Starch-controlling Gene Fuels Protein

Researchers from Iowa State University (ISU) have introduced a newly discovered gene, found only in Arabidopsis thaliana plants, into soybean plants and increased the amount of protein in the soybean seeds by 30 to 60 percent.

The research was performed by Eve Wurtele, professor of genetics, development and cell biology at ISU, and Ling Li, an adjunct assistant professor and an associate scientist working in her lab.

When the researchers neutralized the gene, known as QQS, in Arabidopsis, they discovered the gene was involved in regulating starch accumulation, called deposition. "Based on the changes in activities of other genes that occurred when we altered QQS, we conjectured that it wasn't directly involved in starch synthesis, but rather it may be involved in altering [the plant's] composition in general," said Wurtele. "We decided to test this concept by transferring the gene to an agronomically important plant species, soybean, which has a seed and is important as a source of vegetable protein and oil."

"We found that the QQS transgene increased protein production in the soybean seed," she added. "That was the best possible scenario."

The discovery has potential to help people in areas who survive on protein-deficient diets and holds promise for helping meet nutritional needs of a hungry world.

This research is supported in part by funding from the National Science Foundation and ISU's Plant Science Institute. To read more about this research, see the ISU news story Starch-controlling gene fuels more protein in soybean plants.

(Date of Image: 2011)

Credit: ISU photo by Bob Elbert

Can Nature's Beauty Lift Citizens From Poverty?

Researchers release findings on who benefits from nature tourism

Using nature's beauty as a tourist draw can boost conservation in China's valued panda preserves, but it isn't an automatic ticket out of poverty for the humans who live there, a unique long-term study shows.

Often those who benefit most from nature-based tourism are people who already have resources. The truly impoverished have a harder time breaking into the tourism business, according to the paper, "Drivers and Socioeconomic Impacts of Tourism Participation in Protected Areas," published in the April 25 edition of PLoS One.

The study looks at nearly a decade of burgeoning tourism in the Wolong Nature Reserve in Southwestern China. China, like many areas in the world, banks on tourism over farming for economic viability, while attempting to preserve fragile animal habitat.

But until now, no one has taken a close look at the long-term implications for people economically.

"Long-term studies like this one give us a birds-eye view into the multifaceted connections between people and the environments they occupy," said Thomas Baerwald, a program director for the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which partially funded the study.

"Finding the right balance between economics that lift people from poverty and habitat management is an important role for social and environmental scientists and will be important into the future."

Lead researcher Wei Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS) at Michigan State University (MSU). He and his colleagues took advantage of the center's 15-year history of work in Wolong, which they call an excellent laboratory to study the complex interactions of humans and nature.

"This study shows the power of having comprehensive long-term data to understand how everything works together," Liu said. "This is the first time we've been able to put it together to understand how changes are being made."

The PLoS One paper is co-authored by Christine Vogt, MSU professor of community, agriculture, recreation and resource studies; Junyan Luo, research associate; Guangming He, research assistant; Kenneth Frank, professor of measurement and quantitative methods and fisheries and wildlife; and Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability. All but Vogt are members of CSIS; Jack Liu is director.

Wei Liu and his colleagues followed 220 families in Wolong from 1999 to 2007 as they rode the wave of change in an area shifting from farming to bringing in tourists, who wanted to see the land of the giant pandas as well as experience its beauty.

That wave abruptly stopped in 2008 with the massive Sichuan earthquake that measured 8.0 on the moment magnitude scale used by seismologists to calculate the size of earthquakes. Damage to roads and buildings from Sichuan still impedes business development today.

Wei Liu and team studied the impact of having resources in Wolong. Residents who already had money, were educated, and had relationships with governmental officials had a much greater chance of being successful with the arrival of nature-based tourism.

Lacking these resources made it harder, which is significant since many of China's programs and initiatives aim to lift people out of poverty.

"The policies haven't yet reached their full potential," Wei Liu said. "But now we have the data to show what's happening.

An interesting piece of the research was learning that people who are engaged in the tourism trade were more likely to acknowledge the tradeoffs between tourism development and conservation. Wei said they acknowledged that tourism increased noise, traffic congestion and disturbance to wildlife.

Wei Liu said this research can help China--and other countries around the world--with the next steps of developing policies to balance tourism with habitat management. The area is working hard to rebuild from the earthquake, just as other developing tourism areas are challenged by natural disasters. The study, he and his colleagues say, can point to opportunities to improve policies.

The research was funded by NSF and NASA. Research on the interactions between human behavior and the environment can help guide policy, and are an important focus of NSF's Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

-NSF-

Precambrian Life Discovered in China (Image 7)

Shuhai Xiao (left), a professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, and field assistant Guwei Xie (right) collect samples from the upper Doushantuo Formation in South China. The site yielded thousands of 600 million-year-old embryo microfossils. (Date of Image: 2005)

More About This Image

 Research by Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, has found evidence that animals may have existed before the Cambrian period (542 to 488 million years ago) in the Precambrian period, which spans from 4.5 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian period.

In 1997, Xiao and colleagues discovered in the Doushantuo Formation, thousands of 600 million-year-old embryo microfossils. Then in 2000, Xiao's team reported the discovery of a tubular, coral-like animal in a later stage of development than embryonic.

Xiao and colleagues are trying to learn more about these animals that are between the embryonic and adult stages. Only 80 have been recovered that have an advanced to intermediary stage of development; the rest have been early stage embryos. These intermediate stage embroyos have a coiled, tubular embryo imbedded in their egg case. The egg cases have a groove on the surface that consists of three clockwise coils. The researchers used microfocus X-ray computed tomography imaging to virtually peel off the egg case and expose the embryo inside. The tubular embryo is also coiled, with three clockwise coils; some specimens showed signs of uncoiling.

"We think it's safe to say these are juvenile or adult stage organisms," Xiao says. "Uncoiling indicates these embryos would have grown into the tubular organisms that we discovered earlier in our research."

The researchers believe the embroyos were animals similar to corals. Although these creatures were soft-bodied, without skeletons, they were well preserved in rocks that predate the Cambrian period. Xiao says this supports the existence of animals in the Precambrian period. "We didn't see the animal fossil, but we saw the trace of the animal," says Xiao, who along with colleagues estimates this animal to be at least 550 million years old (or about 9 million years before the Cambrian period).

Xiao and colleagues are also studying the connection between the rate of evolution, which accelerated in the Cambrian period, and oxygen. Xiao says that one of the reasons the number of animals species exploded during the early Cambrian may have been oxygen. "Suddenly there was more oxygen," says Xiao, "and we know that almost all animals need oxygen to survive."

Evidence of several oxidation events during the time period suggests a connection between oxidation and evolution. Kathleen McFadden, who was a Ph.D. student with Xiao at the time, studied the ratio of carbon and sulfur in the million-year-old rocks at the Yangtze Gorges of South China and determined from the carbon/sulfur cycles, that several significant oxidation events occurred as life was forming.

McFadden and colleagues meticulously analyzed layers of rock at the site of an ancient sea in the Yangtze Gorges. The layers of sediment represent millions of years of deposits. McFadden went through road cuts, bed by bed, measuring and describing the exposed rock and taking small rock samples every few feet. She collected about 200 samples. While the triggers for the oxidation events are still not clear, "these events recorded in the ocean were probably related to oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with sediments on land," McFadden says. Xiao notes that after each oxidation event, there is more diversification of species.

Future research for Xiao includes exploring how these Precambrian animals were preserved and determining if animals in the Cambrian period are descended from the Precambrian animals or can be linked to that period.

This text was taken from the story "Scientist Searches for Clues About the Beginnings of Life" that appeared in Virginia Tech's Research magazine, Winter 2010.

Credit: Photo by Kathleen McFadden.

Precambrian Life Discovered in China (Image 5 and 6)

Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, is shown here in the lab, where he used a light microscope to examine paper-thin slices of rock from the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation in South China. (Date of Image: 2010)

More About This Image

 Research by Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, has found evidence that animals may have existed before the Cambrian period (542 to 488 million years ago) in the Precambrian period, which spans from 4.5 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian period.

In 1997, Xiao and colleagues discovered in the Doushantuo Formation, thousands of 600 million-year-old embryo microfossils. Then in 2000, Xiao's team reported the discovery of a tubular, coral-like animal in a later stage of development than embryonic.

Xiao and colleagues are trying to learn more about these animals that are between the embryonic and adult stages. Only 80 have been recovered that have an advanced to intermediary stage of development; the rest have been early stage embryos. These intermediate stage embroyos have a coiled, tubular embryo imbedded in their egg case. The egg cases have a groove on the surface that consists of three clockwise coils. The researchers used microfocus X-ray computed tomography imaging to virtually peel off the egg case and expose the embryo inside. The tubular embryo is also coiled, with three clockwise coils; some specimens showed signs of uncoiling.

"We think it's safe to say these are juvenile or adult stage organisms," Xiao says. "Uncoiling indicates these embryos would have grown into the tubular organisms that we discovered earlier in our research."

The researchers believe the embroyos were animals similar to corals. Although these creatures were soft-bodied, without skeletons, they were well preserved in rocks that predate the Cambrian period. Xiao says this supports the existence of animals in the Precambrian period. "We didn't see the animal fossil, but we saw the trace of the animal," says Xiao, who along with colleagues estimates this animal to be at least 550 million years old (or about 9 million years before the Cambrian period).

Xiao and colleagues are also studying the connection between the rate of evolution, which accelerated in the Cambrian period, and oxygen. Xiao says that one of the reasons the number of animals species exploded during the early Cambrian may have been oxygen. "Suddenly there was more oxygen," says Xiao, "and we know that almost all animals need oxygen to survive."

Evidence of several oxidation events during the time period suggests a connection between oxidation and evolution. Kathleen McFadden, who was a Ph.D. student with Xiao at the time, studied the ratio of carbon and sulfur in the million-year-old rocks at the Yangtze Gorges of South China and determined from the carbon/sulfur cycles, that several significant oxidation events occurred as life was forming.

McFadden and colleagues meticulously analyzed layers of rock at the site of an ancient sea in the Yangtze Gorges. The layers of sediment represent millions of years of deposits. McFadden went through road cuts, bed by bed, measuring and describing the exposed rock and taking small rock samples every few feet. She collected about 200 samples. While the triggers for the oxidation events are still not clear, "these events recorded in the ocean were probably related to oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with sediments on land," McFadden says. Xiao notes that after each oxidation event, there is more diversification of species.

Future research for Xiao includes exploring how these Precambrian animals were preserved and determining if animals in the Cambrian period are descended from the Precambrian animals or can be linked to that period.

Kathleen McFadden looks for evidence of oxidation events in the ancient rock along the Yangtze Gorges of South China. Evidence of several oxidation events during the early Cambrian suggests a connection between oxidation and evolution. McFadden was a doctoral student at Virginia Tech at the time of this research. (Date of Image: 2005)

More About This Image

 Research by Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, has found evidence that animals may have existed before the Cambrian period (542 to 488 million years ago) in the Precambrian period, which spans from 4.5 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian period.

In 1997, Xiao and colleagues discovered in the Doushantuo Formation, thousands of 600 million-year-old embryo microfossils. Then in 2000, Xiao's team reported the discovery of a tubular, coral-like animal in a later stage of development than embryonic.

Xiao and colleagues are trying to learn more about these animals that are between the embryonic and adult stages. Only 80 have been recovered that have an advanced to intermediary stage of development; the rest have been early stage embryos. These intermediate stage embroyos have a coiled, tubular embryo imbedded in their egg case. The egg cases have a groove on the surface that consists of three clockwise coils. The researchers used microfocus X-ray computed tomography imaging to virtually peel off the egg case and expose the embryo inside. The tubular embryo is also coiled, with three clockwise coils; some specimens showed signs of uncoiling.

"We think it's safe to say these are juvenile or adult stage organisms," Xiao says. "Uncoiling indicates these embryos would have grown into the tubular organisms that we discovered earlier in our research."

The researchers believe the embroyos were animals similar to corals. Although these creatures were soft-bodied, without skeletons, they were well preserved in rocks that predate the Cambrian period. Xiao says this supports the existence of animals in the Precambrian period. "We didn't see the animal fossil, but we saw the trace of the animal," says Xiao, who along with colleagues estimates this animal to be at least 550 million years old (or about 9 million years before the Cambrian period).

Xiao and colleagues are also studying the connection between the rate of evolution, which accelerated in the Cambrian period, and oxygen. Xiao says that one of the reasons the number of animals species exploded during the early Cambrian may have been oxygen. "Suddenly there was more oxygen," says Xiao, "and we know that almost all animals need oxygen to survive."

Evidence of several oxidation events during the time period suggests a connection between oxidation and evolution. Kathleen McFadden, who was a Ph.D. student with Xiao at the time, studied the ratio of carbon and sulfur in the million-year-old rocks at the Yangtze Gorges of South China and determined from the carbon/sulfur cycles, that several significant oxidation events occurred as life was forming.

McFadden and colleagues meticulously analyzed layers of rock at the site of an ancient sea in the Yangtze Gorges. The layers of sediment represent millions of years of deposits. McFadden went through road cuts, bed by bed, measuring and describing the exposed rock and taking small rock samples every few feet. She collected about 200 samples. While the triggers for the oxidation events are still not clear, "these events recorded in the ocean were probably related to oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with sediments on land," McFadden says. Xiao notes that after each oxidation event, there is more diversification of species.

Future research for Xiao includes exploring how these Precambrian animals were preserved and determining if animals in the Cambrian period are descended from the Precambrian animals or can be linked to that period.

This text was taken from the story "Scientist Searches for Clues About the Beginnings of Life" that appeared in Virginia Tech's Research magazine, Winter 2010.

Credit: Photo by Ganqing Jiang.