Natural clays with an inherent uranium component that nevertheless sequester uranium from contaminated water.

Clays present a cost effective and sustainable method for removing uranium and heavy metals from drinking water because of their cation exchange capabilities. However, managing muddy suspensions is problematic; therefore, clay pellets as presented in this article are a promising alternative. Three standard clays and two regional clays were evaluated for sorption, both in powder form and in pellet structure for comparison.

Differential expression and phylogenetic analysis suggest specialization of plastid-localized members of the PHT4 phosphate transporter family for photosynthetic and heterotrophic tissues.

Plastids rely on multiple phosphate (Pi) transport activities to support and control a wide range of metabolic processes, including photosynthesis and carbon partitioning. Five of the six members of the PHT4 family of Pi transporters in Arabidopsis thaliana (PHT4;1-PHT4;5) are confirmed or predicted plastid proteins. As a step towards identifying the roles of individual PHT4 Pi transporters in chloroplast and non-photosynthetic plastid Pi dynamics, we used promoter-reporter gene fusions and quantitative RT-PCR studies, respectively, to determine spatial and diurnal gene expression patterns.