orfelia fultonii, the keroplatid species from the Appalachians. To their surprise, the mixture emitted blue light similar to the light emitted by O. fultonii.

Enzymes similar to beetle luciferase have been found in non-luminescent species, but the occurrence of luciferin in terrestrial organisms has so far been limited to luminescent species. Hence, the novelty of this discovery.

In addition to Viviani, the co-authors of the study included postdoctoral researcher Danilo Trabuco do Amaral, and doctoral researcher Vanessa Rezende Bevilaqua, both affiliated with UFSCar and recipients of scholarships from São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP, as well as postdoctoral researcher Rafaela Falaschi, who is affiliated with the University of Ponta Grossa. The study was part of the Thematic Project "Arthropod bioluminescence", which is funded by FAPESP.

Laboratory use

In addition to captivating people who find bioluminescent species at night, the light-emitting substances they produce are widely used for research in medicine, biotechnology, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals. Genetic engineering to mark specific cells with bioluminescent substances allows them to be easily observed under a microscope, for example.

"Bioluminescent substances are used to mark cancer cells, test sperm viability, and detect pathogens and even heavy metals in water samples," said Viviani, who chairs the International Society for Bioluminescence & Chemiluminescence (ISBC).

Once it has been fully characterized, the new luciferin may also be used in analytical applications, including as an indicator of specific cells. "We don't yet know all its potential applications, but its chemical composition has peculiarities that could lead to many other uses," Viviani said.

Biotechnology applications of the luciferin-luciferase combination that produces blue light, he recalls, differ from applications of the more energetic luciferin-luciferase reaction that produces yellow-green light in fireflies and glow-worms.

Recent evolution

The authors of the study also tested the larvae of two other dipterans to search for luciferin that interacted with luciferase from O. fultonii.

Arachnocampa luminosa, the New Zealand glow-worm, emits light to lure prey to its cave webs, but laboratory tests showed the bioluminescence of this species to be different because it did not emit light when brought into contact with the Appalachian species.

The same results were observed with Aedes aegypti, demonstrating that the mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever does not have molecules similar to luciferin, or if it does, they do not interact with the tested luciferase.

Nevertheless, the study contributes to the search for bioluminescent substances in other species. The occurrence of luciferin in a non-luminescent larva may indicate that it has a different but equally important biological function in keroplatids. This finding suggests that bioluminescence is a trait that has evolved more recently in insects that already produced luciferin for other biological purposes.

The researchers do not rule out the possibility of applying knowledge of luciferin and luciferase in bioluminescent insects to the control of disease-bearing mosquitos because these molecules are ideal to mark cells and investigate intracellular processes.

"If dipteran luciferin and related compounds do indeed prove to play an important role in the physiology of the organism, we might be able to interfere with mosquito reproduction," Viviani said.

The next stage of the project involves determining the chemical structure of the novel luciferin. Viviani plans to conduct it in collaboration with Cassius Stevani, a professor at the University of São Paulo's Chemistry Institute (IQ-USP), and colleagues at other partner institutions.

HOUSTON - (Oct. 31, 2018) - In its first year, an innovative virtual program has substantially increased mistreated elderly Texans' access to elder mistreatment and geriatric experts with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

The statewide adult Forensic Assessment Center Network (FACN) at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth received and completed more than 500 referrals from Texas Adult Protective Services (APS) - more than quadrupling APS worker and client access. Before the establishment of the network across the state, the team evaluated 100 referrals a year from the Houston APS region.

"This network allows us to reach more people in need in a more timely fashion," said Jason Burnett, Ph.D., co-director of the adult network and assistant professor of geriatric and palliative medicine at McGovern Medical School. "Previously, in rural areas, an APS worker would have to find a doctor willing to travel to do an in-home assessment. Any delays in the process would prolong the older adult's risks. With this program, they don't have to search for physicians. This streamlines the process and cuts down the time for assessments, which are used to facilitate protective-service planning. This is really critical considering the physician shortage in many areas and the needs and risks of this very vulnerable population."

Using videophone-assisted secure devices such as smart phones and tablets, the network provides access to the UTHealth team for APS workers in every region in the state. To date, all 11 state APS districts have used the program - 10 of them within the first three months of implementation.

A report on the early results, A Statewide Elder Mistreatment Virtual Assessment Program: Preliminary Data, appeared recently in an online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Nationally, APS agencies see roughly 500,000 cases a year of elder mistreatment, including physical abuse, neglect and exploitation, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A lack of elder mistreatment experts and geriatric specialists can result in long waits for assessment, especially for those who live in rural and medically under-resourced areas.

"The majority of our cases involve assessing mental capacity and a majority of those are now via videophone conferencing," Burnett said. "Time is critical in preventing more harm. This network brought an innovative solution to protecting some of Texas' most vulnerable seniors and the model we use can be scaled up or down and used anywhere."

For more than 20 years, The Texas Elder Abuse and Mistreatment Institute (TEAM), the first U.S. medical school-APS joint collaboration, has conducted geriatric and decision-making capacity assessments of APS clients in the Houston area. The institute moved to UTHealth in 2007 and includes experts in abuse, neglect, exploitation and self-neglect including geriatric physicians, geriatric nurses, gerontologists and geriatric social workers.

The adult network was adapted from the child Forensic Assessment Center Network, a program established in 2006 by Rebecca Girardet, M.D., professor of pediatrics at McGovern Medical School. Created in 2017 using funds from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, it is the first of its kind in the country to give APS caseworkers from a state adult protective services agency and their clients, regardless of location, direct access to a team of medical experts who can assist in abuse case investigations and determinations.

Process waters from the seafood industry contain valuable nutrients, that could be used in food or aquaculture feed. But currently, these process waters are treated as waste. Now, a research project from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows the potential of recycling these nutrients back into the food chain.

During preparation of herring, shrimps and mussels, large amounts of process water are continuously pumped out as waste by the seafood industry. The water is used when boiling shrimps or mussels, or when filleting, salting and marinating herring, for example. Approximately 7000-8000 liters of water is used to prepare a ton of marinated herring, whilst a stunning 50,000 liters of water is needed per ton of peeled shrimps, or per three tons of raw shrimps.

But these side stream waters contain proteins, peptides, fats and micronutrients, which could be recycled and used, for example by the food industry, as an ingredient in feed or for growing microalgae. In fact, the leftover boiled water from shrimp preparation is basically a ready-made stock.

The Nordic project Novaqua, coordinated by Professor Ingrid Undeland of the Department of Biology and Biological Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, has now shown the potential of extracting these important nutrients from the process waters.

"It's very important to help the industry understand that the side streams don't need to be wasted. Instead, they should be treated as really exciting raw material," she says.

"The backbone of our project is a circular approach. In the past, we had a more holistic view on handling of food raw materials, but today so much is lost in side streams. Furthermore, we are in the middle of a protein shift, and there's a huge demand in society for alternative protein sources."

The research project started in 2015 with the aim to recover nutrients from seafood process waters and create innovative uses for them. A similar approach is already successfully implemented in the dairy industry, where the residual liquid from cheese making - whey - is used in sports nutrition, as well as in different food and feed products.

When the research team measured the composition of process waters, they found them to contain up to 7 percent protein and 2,5 percent fat. In process waters from shrimp, astaxanthin, a red pigment and antioxidant often used as a dietary supplement, was also present.

"Our calculations show that in a primary processing plant for herring, as much as 15 percent of the herring protein coming in to the industry leached out into the water and was treated as waste, thereby lost," Ingrid Undeland explains.

Using a two-step process, the research team managed to recover up to 98 percent of the protein and 99 percent of the omega 3-rich fats. The process resulted in a semi-solid biomass and a nutrient-rich liquid. After dehydration, biomass from shrimp boiling water was shown to contain 66 percent protein and 25 percent fat. Two tests were made, together with the University of Gothenburg and Skretting ARC, using this new biomass as an ingredient in feed for salmon, and the results were encouraging.

The nutritious liquid was used for glazing frozen fish, thereby protecting it from going rancid. It turned out to be slightly more protective than water, which is currently used for such glazing. The fluid was also tested as a substance for microalgae-cultivation and was shown to enhance the growth of two types of algae. The algae biomasses can subsequently be used as sources of protein or pigment.

All in all, the research project pointed out several different ways to recycle the nutrients which are currently lost in the process waters. The next step is implementation in the seafood industry.

"A major challenge is to get the industry to manage the water side streams as food, beyond the stage when they are separated from the seafood product. Today, that is the point where the side streams start being handled as waste. This means there's a need for new routines for cooling and hygiene," says Ingrid Undeland.

In Sweden, the waste waters are purified to some extent before they go out of the factories. This means that many seafood producers already have the flotation technology needed in the second step of side stream recycling. But there are also investments to be made, according to Bita Forghani Targhi, a post-doctoral researcher at the division of Food and Nutrition Science and colleague of Undeland.

"The main challenge would be cost-related issues," she says.

The work now continues within the new project AquaStream, funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. Bita Forghani Targhi points out that an important next step will include consulting with local businesses, interviewing them on generated side streams and verifying the current nutrient loss through a primary characterisation of process waters. She has a positive outlook on the future:

"I am quite positive on the fact that related industries, sooner or later, will be implementing these techniques. With ever increasing awareness on the value of recycling nutrients, this facilitates industrial processes to adopt feasible approaches towards a circular economy."

More information about the Novaqua project:

The project's full name is Extracting Novel Values from Aqueous Seafood Side Streams, or Novaqua for short. The project was started in 2015 and closed in 2018, and was funded by Nordic Innovation. Partners involved alongside Chalmers included Räkor & Laxgrossisten AB, Fisk Idag AB, Swemarc at the University of Gothenburg, DTU Foods, Bio-Aqua and Skretting ARC. Research on algae cultivation was done in collaboration with the researchers Eva Albers and Joshua Mayers at Industrial Biotechnology at Chalmers. Scandic Pelagic AB and Klädesholmen Seafood AB were also affiliated to the project, and play an important role in the new AquaStream project.

A new study puts a fresh spin on what it means to "go with your gut." The findings, published in Nature, suggest that gut bacteria may control movement in fruit flies and identify the neurons involved in this response. The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

"This study provides additional evidence for a connection between the gut and the brain, and in particular outlines how gut bacteria may influence behavior, including movement," said Margaret Sutherland, Ph.D., program director at NINDS.

Researchers led by Sarkis K. Mazmanian, Ph.D., professor of microbiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and graduate student Catherine E. Schretter, observed that germ-free flies, which did not carry bacteria, were hyperactive. For instance, they walked faster, over greater distances, and took shorter rests than flies that had normal levels of microbes. Dr. Mazmanian and his team investigated ways in which gut bacteria may affect behavior in fruit flies.

"Locomotion is important for a number of activities such as mating and searching for food. It turns out that gut bacteria may be critical for fundamental behaviors in animals," said Dr. Mazmanian.

Fruit flies carry between five and 20 different species of bacteria and Dr. Mazmanian's team treated the germ-free animals with individual strains of those microbes. When the flies received Lactobacillus brevis, their movements slowed down to normal speed. L. brevis was one of only two species of bacteria that restored normal behavior in the germ-free flies.

Dr. Mazmanian's group also discovered that the molecule xylose isomerase (Xi), a protein that breaks down sugar and is found in L. brevis, may be critical to this process. Isolating the molecule and treating germ-free flies with it was sufficient to slow down the speedwalkers.

Additional experiments showed that Xi may regulate movement by fine-tuning levels of certain carbohydrates, such as trehalose, which is the main sugar found in flies and is similar to mammalian glucose. Flies that were given Xi had lower levels of trehalose than did untreated germ-free flies. When Xi-treated flies, which showed normal behavior, were given trehalose alone, they resumed fast movements suggesting that the sugar was able to reverse the effects of Xi.

Next, the researchers looked into the flies' nervous system to see what cells were involved in bacteria-directed movement. When Dr. Mazmanian's team turned on neurons that produce the chemical octopamine, that activation canceled out the effect of L. brevis on the germ-free flies. As a result, the flies, which had previously slowed down after receiving the bacterium or Xi, resumed their speedwalking behavior. Turning on octopamine-producing nerve cells in flies with normal levels of bacteria also caused them to move faster. However, activating neurons that produce other brain chemicals did not influence the flies' movements.

According to Dr. Mazmanian, Schretter and their colleagues, Xi may be monitoring the flies' metabolic state, including levels of nutrients, and then signaling to octopamine neurons whether they should turn on or off, resulting in changes in behavior.

Instead of octopamine, mammals produce a comparable chemical called noradrenaline, which has been shown to control movement.

"Gut bacteria may play a similar role in mammalian locomotion, and even in movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease," said Dr. Mazmanian.

More research is needed to see whether bacteria control movement in other species, including mammals. In addition, future studies will further investigate how Xi is involved in these behaviors.

Only one in 30 children does the recommended amount of daily physical activity, new research suggests.

Guidelines from the Chief Medical Officer say people aged five to 18 should do at least 60 minutes of "moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity" every day.

Previous research has often used less than seven days of data on children's activity and created an average based on that.

But a study by the universities of Exeter and Plymouth of Year Five children (aged nine or ten) found that although almost a third (30.6%) achieved an average of 60 minutes per day, just 3.2% did so every day.

Activity levels among girls were even lower, with just 1.2% hitting the 60-minute daily target - compared to 5.5% of boys.

"Previous studies based on average activity are likely to have overestimated the percentage of children meeting the recommendations," said Dr Lisa Price, of the University of Exeter.

"Our findings suggest that just under a third of children are achieving an average of 60 minutes per day, but only 3.2% meet the 60-minute target every day.

"We were surprised to find such a big difference.

"We don't know whether averaging 60 minutes a day will be different in terms of health outcomes compared to 60 minutes daily - more research is needed to look into this.

"We do know that most children aren't doing enough physical activity, and that this has consequences not just in childhood but in adulthood too."

The data was gathered from 807 Year Five children from 32 schools in Devon, with a full seven days of data gathered on each child using an activity tracker watch.

Previous studies collecting activity data have been limited by the ability to obtain a full seven days of data, so this study has some of the most robust data on nine and ten year olds' activity.

MINNEAPOLIS - In the past, researchers believed that Parkinson's disease did not affect life expectancy. But recent studies showed a somewhat shorter life span. Now a new study suggests that when the disease does not affect thinking skills early on, life span is not affected. The study is published in the October 31, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"This is good news for many people with Parkinson's and their families," said study author David Bäckström, MD, of Umeå University in Umeå, Sweden.

The study looked at people with Parkinson's disease and other types of parkinsonism, such as multiple system atrophy and progressive supranuclear palsy. People with those two disorders had the shortest life expectancy, with a mortality rate that was more than three times higher than for the general population.

The study involved 182 people who were newly diagnosed with parkinsonism and were followed for up to 13.5 years. Of the participants, 143 had Parkinson's disease, 18 had progressive supranuclear palsy and 13 had multiple system atrophy. At the start of the study and at least once a year, the participants were tested for Parkinson's symptoms and memory and thinking skills. During the study, 109 of the people died.

People with problems with memory and thinking skills, or mild cognitive impairment, at the beginning of the study were 2.4 times more likely to die during the study than people who did not have memory and thinking problems. Bäckström said that assuming that the average age at the start of the study was about 71 for people with Parkinson's disease, the expected survival for people with no mild cognitive impairment was 11.6 years, compared to 8.2 years for those with mild cognitive impairment.

A total of 54 percent of those with Parkinson's disease died during the study, compared to 89 percent of those with progressive supranuclear palsy and 92 percent of those with multiple system atrophy.

Bäckström said that assuming the average age at the start of the study was about 72 for people with all types of parkinsonism, the expected survival for people with Parkinson's disease was 9.6 years and 6.1 years for people with progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy.

Other factors early in the disease that were associated with a shorter life span were having freezing of gait, where people are briefly unable to walk, and a loss of the sense of smell.

A limitation of the study was that autopsies were used to confirm the diagnoses in only five of the 109 people who died, so there may have been some people who were diagnosed incorrectly.

Only a third of European countries have robust reporting on child and adolescent nutrient intakes, new research shows. This highlights the potential lack of data to inform the design and monitoring of nutritional policies in some parts of Europe.

To better understand energy levels and the nutrient intakes currently consumed by European children, an international team led by the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the World Health Organization's (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, reviewed national diet surveys from the 53 European Member States. They found the majority of the reporting gaps were in Central and Eastern European countries, meaning potential nutritional issues in certain countries may be undetected or underestimated.

Lead author Holly Rippin, a postgraduate researcher from the School of Food Science and Nutrition, said: "The lack of available data for child nutrient intake is concerning. It makes it extremely difficult to identify vulnerable groups, compare nutrient intakes between countries and provide evidence for policies that could improve health. It's similar to trying to describe a complex watercolour when large sections haven't been painted in yet."

The study, published in Nutrition Research Reviews, shows:

Only around 30 per cent of countries reported nutrient intake data by gender and age group for children and adolescents.

Age groupings varied across counties and several counties did not report nutrients in all age groups or reported on different types of nutrients.

Many countries did not separate intake amounts for girls and boys in the youngest age groups.

Holly Rippin said: "Our assessment also showed a significant amount of under-reporting, which means certain nutrition-related problems, such as deficiencies or overconsumption, could be underestimated and possibly just the tip of the iceberg with so many countries intakes unknown."

The WHO European Food and Nutrition Action Plan encourages Member States to strengthen and expand nationally representative diet and nutrition surveys. However, national diet survey provision across Europe is inconsistent and less than two thirds of WHO European countries have nationally representative diet surveys.

Holly Rippin added: "Insufficient data and the inability to compare countries and age groups highlights the pressing need to dedicate resources to dietary surveillance and harmonise methodologies and approaches in nutrient reporting throughout the WHO European region.

"The worry is that it is extremely difficult to design suitable and locally-appropriate nutrition policies in countries without sufficient data. Easily accessed, robust data is critical in tailoring policies to meet national needs and improve diets across Europe."

Falling short of WHO recommended nutrient intakes

The team assessed the limited available data from the national diet surveys against nutrient intakes recommended by WHO. While inconsistent reporting across and within countries hindered comparisons, the study identified some key areas of concern and in particular found that the average intakes for children reported in the majority of countries, including the UK, did not meet most of the WHO recommended nutrient intakes.

Co-author Janet Cade, professor of nutritional epidemiology and public health at Leeds, said: "Our findings indicate that a Europe-wide policy focus could improve intakes of iron, vitamin D, and total folate while also reducing sodium and free sugar intake. A focus on iron and vitamin D intake would be especially beneficial for girls and children over the age of 10 .

"Iron is a particular issue for adolescent girls. The survey data showed low iron intakes in the vast majority of countries. Adolescent girls continue to be at greater risk of iron-deficiency anaemia, which is associated with reduced intellectual and immune function.

"Although a variety of evidence is required to inform national interventions, accurately identifying key dietary trends could help prevent childhood nutrient deficiencies that can cause health issues that extend well into adulthood."

The WHO European Food and Nutrition Action Plan already identifies several of the nutrients highlighted in the report as areas of concern, such as iron and vitamin D, although it refers to all ages rather than specifically children. The Action Plan also calls for the promotion of healthy diets through the reduction in sodium, saturated fats, and free sugars.

Co-author Dr Jayne Hutchinson, also from the School of Food Science and Nutrition at Leeds, said: "The WHO European Food and Nutrition Action Plan is making a concentrated effort to improve nutrient intake across Europe and identifying any additional areas of concern is an important part of advancing these efforts.

"Our research shows there are still other areas of concern that need to be better understood and addressed, such as omega fats for which reported intakes were low. Omega fats have important functions for health and studies suggest they may help lower the risk of heart disease and depression.

"Identifying these trends allows for the potential to develop targeted policy and guidance, for example encouraging public education on sources of omega fats.

"Despite the current lack of data, national nutrition and health surveys remain the best source of information on dietary risk factors. It's vital that government and health bodies should continue to invest and improve efforts to conduct national dietary surveys in a standardised format with a full range of nutrient intakes."

Dr Joao Breda is a study co-author and Programme Manager for Nutrition at WHO Europe and Head of the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases. He said: "Dietary surveys should be the foundation for all nutrition policies in a country. In many cases, our efforts to support countries in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals are constrained by a lack of data.

"Commitment by countries and funders to support the better availability of dietary intake data will help the public health community target policies and interventions to eradicate all forms of malnutrition, including both the remaining pockets of under-nutrition in the region and the rising rates of overweight and unhealthy diets."

Researchers have taught an artificial intelligence program used to recognise faces on Facebook to identify galaxies in deep space.

The result is an AI bot named ClaRAN that scans images taken by radio telescopes.

Its job is to spot radio galaxies--galaxies that emit powerful radio jets from supermassive black holes at their centres.

ClaRAN is the brainchild of big data specialist Dr Chen Wu and astronomer Dr Ivy Wong, both from The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Dr Wong said black holes are found at the centre of most, if not all, galaxies.

"These supermassive black holes occasionally burp out jets that can be seen with a radio telescope," she said.

"Over time, the jets can stretch a long way from their host galaxies, making it difficult for traditional computer programs to figure out where the galaxy is.

"That's what we're trying to teach ClaRAN to do."

Dr Wu said ClaRAN grew out of an open source version of Microsoft and Facebook's object detection software.

He said the program was completely overhauled and trained to recognise galaxies instead of people.

ClaRAN itself is also open source and publicly available on GitHub.

Dr Wong said the upcoming EMU survey using the WA-based Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope is expected to observe up to 70 million galaxies across the history of the Universe.

She said traditional computer algorithms are able to correctly identify 90 per cent of the sources.

"That still leaves 10 per cent, or seven million 'difficult' galaxies that have to be eyeballed by a human due to the complexity of their extended structures," Dr Wong said.

Dr Wong has previously harnessed the power of citizen science to spot galaxies through the Radio Galaxy Zoo project.

"If ClaRAN reduces the number of sources that require visual classification down to one per cent, this means more time for our citizen scientists to spend looking at new types of galaxies," she said.

A highly-accurate catalogue produced by Radio Galaxy Zoo volunteers was used to train ClaRAN how to spot where the jets originate.

Dr Wu said ClaRAN is an example of a new paradigm called 'programming 2.0'.

"All you do is set up a huge neural network, give it a ton of data, and let it figure out how to adjust its internal connections in order to generate the expected outcome," he said.

"The new generation of programmers spend 99 per cent of their time crafting the best quality data sets and then train the AI algorithms to optimise the rest.

"This is the future of programming."

Dr Wong said ClaRAN has huge implications for how telescope observations are processed.

"If we can start implementing these more advanced methods for our next generation surveys, we can maximise the science from them," she said.

"There's no point using 40-year-old methods on brand new data, because we're trying to probe further into the Universe than ever before."

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in North America and its incidence has risen sharply in the last decade. Since its progression depends on environmental factors, increases in daily temperatures, a manifestation of climate change, might be contributing to a rise in the number of ticks as well as a greater availability of hosts. A new study looked at the relationship between climatic variables and the incidence of Lyme disease in 15 U.S. states. The study found that rising temperatures are expected to boost the number of cases of Lyme disease by more than 20 percent by mid-century.

The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, appears in the Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology.

"A sizable increase in the incidence of cases of Lyme disease in the United States due to climate change is imminent," says Edson Severnini, assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, who coauthored the study. "Our findings should alert clinicians, public health professionals, and policymakers, as well as the general public."

The number of reported cases of Lyme disease in the United States rose from 10,000 in 1991 to about 28,000 annually in the past five years. Growing evidence suggests that climate change may affect the incidence and prevalence of diseases like Lyme. This is because ticks spend most of their life cycle outside the host in an environment where temperature and humidity directly affect their development, activity, survival, and host-seeking behavior. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses the number of cases of Lyme disease as an indicator of climate change.

To better understand the magnitude of the effect of climate change on incidences of Lyme disease, researchers examined the effect of climatic variables on frequency of the disease in 15 U.S. states with the highest incidence of Lyme disease; these 15 states, which are primarily in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, contribute to 95 percent of reported cases. In those states, researchers studied 568 counties, using annual epidemiological data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2000 to 2016; they also looked at meteorological data (temperature and precipitation) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Assuming that the temperature will rise 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century, which is what the U.S. National Climate Assessment predicts will occur based on projection averages for the period 2036-2065, the study predicts that the number of cases of Lyme disease in the United States will increase about 21 percent by mid-century. This means 8.6 more cases of Lyme disease per 100,000 people annually.

"Tick-borne diseases are an important public health concern and the incidence of these infections is increasing in the Unites States and worldwide," explains Igor Dumic, researcher at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science and the Mayo Clinic Health System, who led the study. "Lyme disease is a classic example of the link between environmental factors and the occurrence and spread of disease."