Psychobiological stress response to a lung cancer diagnosis: a prospective study of patients in Iceland and Sweden.

Background: A diagnostic work-up leading to a lung cancer diagnosis is a severely stressful experience that may impact tumor progression. Yet, prospective data are scarce on psychological and biological components of stress at the time of lung cancer diagnosis. The aim of this study was to assess pre-to-post diagnosis change in psychological distress and urinary excretion of catecholamines in patients with suspected lung cancer.

Mass spectral imaging showing the plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria's effect on the Brachypodium awn.

The plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) on the host plant surface play a key role in biological control and pathogenic response in plant functions and growth. However, it is difficult to elucidate the PGPR effect on plants. Such information is important in biomass production and conversion.

Molecular imaging of plant-microbe interactions on the seed surface.

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) play a crucial role in biological control and pathogenic defense on and within plant tissues, however the mechanisms by which plants associate with PGPR to elicit such beneficial effects need further study. Here, we present time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) imaging of (Brachypodium) seeds with and without exposure to two model PGPR, , Gram-negative () and Gram-positive A6 (). Delayed image extraction was used to image PGPR-treated seed sections to reveal morphological changes.

Crops for Carbon Farming.

Agricultural cropping systems and pasture comprise one third of the world's arable land and have the potential to draw down a considerable amount of atmospheric CO for storage as soil organic carbon (SOC) and improving the soil carbon budget. An improved soil carbon budget serves the dual purpose of promoting soil health, which supports crop productivity, and constituting a pool from which carbon can be converted to recalcitrant forms for long-term storage as a mitigation measure for global warming. In this perspective, we propose the design of crop ideotypes with the dual functionality of being highly productive for the purposes of food, feed, and fuel, while at the same time being able to facilitate higher contribution to soil carbon and improve the below ground ecology.

AutoCCS: automated collision cross-section calculation software for ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry.

Motivation: Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) separations are increasingly used in conjunction with mass spectrometry (MS) for separation and characterization of ionized molecular species. Information obtained from IMS measurements includes the ion's collision cross section (CCS), which reflects its size and structure and constitutes a descriptor for distinguishing similar species in mixtures that cannot be separated using conventional approaches. Incorporating CCS into MS-based workflows can improve the specificity and confidence of molecular identification.

Isolation of Histone from Sorghum Leaf Tissue for Top Down Mass Spectrometry Profiling of Potential Epigenetic Markers.

Histones belong to a family of highly conserved proteins in eukaryotes. They pack DNA into nucleosomes as functional units of chromatin. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) of histones, which are highly dynamic and can be added or removed by enzymes, play critical roles in regulating gene expression.

Metabolic Interactions between and Pseudomonas fluorescens under Controlled Iron-Limited Conditions.

Iron (Fe) availability has well-known effects on plant and microbial metabolism, but its effects on interspecies interactions are poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate metabolite exchange between the grass strain Bd21 and the soil bacterium SBW25::gfp/lux (SBW25) during Fe limitation under axenic conditions. We compared the transcriptional profiles and root exudate metabolites of plants grown semihydroponically with and without SBW25 inoculation and Fe amendment.

Transcriptomic analysis of field-droughted sorghum from seedling to maturity reveals biotic and metabolic responses.

Drought is the most important environmental stress limiting crop yields. The C4 cereal sorghum [ (L.) Moench] is a critical food, forage, and emerging bioenergy crop that is notably drought-tolerant.

Correlative surface imaging reveals chemical signatures for bacterial hotspots on plant roots.

The rhizosphere is arguably the most complex microbial habitat on Earth, comprising an integrated network of plant roots, soil and a highly diverse microbial community (the rhizosphere microbiome). Understanding, predicting and controlling plant-microbe interactions in the rhizosphere will allow us to harness the plant microbiome as a means to increase or restore plant ecosystem productivity, improve plant responses to a wide range of environmental perturbations, and mitigate the effects of climate change by designing ecosystems for long-term soil carbon storage. To this end, it is imperative to develop new molecular approaches with high spatial resolution to capture interactions at the plant-microbe, microbe-microbe, and plant-plant interfaces.

Sedimentation of ballasted cells-free EPS in meromictic Fayetteville Green Lake.

Fayetteville Green Lake (FGL) is a recognized, extensively studied present-day model of the stratified Proterozoic ocean. Nonetheless, biomass sedimentation in FGL remains hard to explain: while virtually all sediment pigments belong to photosynthetic sulfur bacteria from a chemocline, the isotopic carbon signature of the bulk organic matter suggests its epilimnetic phytoplankton origin. To explain the epilimnetic origin of sedimented carbon, we studied the dominant Synechococci, isolated from FGL.

Top-down mass spectrometry of histone modifications in sorghum reveals potential epigenetic markers for drought acclimation.

Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is an important cereal crop noted for its ability to survive water-limiting conditions. Herein, we present an analytical workflow to explore the changes in histone modifications through plant developmental stages and two drought stresses in two sorghum genotypes that differ in their response to drought.

Metabolic shifts associated with drought-induced senescence in Brachypodium.

The metabolic underpinnings of plant survival under severe drought-induced senescence conditions are poorly understood. In this study, we assessed the morphological, physiological and metabolic responses to sustained water deficit in Brachypodium distachyon, a model organism for research on temperate grasses. Relative to control plants, fresh biomass, leaf water potential, and chlorophyll levels decreased rapidly in plants grown under drought conditions, demonstrating an early onset of senescence.

EcoFABs: advancing microbiome science through standardized fabricated ecosystems.

Microbiomes play critical roles in ecosystems and human health, yet in most cases scientists lack standardized and reproducible model microbial communities. The development of fabricated microbial ecosystems, which we term EcoFABs, will provide such model systems for microbiome studies.

Metabotyping as a Stopover in Genome-to-Phenome Mapping.

Predicting phenotypic expression from genomic and environmental information is arguably the greatest challenge in today's biology. Being able to survey genomic content, e.g.

Association mapping by aerial drone reveals 213 genetic associations for Sorghum bicolor biomass traits under drought.

Background: Sorghum bicolor is the fifth most commonly grown cereal worldwide and is remarkable for its drought and abiotic stress tolerance. For these reasons and the large size of biomass varieties, it has been proposed as a bioenergy crop. However, little is known about the genes underlying sorghum's abiotic stress tolerance and biomass yield.

Climate-smart crops with enhanced photosynthesis.

The potential of enhanced photosynthetic efficiency to help achieve the sustainable yield increases required to meet future demands for food and energy has spurred intense research towards understanding, modeling, and engineering photosynthesis. These current efforts, largely focused on the C3 model Arabidopsis thaliana or crop plants (e.g.

High pCO-induced exopolysaccharide-rich ballasted aggregates of planktonic cyanobacteria could explain Paleoproterozoic carbon burial.

The contribution of planktonic cyanobacteria to burial of organic carbon in deep-sea sediments before the emergence of eukaryotic predators ~1.5 Ga has been considered negligible owing to the slow sinking speed of their small cells. However, global, highly positive excursion in carbon isotope values of inorganic carbonates ~2.

Moving beyond the van Krevelen Diagram: A New Stoichiometric Approach for Compound Classification in Organisms.

van Krevelen diagrams (O/C vs H/C ratios of elemental formulas) have been widely used in studies to obtain an estimation of the main compound categories present in environmental samples. However, the limits defining a specific compound category based solely on O/C and H/C ratios of elemental formulas have never been accurately listed or proposed to classify metabolites in biological samples. Furthermore, while O/C vs H/C ratios of elemental formulas can provide an overview of the compound categories, such classification is inefficient because of the large overlap among different compound categories along both axes.

Drought delays development of the sorghum root microbiome and enriches for monoderm bacteria.

Drought stress is a major obstacle to crop productivity, and the severity and frequency of drought are expected to increase in the coming century. Certain root-associated bacteria have been shown to mitigate the negative effects of drought stress on plant growth, and manipulation of the crop microbiome is an emerging strategy for overcoming drought stress in agricultural systems, yet the effect of drought on the development of the root microbiome is poorly understood. Through 16S rRNA amplicon and metatranscriptome sequencing, as well as root metabolomics, we demonstrate that drought delays the development of the early sorghum root microbiome and causes increased abundance and activity of monoderm bacteria, which lack an outer cell membrane and contain thick cell walls.

A Dual-Promoter Gene Orchestrates the Sucrose-Coordinated Synthesis of Starch and Fructan in Barley.

Sequential carbohydrate synthesis is important for plant survival because it guarantees energy supplies for growth and development during plant ontogeny and reproduction. Starch and fructan are two important carbohydrates in many flowering plants and in human diets. Understanding this coordinated starch and fructan synthesis and unraveling how plants allocate photosynthates and prioritize different carbohydrate synthesis for survival could lead to improvements to cereals in agriculture for the purposes of greater food security and production quality.

Surgical treatment is effective in severe cases of exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction: A follow-up study.

Conclusions: Surgery is an effective treatment in severe cases of supraglottic exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction (E-ILO). Conservatively treated subjects and subjects tested negative for E-ILO, who still experience breathing problems 1-3 years after diagnosis, tend to adjust their physical activity to a greater extent than surgically treated subjects.

Objective: To investigate how symptoms and level of physical activity change over time in patients with E-ILO who have undergone surgery, patients with E-ILO treated conservatively and patients who tested negative for laryngeal obstruction at continuous laryngoscopy exercise-test (CLE-test).

Installing extra bicarbonate transporters in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 enhances biomass production.

As a means to improve carbon uptake in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. strain PCC6803, we engineered strains to contain additional inducible copies of the endogenous bicarbonate transporter BicA, an essential component of the CO2-concentrating mechanism in cyanobacteria. When cultured under atmospheric CO2 pressure, the strain expressing extra BicA transporters (BicA(+) strain) grew almost twice as fast and accumulated almost twice as much biomass as the control strain.

Improvement in COPD management by access to asthma/COPD clinics in primary care: data from the observational PATHOS study.

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) guidelines emphasize the importance of patient education to improve quality of life and avoid exacerbations. Longitudinal evaluations of structured management of COPD in primary care are lacking.

Aim: To evaluate the impact of primary care asthma/COPD clinics on exacerbations, hospitalizations, and associated costs in COPD.