Common cold combats influenza

YALE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

As the flu season approaches, a strained public health system may have a surprising ally -- the common cold virus.

Rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of common colds, can prevent the flu virus from infecting airways by jumpstarting the body's antiviral defenses, Yale researchers report Sept. 4 in the journal The Lancet Microbe.

The findings help answer a mystery surrounding the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic: An expected surge in swine flu cases never materialized in Europe during the fall, a period when the common cold becomes widespread.

A Yale team led by Dr. Ellen Foxman studied three years of clinical data from more than 13,000 patients seen at Yale New Haven Hospital with symptoms of respiratory infection. The researchers found that even during months when both viruses were active, if the common cold virus was present, the flu virus was not.

"When we looked at the data, it became clear that very few people had both viruses at the same time," said Foxman, assistant professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology and senior author of the study.

Foxman stressed that scientists do not know whether the annual seasonal spread of the common cold virus will have a similar impact on infection rates of those exposed to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

"It is impossible to predict how two viruses will interact without doing the research," she said.

To test how the rhinovirus and the influenza virus interact, Foxman's lab created human airway tissue from stem cells that give rise to epithelial cells, which line the airways of the lung and are a chief target of respiratory viruses. They found that after the tissue had been exposed to rhinovirus, the influenza virus was unable to infect the tissue.

"The antiviral defenses were already turned on before the flu virus arrived," she said.

The presence of rhinovirus triggered production of the antiviral agent interferon, which is part of the early immune system response to invasion of pathogens, Foxman said.

"The effect lasted for at least five days," she said.

Foxman said her lab has begun to study whether introduction of the cold virus before infection by the COVID-19 virus offers a similar type of protection.

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Other members of the Yale research team were Anchi Wu, Valia Mihaylova, and Marie Landry. Wu and Mihaylova are co-first authors of the study, which was primarily funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

HOGWARTS

DEPT OF QUANTUM APPLICATIONS

Wool-like material can remember and change shape

Material could be used in smart textiles, medical devices and more

MAGICKAL ROBES 

HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES

Research News

 L

IMAGE: A KERATIN SHE

ET FOLDED INTO A COMPLEX ORIGAMI STAR AS ITS PERMANENT SHAPE. ONCE THE MEMORY WAS SET, THE RESEARCHERS DUNKED THE STAR IN WATER, WHERE IT UNFOLDED AND BECAME... view more 

CREDIT: LUCA CERA/HARVARD SEAS

As anyone who has ever straightened their hair knows, water is the enemy. Hair painstakingly straightened by heat will bounce back into curls the minute it touches water. Why? Because hair has shape memory. Its material properties allow it to change shape in response to certain stimuli and return to its original shape in response to others.

What if other materials, especially textiles, had this type of shape memory? Imagine a t-shirt with cooling vents that opened when exposed to moisture and closed when dry, or one-size-fits-all clothing that stretches or shrinks to a person's measurements.

Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a biocompatible material that can be 3D-printed into any shape and pre-programmed with reversible shape memory. The material is made using keratin, a fibrous protein found in hair, nails and shells. The researchers extracted the keratin from leftover Agora wool used in textile manufacturing.

The research could help the broader effort of reducing waste in the fashion industry, one of the biggest polluters on the planet. Already, designers such as Stella McCarthy are reimagining how the industry uses materials, including wool.

"With this project, we have shown that not only can we recycle wool but we can build things out of the recycled wool that have never been imagined before," said Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and senior author of the paper. "The implications for the sustainability of natural resources are clear. With recycled keratin protein, we can do just as much, or more, than what has been done by shearing animals to date and, in doing so, reduce the environmental impact of the textile and fashion industry."

The research is published in Nature Materials.

The key to keratin's shape-changing abilities is its hierarchical structure, said Luca Cera, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and first author of the paper.

A single chain of keratin is arranged into a spring-like structure known as alpha-helix. Two of these chains twist together to form a structure known as a coiled coil. Many of these coiled coils are assembled into protofilaments and eventually large fibers.

"The organization of the alpha helix and the connective chemical bonds give the material both strength and shape memory," said Cera.

When a fiber is stretched or exposed to a particular stimulus, the spring-like structures uncoil, and the bonds realign to form stable beta-sheets. The fiber remains in that position until it is triggered to coil back into its original shape.

To demonstrate this process, the researchers 3D-printed keratin sheets in a variety of shapes. They programmed the material's permanent shape -- the shape it will always return to when triggered -- using a solution of hydrogen peroxide and monosodium phosphate.

Once the memory was set, the sheet could be re-programmed and molded into new shapes.

For example, one keratin sheet was folded into a complex origami star as its permanent shape. Once the memory was set, the researchers dunked the star in water, where it unfolded and became malleable. From there, they rolled the sheet into a tight tube. Once dry, the sheet was locked in as a fully stable and functional tube. To reverse the process, they put the tube back into water, where it unrolled and folded back into an origami star.

"This two-step process of 3D printing the material and then setting its permanent shapes allows for the fabrication of really complex shapes with structural features down to the micron level," said Cera. "This makes the material suitable for a vast range of applications from textile to tissue engineering."

"Whether you are using fibers like this to make brassieres whose cup size and shape can be customized every day, or you are trying to make actuating textiles for medical therapeutics, the possibilities of Luca's work are broad and exciting," said Parker. "We are continuing to reimagine textiles by using biological molecules as engineering substrates like they have never been used before."

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This research is co-authored by Grant Gonzalez, Qihan Liu, Suji Choi, Christophe Chantre, Juncheol Lee, Rudy Gabardi, Myung Choi and Kwanwoo Shin.

  PRECOOKED

New species of freshwater Crustacea found in the hottest place on earth

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Research News

 

IMAGE: A NEW SPECIES OF FRESHWATER CRUSTACEA HAS BEEN DISCOVERED DURING AN EXPEDITION OF THE DESERT LUT, KNOWN AS THE HOTTEST PLACE ON EARTH. view more 

CREDIT: M. PALLMANN SMNS / PALLMANN

A new species of freshwater Crustacea has been discovered during an expedition of the desert Lut, known as the hottest place on Earth.

The newly identified species belongs to the genus Phallocryptus of which only four species were previously known from different arid and semiarid regions.

Dr Hossein Rajaei from the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History and Dr Alexander V Rudov from Tehran University made the discovery during an expedition of Lut to better understand the desert's ecology, biodiversity, geomorphology and paleontology.

Further scientific examinations of the specimens by co-author Dr Martin Schwentner, Crustacea specialist from the Natural History Museum of Vienna, stated that they belong to a new species of freshwater Crustacea.

Publishing their findings in Zoology in the Middle East, the biologists name the new species Phallocryptus fahimii, in honor of the Iranian conservation biologist, Hadi Fahimi, who took part in the 2017 expedition and sadly died in an airplane crash in 2018.

Dr Rajaei, an entomologist from State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, who actually found the species in a small seasonal lake in southern part of the desert says the discovery is "sensational".

"During an expedition to such an extreme place you are always on alert, in particular when finding water. Discovering crustaceans in this otherwise hot and dry environment was really sensational."

The team's study explains how Phallocryptus fahimii differs in its overall morphology and its genetics from all other known Phallocryptus species.

Dr Schwentner, who has worked with similar crustaceans from the Australian deserts in the past, adds: "These Crustaceans are able to survive for decades in the dried-out sediment and will hatch in an upcoming wet season, when the aquatic habitat refills. They are perfectly adapted to live in deserts environments. Their ability to survive even in the Lut desert highlights their resilience."

The Lut desert - also known as Dasht-e Lut - is the second largest desert in Iran.

Located between 33° and 28° parallels and with its 51,800 km2 larger than Switzerland, this desert holds the current record for the highest ever-recorded surface temperature. Based on 2006 satellite measurements, the NASA reported a record surface temperature of 70.7°C, which more recently has been increased to even 80.3°C. Dark pebbles that heat up are one of the causes of these record temperatures. Mean daily temperatures range from -2.6°C in winter to 50.4°C in summer with annual precipitation not exceeding 30 mm per year.

Almost deprived of vegetation, the Lut desert harbors a diverse animal life, but no permanent aquatic biotops (such as ponds).

After rain falls, non-permanent astatic water bodies are filled including the Rud-e-Shur river from north-western Lut.

Here a diverse community of Archaea has been described but aquatic life in the Lut remains highly limited, which makes this find particularly rare.

Unraveling the secrets of Tennessee whiskey

Food scientists with the UT Institute of Agriculture tackle the science of flavor

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE

Research News

 

IMAGE: UT DEPARTMENT OF FOOD SCIENCE GRADUATE STUDENTS COLLECTING WHISKEY DISTILLATE SAMPLES FOR CHEMICAL ANALYSIS AT THE SUGARLANDS DISTILLING COMPANY IN GATLINBURG, TENNESSEE. PICTURED ARE CO-AUTHOR TRENTON KERLEY, MELISSA DEIN, AND... view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY J. MUNAFO, COURTESY UTIA.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- More than a century has passed since the last scientific analyses of the famed "Lincoln County [Tennessee] process" was published, but the secrets of the famous Tennessee whiskey flavor are starting to unravel at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. The latest research promises advancements in the field of flavor science as well as marketing.

Conducted John P. Munafo, Jr., assistant professor of flavor science and natural products, and his graduate student, Trenton Kerley, the study "Changes in Tennessee Whiskey Odorants by the Lincoln County Process" was recently published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (JAFC).

The study incorporated a combination of advanced flavor chemistry techniques to probe the changes in flavor chemistry occurring during charcoal filtration. This type of filtration is a common step in the production of distilled beverages, including vodka and rum, but it's a required step for a product to be labeled "Tennessee whiskey." The step is called the Lincoln County Process (LCP), after the locale of the original Jack Daniel's distillery. It is also referred to as "charcoal mellowing."

The LCP step is performed by passing the fresh whiskey distillate through a bed of charcoal, usually derived from burnt sugar maple, prior to barrel-aging the product. Although no scientific studies have proved such a claim, it is believed that the LCP imparts a "smoother" flavor to Tennessee whiskey. In addition, by law for the distinction of having "Tennessee whiskey" on the label, the liquor must be produced in the state of Tennessee from at least 51% corn after having been aged in Tennessee for at least 2 years in unused charred oak barrels.

The actual LCP differs from distiller to distiller, and, as the details are generally held as a trade secret, the process has been historically shrouded in mystery. There are no regulations as to how the process is performed, only that the step is required. In other words, all a manufacturer needs to do is pass the distillate over charcoal (an undefined amount--possibly even just one piece). Thus, depending on how it's conducted, the LCP step may not impact the whisky flavor at all. On the other hand, even small adjustments to the LCP can modify the flavor profile of the whiskey positively or negatively, potentially causing any number of surprises.

Munafo and Kerley describe how distillers adjust parameters empirically throughout the whiskey production process, then rely on professional tasters to sample products, blending subtly unique batches to achieve their target flavor. Munafo says, "By gaining a fundamental understanding of the changes in flavor chemistry occurring during whiskey production, our team could advise distillers about exactly what changes are needed to make their process produce their desired flavor goals. We want to give distillers levers to pull, so they are not randomly or blindly attempting to get the precise flavor they want."

Samples used in the study were provided by the Sugarlands Distilling Company (SDC), in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, producers of the Roaming Man Whiskey. SDC invited the UTIA researchers to visit their distillery and collect in-process samples. Munafo says SDC prioritizes transparency around their craft and takes pride in sharing the research, discovery and distillation process of how their whiskey is made and what makes Tennessee whiskey unique.

Olfactory evaluations--the good ole smell test--revealed that the LCP treatment generally decreased malty, rancid, fatty and roasty aromas in the whiskey distillates. As for the odorants (i.e., molecules responsible for odor), 49 were identified in the distillate samples using an analytical technique called gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O). Nine of these odorants have never been reported in the scientific whiskey literature.

One of the newly found whiskey odorants, called DMPF, was originally discovered in cocoa. It is described as having a unique anise or citrus-like smell. Another of the newly discovered whiskey odorants (called MND) is described as having a pleasant dried hay-like aroma. Both odorants have remarkably low odor thresholds in the parts-per-trillion range, meaning that the smells can be detected at very low levels by people but are difficult to detect with scientific instrumentation.

The only previous investigation into how charcoal treatment affects whiskey was published in 1908 by William Dudley in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The new study revealed fresh knowledge for optimizing Tennessee whiskey production. Thirty-one whiskey odorants were measured via a technique called stable isotope dilution assay (SIDA), all showing a decrease in concentration as a result of LCP treatment, albeit to different degrees. That is to say, while the LCP appears to be selective in removing certain odorants, the process didn't increase or add any odorants to the distillate. This new knowledge can be used to optimize Tennessee whiskey production. For instance, the process can be optimized for the removal of undesirable aromas, while maintaining higher levels of desirable aromas, thus "tailoring" the flavor profile of the finished whiskey.

"We want to provide the analytical tools needed to help enable distillers to have more control of their processes and make more consistent and flavorful whiskey, says Dr. Munafo. "We want to help them to take out some of the guesswork involved in whiskey production."

Additional studies are now underway at the UT Department of Food Science to characterize both the flavor chemistry of different types of whiskey and their production processes. The ultimate aim of the whiskey flavor chemistry program is to aid whiskey manufacturers in producing a consistent product with the exact flavor profile that they desire. Even with the aid of science Munafo says, "Whiskey making will 'still' remain an impressive art form." Pun intended.

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The researchers acknowledge support from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Hatch Project #1015002 and funding through the Food Science Department and start-up funding from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.

Through its land-grant mission of research, teaching and extension, the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. utia.tennessee.edu

Battery-free Game Boy runs forever

Button pressing and solar energy power the retro gaming device

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Research News

    

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS DEVELOP FIRST-EVER BATTERY-FREE, ENERGY-HARVESTING, INTERACTIVE DEVICE view more 

CREDIT: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

• Researchers develop first-ever battery-free, energy-harvesting, interactive device
• Looking and feeling like an 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy, the device can play games straight from their original cartridges
• Ultimate goal of battery-free computing is to reduce society's reliance on batteries, which are costly, environmentally hazardous and end up in landfills

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A hand-held video game console allowing indefinite gameplay might be a parent's worst nightmare.

But this Game Boy is not just a toy. It's a powerful proof-of-concept, developed by researchers at Northwestern University and the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, that pushes the boundaries of battery-free intermittent computing into the realm of fun and interaction.

Instead of batteries, which are costly, environmentally hazardous and ultimately end up in landfills, this device harvests energy from the sun -- and the user. These advances enable gaming to last forever without having to stop and recharge the battery.

"It's the first battery-free interactive device that harvests energy from user actions," said Northwestern's Josiah Hester, who co-led the research. "When you press a button, the device converts that energy into something that powers your gaming."

"Sustainable gaming will become a reality, and we made a major step in that direction -- by getting rid of the battery completely," said TU Delft's Przemyslaw Pawelczak, who co-led the research with Hester. "With our platform, we want to make a statement that it is possible to make a sustainable gaming system that brings fun and joy to the user."

The teams will present the research virtually at UbiComp 2020, a major conference within the field of interactive systems, on Sept. 15.

Hester is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. Pawelczak is an assistant professor in the Embedded Software Lab at TU Delft. Their team includes Jasper de Winkel and Vito Kortbeek, both Ph.D. candidates at TU Delft.

The researchers' energy aware gaming platform (ENGAGE) has the size and form factor of the original Game Boy, while being equipped with a set of solar panels around the screen. Button presses by the user are a second source of energy. Most importantly, it impersonates the Game Boy processor. Although this solution requires a lot of computational power, and therefore energy, it allows any popular retro game to be played straight from its original cartridge.

As the device switches between power sources, it does experience short losses in power. To ensure an acceptable duration of gameplay between power failures, the researchers designed the system hardware and software from the ground up to be energy aware as well as very energy efficient. They also developed a new technique for storing the system state in non-volatile memory, minimizing overhead and allowing quick restoration when power returns. This eliminates the need to press "save" as seen in traditional platforms, as the player can now continue gameplay from the exact point of the device fully losing power -- even if Mario is in mid-jump.

On a not-too-cloudy day, and for games that require at least moderate amounts of clicking, gameplay interruptions typically last less than one second for every 10 seconds of gameplay. The researchers find this to be a playable scenario for some games -- including Chess, Solitaire and Tetris -- but certainly not yet for all (action) games.

Although there is still a long way to go before state-of-the-art 21st century hand-held game consoles become fully battery-free, the researchers hope their devices raise awareness of the environmental impact of the small devices that make up the Internet of Things. Batteries are costly, environmentally hazardous and they must eventually be replaced to avoid that the entire device ends up at the landfill.

"Our work is the antithesis of the Internet of Things, which has many devices with batteries in them," Hester said. "Those batteries eventually end up in the garbage. If they aren't fully discharged, they can become hazardous. They are hard to recycle. We want to build devices that are more sustainable and can last for decades."

Natural pest control saving billions


UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND



IMAGE: A PARASITIC WASP (BIOLOGICAL CONTROL AGENT) INJECTS AN EGG INTO A PEST CATERPILLAR. THE WASP WILL DEVELOP INSIDE THE CATERPILLAR, EVENTUALLY KILLING IT. view more

CREDIT: THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND


Biological control of insect pests - where 'natural enemies' keep pests at bay - is saving farmers in Asia and the Pacific billions of dollars, according to University of Queensland-led research.

Dr Kris Wyckhuys from UQ's School of Biological Sciences said biological control involved the careful release of an exotic natural enemy from a pest's native habitat.

"Scientists meticulously choose co-evolved beneficial insects that are the most effective and least likely to pose ecological upsets," Dr Wyckhuys said.

"We've reviewed how biological control introductions have effectively managed 43 insect pests in food, feed and fibre crops in the Asia-Pacific region over a century."

The team found that biological control has helped regulate invasive pest threats in multiple key food crops such as banana, breadfruit and coconut.

"Our work shows these techniques are saving farmers in Asia around $20.1 billion to $26.8 billion (US$14.6-19.5 billion) per year," Dr Wyckhuys said.

"That's a phenomenal amount of money and benefit, particularly when compared to other innovations in the agricultural sector.

"A good point of comparison is the Green Revolution in Asia during the late 1960s, which tripled the output of local rice production but also saw a rise of chemical fertilisers, agrochemicals and newer methods of cultivation.

"A large part of the Green Revolution impacts can be ascribed to double-yielding rice varieties, which generated $4.8 billion (US$4.3 billion) per year in Asia."

UQ's Associate Professor Michael Furlong said recognition of the success of biological control might lead to greater uptake and more resilient, prosperous farming globally.

"Biological control offers great opportunities for some of the world's poorest farmers," Dr Furlong said.

"It's promoted rural growth and prosperity even in marginal, poorly endowed, non-rice environments.

"A great example is the coconut scale (Aspidiotus destructor), which jeopardised the economic prosperity and food security of entire nations.

"This coconut scale posed a serious problem to crops like coconut, bananas and copra industries in Fiji at the start of the Twentieth Century.

"In 1928, lady beetles from Trinidad and millimetre-long parasitic wasps were introduced, and the results were almost immediate.

"Coconut scale ceased to be an economic issue on all of the main Fijian islands within nine months, and after 18 months, the scale was so rare it was difficult to find.

"These innovative approaches, with increasingly better science, are helping feed the world, safeguard on-farm biodiversity and increase farmers' quality of life.

"We're hoping this research provides lessons for future efforts to mitigate invasive species, restore ecological resilience, and sustainably increase the output of our global food system."

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The research has been published in Nature Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-01294-y).

Unmanned aerial vehicles help wheat breeders

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF AGRONOMY

Research News

 

IMAGE: MARGARET KRAUSE OPERATES AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE AT THE INTERNATIONAL MAIZE AND WHEAT IMPROVEMENT CENTER (CIMMYT) IN CIUDAD OBREGÓN, MEXICO. view more 

CREDIT: JOSÉ MANUEL REYES MENDOZA

Breeding programs for crops with limited per-plant seed yield require one or more generations of seed increase to generate sufficient quantities for sowing replicated yield trials. The ability to accurately discard low potential lines at these early stages may reduce spending on costly yield testing.

Breeders typically rely on visual selection at these stages because extensive measurement of plant traits is difficult due to the large number of lines under evaluation. However, recent advances in remote sensing have made high-throughput data collection increasingly feasible.

Authors of a recent Crop Science article leveraged unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to record the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), a measure of plant health, at the seed increase stage of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center's (CIMMYT) wheat breeding program. NDVI measurements were heritable and moderately correlated with grain yield, and results showed that selection based on NDVI would have outperformed visual selection.

Harnessing UAV-collected traits to inform selection at the early stages may improve resource-use efficiency in breeding programs and/or increase rates of genetic gain. As remote sensing technologies become increasingly automated and scalable, breeders will have access to comprehensive suites of traits with which to develop integrative selection strategies.

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 Operation Outbreak simulation teaches students how pandemics spread

CELL PRESS

Research News

 

In 2015, a team of specialists in modeling disease outbreaks got together with educators to create Operation Outbreak, an educational platform and simulation intended to teach high school and college students the fundamentals of responses to pandemics. The program, which is open source and freely available, was designed to simulate outbreaks with different variables (such as R0 and mode of transmission) and to generate data in the context of real human behavior. It includes a Bluetooth-based app that carries out contact tracing by recording transmission events between phones. The details are highlighted in a Commentary published August 31 in the journal Cell.

Operation Outbreak came about after Todd Brown, then a middle school teacher in Florida, contacted Pardis Sabeti (@PardisSabeti), a computational biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, after reading a profile of her in a magazine. He and his students were studying the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and he was developing a simulation of how the virus spread using stickers.

As they continued to work together, Sabeti and her team, including Andrés Colubri (@codeanticode), at the time a computational scientist in her lab, began studying mumps outbreaks across Boston college campuses. The idea to create an educational app that "spread" viruses through Bluetooth was soon born. And as recently as December 2019, they were running simulations modeling the outbreak of a virus with a very similar modus operandi to SARS-CoV-2.

"We decided to use a SARS-like virus since it had been high on many pandemic researchers' lists as a concern," says Colubri, who is now at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "To make the simulation more challenging, we included an element of asymptomatic spread. This was a natural concern that would elevate a pandemic's potential even further."

This summer, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread, Operation Outbreak was rolled out to 2,000 students in Chicago who were participating as "social distancing ambassadors" as part of the One Summer Chicago program. Participants used the app to track and trace behaviors and learn how "infections" spread in different parts of the city.

"The platform and curriculum are very flexible from an academic and also an experiential learning standpoint," Brown says. "We tried to gamify the education, so that players' behaviors and decisions affect not only them, but the entire group they're playing with."

The simulation includes elements that have become a familiar part of our daily lives, like limitations in testing abilities and shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). The program also offers the ability to simulate additional elements that could arise in the current pandemic or in future ones, such as other circulating viruses that can complicate diagnosis.

"We are in one of the most unique situations in the history of the world, by virtue of being able to engage students," says Brown, who is now community outreach director at Sarasota Military Academy. "Kids are more primed to learn when something directly affects them and their families. This is a chance for future generations to become aware of how infections spread and to recognize warning signs."

"I hope we can convey that we don't have to wait for the next pandemic to learn how to respond to them," Sabeti says. "Ultimately, we can exquisitely model every aspect of viruses and how they spread, even in the ways that we react through vaccines, protective gear, and diagnostics."

The team has put together a scalable curriculum, including a textbook and series of educational videos, that can be integrated at schools around the country. The materials, which have been funded by philanthropy, are open source and are available for free.

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This work is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additional funding grants include L'Oreal USA Women in Science Changing the Face of STEM, Toshiba America Foundation, Florida Association of International Baccalaureate World Schools, and Voya Financial.

Cell, Colubri et al. "Preventing outbreaks through interactive, experiential real-life simulations" https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31084-9

Cell (@CellCellPress), the flagship journal of Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that publishes findings of unusual significance in any area of experimental biology, including but not limited to cell biology, molecular biology, neuroscience, immunology, virology and microbiology, cancer, human genetics, systems biology, signaling, and disease mechanisms and therapeutics. Visit: http://www.cell.com/cell. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

 

Air pollution renders flower odors unattractive to moths

Tobacco hawkmoths are not attracted to flower odors when ozone levels are high; however, the moths are able to learn that odors modified by ozone may offer a reward, that is, nectar

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

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VIDEO: POLLINATION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE: A MOTH CAN LEARN OZONE-ALTERED FLORAL BLENDS view more 

CREDIT: MARKUS KNADEN, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, and the University of Virginia, USA, has studied the impact of high ozone air pollution on the chemical communication between flowers and pollinators. They showed that tobacco hawkmoths lost attraction to the scent of their preferred flowers when that scent had been altered by ozone. This oxidizing pollutant thus disturbs the interaction between a plant and its pollinator, a relationship that has evolved over millions of years. However, when given the chance, hawkmoths quickly learn that an unpleasantly polluted scent may lead to nutritious nectar (Journal of Chemical Ecology, September 2020, DOI: 10.1007/s10886-020-01211-4).

Pollination in the Anthropocene

Pollination is a critical ecosystem service, one that is performed mainly by insects. Flowers attract insects using floral scents, which are chemical signals that the pollinators can have an innate preference for. This preference is the result of the co-evolutionary relationship between flowers and their pollinators that has evolved over millions of years.

For about 20 years, the term "Anthropocene" has been used in the scientific community to refer to the geological epoch in which humans are responsible for many changes in biological and atmospheric processes. However, until recently, little has been known about the effects of anthropogenic climate change and atmospheric pollution on natural environmental odors that drive chemical communication between organisms.

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and the University of Virginia has investigated whether human-driven ozone pollution in the air influences the attraction of a pollinating moth to the scent of one of their favorite flowers. Ozone is an oxidant, a highly reactive chemical and pollutant known to cause respiratory diseases in humans. Now, ozone is also thought to change the floral scents that flowers emit to attract their pollinators.

For their experiments, the scientists used the tobacco hawkmoth Manduca sexta. "The hawkmoth Manduca sexta is the perfect model for our study. Although it is highly attracted by flower odors, it also uses its visual system to locate flowers. Flowers that usually attract hawkmoth often share specific compounds in their blend and are visually very conspicuous due to their bright white color," says study leader Markus Knaden, who heads a research group in the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology at the Max Planck Institute.

The research team first determined the exact compositions of the flower odors - with and without increased ozone content - and the respective concentrations of individual odor components using gas chromatography. For the ozone-altered odors, the researchers used ozone concentrations that can be measured on hot days in the natural habitat of tobacco hawkmoths. They tested the responses of the moths in behavioral assays in a wind tunnel, allowing the insect to investigate both the original floral odor and to the ozone-altered floral odor.

"We were surprised, even shocked, that the innate attraction to the odor of tobacco flowers was completely lost in the presence of increased ozone levels," said Knaden, describing what was observed during the experiments.

Tobacco hawkmoths are able to learn

The question remained whether ozone in the air would spoil the appetite of hungry and foraging tobacco hawkmoths, or whether it would prevent insects from finding their food source. Would insects be able to figure out that even polluted flower odors can offer rewards? To answer this question, researchers tested whether tobacco hawkmoths could learn to accept an initially unattractive scent as a food cue if they smelled it while simultaneously being offered a sugar solution reward. The researchers assessed several different ways in which the moth could learn to recognize flowers based on the ozone-altered floral scent. This was critical to relating these experiments to real-world learning. In the real world, a floral scent only becomes ozone-altered as it moves downwind of the flower and mixes with ozone. To see if moths could learn ozone-altered floral scents even when they are decoupled from the sugar reward at the flower, the researchers developed an experiment where the moth had to follow the ozone-altered odor to the flower, but were presented with the original scent at the flower containing the sugar reward.

"While we anticipated that Manduca sexta could learn new floral scents and hoped that they would be able to learn the polluted floral scent of their host flower, we were amazed to see that Manduca sexta could learn the polluted floral blend in a number of different ways, including learning a polluted scent that was decoupled from a sugar reward. This type of learning, which we were surprised to find in Manduca sexta, could be very important in insects' ability to use learning to cope with their rapidly changing environments," says first author Brynn Cook from the University of Virginia. What is especially noteworthy and pertinent about this kind of responsiveness to a changing environment is that it occurs in real time and not over evolutionary timescales.

Learning ability of Manduca sexta is not an all-clear

Although the study shows that tobacco hawkmoths can learn to rely on ozone-altered and initially unattractive plumes to recognize their flowers, air pollution still poses a serious risk to pollination and pollinators. "Learning may be key to insects recognizing their host plants in polluted environments, but one of the major questions remaining from our study is whether pollinators will be able to find their flowers in the first place. Without initially recognizing smells, will pollinators only have visual cues to help them locate host flowers in order to learn the pollution-altered floral scent? Another important aspect to consider is that other pollinators may not have the same facility to learn new smells that Manduca sexta has. Specialist pollinators, for instance, may not have that flexibility in learning. Our study is just a starting point. Field studies are going to be critical to understanding which flowers and insects are most affected by which pollutants, and likely why," says Cook.

Air pollution and climate change have far-reaching consequences for our ecosystem; by no means have all of these been studied and understood. For example, we still know little about the impact of atmospheric changes on the chemical communication between plants and insects. Not only are plant odors altered, but also the sex pheromone female insects use to attract males. Atmospheric changes have the potential to cause alterations in pheromones that could lead to mating failure. Insect mortality has risen dramatically in recent years, and researchers worldwide are searching for the causes. Since 2020, the Max Planck Center next Generation Insect Chemical Ecology, a cooperation between the Max Planck Society and two Swedish universities in which the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and the co-authors of the study, Bill Hansson and Markus Knaden, play a major role, has been dedicated to this field of research.

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Original publication:

Cook, B., Haverkamp, A., Hansson, B.S., Roulston, T., Lerdau, M., Knaden, M. (2020). Pollination in the Anthropocene: a Moth can Learn Ozone-altered Floral Blends, Journal of Chemical Ecology, DOI: 10.1007/s10886-020-01211-4

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-020-01211-4

Further Information:

Dr. Markus Knaden, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Hans-Knöll-Str. 8, 07745 Jena, Germany, Tel. +49 3641 57 1421, E-Mail: mknaden [at] ice.mpg.de

Download of videos and high-resolution photos via http://www.ice.mpg.de/ext/downloads2020.html