It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, August 31, 2024
Seeing the future: Zebrafish regenerates fully functional photoreceptor cells and restores its vision
Technische Universität Dresden
image:
Zebrafish photoreceptor cells stimulated with blue light show correct electrical activity. The picture was taken using the microscope that was custom-built for this study.
Blinding diseases lead to permanent vision loss by damaging photoreceptor cells, which humans cannot naturally regenerate. While researchers are working on new methods to replace or regenerate these cells, the crucial question is whether these regenerated photoreceptors can fully restore vision. Now, a team of researchers led by Prof. Michael Brand at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) of Dresden University of Technology has made an important step forward. By studying zebrafish, an animal naturally capable of photoreceptor regeneration, the team showed that regenerated photoreceptors are as good as original ones and regain their normal function, allowing the fish to recover complete vision. Their results, published in the journal “Developmental Cell”, offer promising insights for the future of photoreceptor replacement therapies.
Vision is a complex sense that depends on the retina. This complex neural tissue in the back of our eyes is actually an external piece of the brain. It is where photoreceptor cells capture light and convert it into electrical signals. For humans, these photoreceptors are not replaced after damage. Once lost, they do not regenerate, leading to irreversible vision loss.
Therapies that are currently under development, including at the CRTD in Dresden, aim to replace damaged human photoreceptors and restore vision, either by stimulating stem cells within the retina to develop into new photoreceptors or by transplanting photoreceptors grown outside of the body.
Unlike humans, zebrafish have a remarkable ability to regenerate parts of their nervous system even after severe damage. Zebrafish can regrow photoreceptors from special stem cells located in the retina, known as Müller glia. This unique ability makes zebrafish an ideal model for studying the potential to restore vision through photoreceptor regeneration.
“Mammalian retina, including human retina, has very similar Müller glia cells. However, our cells have lost the ability to regenerate during evolution. Since these cells are so very similar, however, it may be possible to rekindle this regeneration potential for therapeutic applications in the future,” says Prof. Michael Brand, research group leader at the CRTD who led the study. “However, it is crucial to determine if such new photoreceptor cells can function as effectively as the originals.”
Making the Impossible Measurements
Researchers have long known that zebrafish can regenerate damaged retinas, with new photoreceptors appearing identical to the originals. Various groups, including the group of Prof. Brand, developed behavioral tests that confirmed that fish regained vision after regeneration. But these tests could not directly assess the extent to which the photoreceptor function was restored.
“The only comprehensive test to see if the vision is fully restored is to directly measure the electrophysiological activity of the retinal cells. Are photoreceptors correctly stimulated by the various colors of light? Are they electrically active to the same extent? Are they connected to the neighboring cells? Are they passing the signal to them? Are all the typical circuits engaged?” says Prof. Brand.
To answer these questions, the Brand team used a genetically modified zebrafish that let them use high-end microscopy to track the activity of photoreceptors at the photoreceptor synapse, i.e., directly where the photoreceptors connect to other nerve cells and pass the electric signal forward.
However, testing the function of regenerated photoreceptors proved to be a significant technical challenge. Photoreceptors convert light into electrical signals. But using light to observe cells under the microscope simultaneously stimulates them. This technical difficulty seemed almost impossible to overcome. However, with input from Prof. Tom Baden from the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K., and Dr. Hella Hartmann, leader of the Light Microscopy Facility at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering at TUD, it was possible to build a custom microscope that allowed the team to uncouple the stimulation from observation and measurement for different light colors, and to overcome this technical hurdle.
Using this advanced custom setup, the Brand team could show that the regenerated photoreceptors indeed regain their normal physiological function. They respond to light at different wavelengths, transmit the electric signal to neighboring cells, and do so with the same sensitivity, quality, and speed as original photoreceptors in an intact retina.
Hope for the Future
“Restoring all of these aspects of photoreceptor function, together with our previous work on restoring vision-controlled behavior, confirmed on a molecular level that the fish can fully ‘see’ again,” says Prof. Brand.
“Humans and fish have a common evolutionary ancestry and share most of the genes and types of cells. Therefore, we hope that humans can learn this ‘regeneration trick’ from the zebrafish. It is important to note that, at this stage, our work is classical basic research. It is still a long way until it can be applied in the clinic. However, being able to eventually achieve such functional regeneration from stem cells already located in the human retina could potentially revolutionize the treatment of currently untreatable diseases like retinitis pigmentosa or macular degeneration. This study brings us one step closer to that dream,” concludes Prof. Brand.
Original Publication
Evelyn Abraham, Hella Hartmann, Takeshi Yoshimatsu, Tom Baden, Michael Brand: Restoration of cone-circuit functionality in the regenerating adult zebrafish retinaDevelopmental Cell (August 2024) Link: https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S1534-5807(24)00440-4
About the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD)
The Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) of TUD Dresden University of Technology is an academic home for scientists from more than 30 nations. Their mission is to discover the principles of cell and tissue regeneration and leverage this for the recognition, treatment, and reversal of diseases. The CRTD links the bench to the clinic, scientists to clinicians to pool expertise in stem cells, developmental biology, gene-editing, and regeneration towards innovative therapies for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, hematological diseases such as leukemia, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, bone and retina diseases. The CRTD was founded in 2006 as a research center of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and funded until 2018 as a DFG Research Center, as well as a Cluster of Excellence. Since 2019, the CRTD is funded by the TU Dresden and the Free State of Saxony.
The CRTD is one of three institutes of the central scientific facility Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (CMCB) of the TU Dresden. http://www.tud.de/crtd http://www.tud/de/cmcb
Genuine and effective collaboration and inclusive participation
The study is based on an analysis of the design processes for green schoolyards in four cities: Barcelona (with the Transformem els patis [Transforming school playgrounds] programme), Paris, Brussels and Rotterdam. "In the four cities we've studied, we've seen that most efforts are aimed at encouraging involvement in the space design and preparation stages, but not so much during implementation and maintenance. But children tend to appreciate places more if they've been involved in building them, for example by doing small jobs," said Sekulova, who led the study. "Effective collaboration between schoolchildren, parents, teachers, designers, architects, funders and local stakeholders at the different stages of a schoolyard's creation is crucial."
Another key factor is encouraging inclusive participation. In low-income, working-class neighbourhoods, families tend to be less involved than in more affluent areas. This is not because of a lack of interest, but because their jobs and socio-economic circumstances mean that they cannot afford to volunteer, as their main concern is often making ends meet.
"This low level of participation often leads to lower-quality green spaces in schools in these neighbourhoods. One way to address this is to offer real compensation for participation, such as a free meal or childcare services, as part of the participatory processes in these communities," said Sekulova.
Involving committed architects and landscape designers is key
The profile of the architects and landscape designers involved is key when it comes to creating a successful space that meets the needs of both children and the community. They must be committed to education, pedagogy, landscape ecology and permaculture in general. The researchers found that "when these professionals are open to a horizontal co-creation process with experiential and artistic aspects, the outcomes are clearly better: schoolyards that are widely diverse, green and unique, places where schoolchildren can develop a sense of belonging. Conversely, when architects approach transformation processes as 'just another urbanization project', the resulting designs are less ambitious, more uniform and standardized, and do not encourage creative play or lead to a sense of belonging."
When asked what green spaces should look like, Sekulova said that "we must dare to make wilder, unstructured spaces based on nature". Science has shown (The Theory of Loose Parts, Simon Nicholson, 1972) that including loose items, such as natural and recycled materials, stimulates creativity and imagination. These green playgrounds can therefore include hills, bridges, paths and tunnels, as well as trees, shrubbery, woodchip floors or other items. As for play structures, it is advisable to install huts and climbing frames made of recycled wood (with tree trunks), amphitheatres, orchards and vegetable gardens, water and mud elements, as well as water collection infrastructure.
Such environments, which are more flexible and not over-organized, facilitate outdoor learning and foster more varied and creative play than paved playgrounds. "Studies have shown that young people who spend time in places with plant life can concentrate better and generally cope better with stressful life events, and show fewer symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity," said Sekulova.
The challenge of integrating the educational curriculum
Despite all the benefits of children spending time in green spaces, the educational system is not currently set up to integrate the outdoors into the learning system. "Firstly, outdoor education is not part of the compulsory curriculum. What's more, there is a general lack of training in outdoor education and it's often seen as extra work that's not even appreciated," said Sekulova. The researchers suggest including outdoor learning and teaching modules in teacher training programmes, as well as providing training for current education professionals. They also say that pressure from families can be a lever for change.
In terms of next steps, Sekulova and Ruiz-Mallén suggest conducting more studies on good practices, and on the factors that facilitate the use of outdoor spaces for teaching. More research is also needed on how outdoor learning improves socio-environmental awareness and general sustainability skills.
The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health.
Over 500 researchers and more than 50 research groups work in the UOC's seven faculties, its eLearning Research programme and its two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).
The university also develops online learning innovations at its eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC), as well as UOC community entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer via the Hubbik platform.
Open knowledge and the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu.
Researchers at the University of Iowa have established the various approaches by which people recognize words. In a new study, the researchers tested how people outfitted with cochlear implants, such as this patient pictured, identified a series of words from similar-sounding competitiors. The researchers found people regardless of hearing abilities used the same general approaches to recognize language.
University of Iowa researchers have defined how people recognize words.
In a new study with people who use cochlear implants to hear, the researchers identified three main approaches that people with or without hearing impairment use to recognize words, an essential building block for understanding spoken language. Which approach depends on the person, regardless of hearing aptitude or ability: Some wait a bit before identifying a word, while others may tussle between two or more words before deciding which word has been heard.
When a person hears a word, the brain briefly considers hundreds, if not thousands, of options and rules out most of them in less than a second. When someone hears “Hawkeyes,” for example, the brain might briefly consider “hot dogs,” “hawk,” “hockey,” and other similar-sounding words before settling on the target word.
While the brain operates quickly and differences in word-recognition strategies may be subtle, the findings in this study are important because they could open new ways for hearing specialists to identify word-recognition difficulties in early childhood or in older adults (who tend to lose hearing) and more effectively manage those conditions.
“With this study, we found people don't all work the same way, even at the level of how they recognize a single word,” says Bob McMurray, F. Wendell Miller Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the study’s corresponding author. “People seem to adopt their own unique solutions to the challenge of recognizing words. There's not one way to be a language user. That’s kind of wild when you think about it.”
McMurray has been studying word recognition in children and in older adults for three decades. His research has shown differences in how people across all ages recognize spoken language. But those differences tended to be so slight that it made it difficult to precisely categorize. So, McMurray and his research team turned to people who use cochlear implants — devices used by the profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing that bypass the normal pathways by which people hear, using electrodes to deliver sound.
“It’s like replacing millions of hair cells and thousands of frequencies with 22 electrodes. It just smears everything together. But it works, because the brain can adapt,” McMurray says.
The research team enlisted 101 participants from the Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center at University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center. The participants listened through loudspeakers as a word was spoken, then selected among four images on a computer screen the one that matched the word they had heard. The hearing and selection activities were recorded with eye-tracking technology, which allowed the researchers to follow, in a fraction of a second, how and when each participant decided on a word they had heard.
The experiments revealed that the cochlear-implant users — even with a different way to hear — employed the same basic process when choosing spoken words as normal hearing people.
The researchers termed three word-recognition dimensions:
Wait and See
Sustained Activation
Slow Activation
Most cochlear implant participants utilized Wait and See to some degree, the researchers found, meaning they waited for as much as a quarter of a second after hearing the word to firmly decide which word they heard.
Previous research in McMurray’s lab has shown that children with early hearing loss have Wait and See tendencies, but this hasn’t been observed more generally.
“Maybe it’s a way for them to avoid a bunch of other word competitors in their heads,” McMurray says. “They can kind of slow down and keep it simple.”
The researchers also learned that some cochlear implant participants tended toward Sustained Activation, in which listeners tussle for a bit between words before settling on what they think is the word they heard, or they utilize Slow Activation, meaning they’re slower to recognize words. Importantly, every listener seems to adopt a hybrid, with a different degree of each strategy.
The dimensions match the patterns by which people without hearing impairment, from youth to older ages, tend to recognize words, as shown in a previous study by McMurray’s team.
“Now that we’ve identified the dimensions with our cochlear implant population, we can look at people without hearing impairment, and we see that the exact same dimensions apply,” McMurray says. “What we see very clearly with how cochlear implant users recognize words is also going on under the hood in lots of people.”
The researchers now hope to apply the findings to develop strategies that may help people who are at the extreme ends of a particular word-recognition dimension. About 15% of adults in the United States have hearing loss, which could cascade into cognitive decline, fewer social interactions, and greater isolation.
“We aim to have a more refined way than simply asking them, ‘How well are you listening; do you struggle to perceive speech in the real world?’” McMurray says.
The study, “Cochlear implant users reveal the underlying dimensions of real-time word recognition,” was published online Aug. 29 in the journal Nature Communications.
Contributing authors, all from Iowa, include Francis Smith, Marissa Huffman, Kristin Rooff, John Muegge, Charlotte Jeppsen, Ethan Kutlu, and Sarah Colby.
The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Science Foundation funded the research, as part of its 30 years of funding the Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center.
The East Javan food called oncom is made by growing orange Neurospora mold on soy pulp left over from making tofu. In about 36 hours, the soy pulp is turned into a tasty and nutritious food.
Chef-turned-chemist Vayu Hill-Maini has a passion: to turn food waste into culinary treats using fungi.
One of his collaborators is Rasmus Munk, head chef and co-owner of the Michelin two-star restaurant Alchemist in Copenhagen, who serves a dessert — orange-colored Neurospora mold grown on rice — inspired by Hill-Maini.
For the past two years, Hill-Maini has worked with a team of chefs at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a Michelin two-star restaurant in Pocantico Hills, New York, to generate tasty morsels from Neurospora mold grown on grains and pulses, including the pulp left over from making oat milk. At Blue Hill, you may soon be served a patty of grain covered with orange Neurospora with a side of moldy bread — orange Neurospora grown on rice bread that, when fried, smells and tastes like a toasted cheese sandwich.
That's only the beginning for Hill-Maini, a Miller postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Working in the lab of Jay Keasling, UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, he has devoted himself to learning everything there is to know about Neurospora intermedia — a widespread fungus that is traditionally used in Indonesia to make a food called oncom (pronounced ahn' cham) from soy pulp — so it can be adapted broadly to Western food waste and Western palates.
"Our food system is very inefficient. A third or so of all food that's produced in the U.S. alone is wasted, and it isn't just eggshells in your trash. It's on an industrial scale,” said Hill-Maini. “What happens to all the grain that was involved in the brewing process, all the oats that didn't make it into the oat milk, the soybeans that didn't make it into the soy milk? It's thrown out."
When a fellow chef from Indonesia introduced him to fermented oncom, he said it struck him that "this food is a beautiful example of how we can take waste, ferment it and make human food from it. So let's learn from this example, study this process in detail, and maybe there's broader lessons we can draw about how to tackle the general challenge of food waste."
Hill-Maini's evangelizing about the benefits of Neurospora inspired Blue Hill to install an incubator and tissue culture hood in its test kitchen this summer, allowing the restaurant to dive more deeply into fungal foods. Before, Luzmore, chef in charge of special projects, FedExed various substrates to Hill-Maini's lab at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, California, near UC Berkeley, where Neurospora magically transformed them for study. Luzmore has tasted many Neurospora experiments, though his favorite is made fromstale rice bread.
"It’s incredibly delicious. It looks and tastes like you grated cheddar onto bread and toasted it," Luzmore said. "It's a very clear window into what can be done with this."
While people from many cultures have long eaten foods transformed by fungi — grain turned into alcohol by yeast, milk curds turned into blue cheese by Penicillium mold, soy sauce and miso produced from soybeans by koji mold (Aspergillus oryzae) — oncom is unique in being produced from waste food. Developed by native Javans long ago, it appears to be the only human food fermented solely by Neurospora mold. But not for long.
A paper by Hill-Maini about the genetics of the Neurospora intermedia strains that transform soy milk waste into oncom, and how the fungi chemically alter 30 different kinds of plant waste, will be published online Aug. 29 in the journal Nature Microbiology.
"In the last few years, I think, fungi and molds have caught the public eye for their health and environmental benefits, but a lot less is known about the molecular processes that these fungi carry out to transform ingredients into food," he said. "Our discovery, I think, opens our eyes to these possibilities and unlocks further the potential of these fungi for planetary health and planetary sustainability."
A nutritious snack in 36 hours
In West Java, oncom comes in two varieties: red oncom, which is made by fermenting soy pulp left over from making tofu, and black oncom, which is grown on the leftover pressings from making peanut oil. They're used similarly — in stir-fries, as fried snacks and with rice as a dumpling filling.
One of the amazing things about these moldy concoctions, Hill-Maini found, is that the fungi transform indigestible plant material — polysaccharides, including pectin and cellulose, originating from the plant cell wall — into digestible, nutritious and tasty food in about 36 hours.
"The fungus readily eats those things and in doing so makes this food and also more of itself, which increases the protein content," he said. "So you actually have a transformation in the nutritional value. You see a change in the flavor profile. Some of the off-flavors that are associated with soybeans disappear. And finally, some beneficial metabolites are produced in high amounts."
Yeast — a single-celled fungus — is famously transformative, fermenting grain and fruit into alcohol. But the fungus that makes oncom is different: it's a filamentous fungus, growing and spreading as filaments identical to the mycorrhizae of fungi that live in forest soil and produce mushrooms. The oncom fungus does not produce mushrooms, however; it is like the mold that grows on spoiled food. The Penicillium mold that produces blue cheese and the koji mold that produces soy sauce, miso and sake are examples of filamentous fungi that raise bland food to a whole new level.
Oncom, however, is one of the only, if not the only, fungal food grown on food by-products. In the new paper, Hill-Maini demonstrated that N. intermedia can grow on 30 different types of agricultural waste, from sugar cane bagasse and tomato pomace to almond hulls and banana peels, without producing any toxins that can accumulate in some mushrooms and molds.
He also analyzed the genetics of the fungi that produce oncom. Surprisingly, he found that the fungus responsible for red oncom is primarily N. intermedia — it was the main fungus in all 10 samples from West Java.
"What was very clear is, wow, this fungus is probably dominant and maybe sufficient for making this food possible, growing on the cellulose-rich soy milk waste and making the food in 36 hours," Hill-Maini said.
The fungi in black oncom, however, were dominated by a range of Rhizopus species that depended on where it was made. It also contained many bacteria. Tempeh, another ancient and popular Javanese source of protein, is also produced by Rhizopus mold fermenting fresh soybeans.
Delving deeper into the genetics of the Neurospora in red oncom and comparing its genes with the genes of Neurospora intermedia strains not found in red oncom, he discovered that there are essentially two types of the mold: wild strains found worldwide, and strains adapted specifically to agricultural waste produced by humans.
"What we think has happened is that there's been a domestication as humans started generating waste or by-products, and it created a new niche for Neurospora intermedia. And through that, probably the practice of making oncom emerged," Hill-Maini said. "And we found that those strains are better at degrading cellulose. So it seems to have a unique trajectory on waste, from trash to treasure."
But is it tasty?
Since the domesticated Neurospora strain degrades the cellulose in soy and peanut waste into a tasty food, Hill-Maini wondered if it could make other waste products edible.
"The most important thing, especially for me as a chef, is, 'Is it tasty?' Sure, we can grow it on all these different things, but if it doesn't have sensory appeal, if people don't perceive it positively outside of a very specific cultural context, then it might be a dead end," he said.
In collaboration with Munk at Alchemist, he presented red oncom to 60 people who had never encountered it before and asked their opinions.
"We found that, basically people who never tried this food before assigned it positive attributes — it was more earthy, nutty, mushroomy," Hill-Maini said. "It consistently rated above six out of nine."
The chefs at Alchemist also grew Neurospora on peanuts, cashews and pine nuts and everyone liked those, too, he said.
"Its flavor is not polarizing and intense like blue cheese. It's a milder, savory kind of umami earthiness," Hill-Maini said. Different substrates impart their own flavors, however, including fruity notes when grown on rice hulls or apple pomace.
This led Munk to add a Neurospora dessert to Alchemist's menu: a bed of jellied plum wine topped with unsweetened rice custard inoculated with Neurospora, left to ferment for 60 hours and served cold, topped with a drop of lime syrup made from roasted leftover lime peel.
“We experienced that the process changed the aromas and flavors in quite a dramatic way — adding sweet, fruity aromas," Munk said. "I found it mind-blowing to suddenly discover flavors like banana and pickled fruit without adding anything besides the fungi itself. Initially, we were thinking of creating a savory dish, but the results made us decide to instead serve it as a dessert."
This dessert was among other edible Neurospora fermentations discussed in a paper published last December in the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, in which Hill-Maini, Munk and their colleagues reported on taste tests of oncom and oncom-like foods grown on substrates other than soy.
“I think it is amazing that we as a restaurant can contribute something like this to the scientific community," Munk added. "We have said from the start that Alchemist’s ambition is to change the world through gastronomy, and this project has that kind of potential. I am very excited to see what other culinary applications this research can lead to in the future and using other waste products from the food industry."
Munk recently launched a food innovation center, Spora, initially focused on upcycling side-streams from the food industry and developing delicious and diverse protein sources.
A culinary upbringing
Hill-Maini grew up in a household centered around cooking. His mother, of Indian descent from Kenya, held cooking classes in their apartment in Stockholm, Sweden, in the 1990s, introducing Swedes to the spices and cooking styles of India. His father is of Cuban and Norwegian descent.
"Growing up, I got connected to cooking really early on as a way to understand my cultural heritage and where I came from," he said.
After high school, he took his love of cooking to New York City, where he worked low-level food-prep jobs at several restaurants before impressing one employer with the sandwiches he brought for lunch. At the age of 18, he was chosen to redesign the menu of a venerable sandwich shop in Manhattan. One creation was voted among the city's top veggie sandwiches by the New York Times.
He eventually returned to school, supporting himself as a chef for hire, and became interested in the science behind the chemical transformations possible with cooking. After obtaining his bachelor's degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, he was accepted into the graduate program at Harvard University, where he studied biochemistry and did Ph.D. work on the gut microbiome.
"Then, you know, I wanted to come back to the kitchen," he said. "The Miller Fellowship was an opportunity to say, ‘I have training in the culinary world. I have training in biochemistry, microbiology. How do I bring them together, especially looking at the sustainability challenges that we're facing and how wasteful and devastating our food system is on the planet?’"
With fellowship support, he visited restaurants — including Blue Hill, Alchemist and the Basque Culinary Center in Spain — to give workshops on fermentation.
"That inspired me to go back to Berkeley and think about my research differently," Hill-Maini said.
Blue Hill has hosted him five times over the past two years, most recently in late June to help inaugurate the restaurant's microbiology lab, where Luzmore hopes Hill-Maini and other chef-scientists will visit and experiment.
"The reason why we have loved working with Vayu so much is because I think he really embodies a lot of where we are going," Luzmore said. Now 20 years old, the for-profit Blue Hill restaurant and the nonprofit Stone Hill Farm are transitioning from being a champion of farm-to-table dining to "endeavoring to make research a bigger part of what we do here and not just have it be a farm and a restaurant, but really, hopefully, be a hub of innovation — what I feel to be a sandbox — and to bring people in, like Vayu, to do this research."
In addition to playing in Blue Hill's sandbox, Hill-Maini will soon have his own: a kitchen-equipped lab at Stanford University, where he has been appointed an assistant professor of bioengineering.
Taste test
Sauteing an oat milk waste burger he made in his Berkeley apartment last June, Hill-Maini talked enthusiastically about the opportunities opened up by Neurospora and the debt he owes to the Javanese, who long ago coopted the fungus to make oncom. Neurospora provides another type of fermentation complementary to the widely used koji mold, which in recent years has been adapted by chefs to transform so many foods that it has become tiresome, he said.
"This is a new tool in the chef's toolbox," he said.
Hill-Maini plated the perfectly-seared burger, indistinguishable from a small beef patty, on a bed of cashew-avocado sauce, pairing it with roasted sweet potatoes and a fresh cucumber-cherry tomato salad with herbs and lemon. He cut the burger with a fork, swirled it through the sauce and lifted it to his mouth.
"Mmm, look at that — waste to food," he said. "It has good bite, it's savory, a note of mushrooms, some fun, fruity aromas."
In future research, he hopes to discover how Neurospora produces these flavors and aromas, but at the same time make a dent in the food waste stream.
"The science that I do — it's a new way of cooking, a new way of looking at food that hopefully makes it into solutions that could be relevant for the world," he said.
A sauteed patty composed of soy pulp innoculated with Neurospora mold and left to ferment for several days. UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Vayu Hill-Maini prepared and cooked the patty, plating it with a cashew cream sauce, baked yams and a fresh cherry tomato and cucumber salad.
Credit
Vayu Hill-Maini, UC Berkeley
Neurospora intermedia, an orange mold, turns day-old bread into a cheesy treat when toasted (left). The mold transforms sugarless rice custard into a sweet dessert served at the Alchemist restaurant in Copenhagen (right).
Credit
Images courtesy of Blue Hill at Stone Farm and Alchemist
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Hill-Maini's co-authors on the Nature Microbiology paper include Keasling; Munk, Nabila Rodriguez-Valeron, Mikel Olaizola Garcia and Diego Prado Vásquez of Alchemist; José Manuel Villalobos-Escobedo of UC Berkeley; Alexander Rosales and Edward Baidoo of JBEI, part of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Christofora Hanny Wijaya, Lilis Nuraida and Isty Damayanti of Bogor Agricultural University in Dramaga, Indonesia; and Ana Calheiros de Carvalho and Pablo-Cruz Morales of the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby. The genome sequencing was performed at Berkeley Lab's Joint Genome Institute by Robert Riley, Anna Lipzen, Guifen He, Mi Yan, Sajeet Haridas, Christopher Daum, Yuko Yoshinaga, Vivian Ng and Igor V. Grigoriev.
Neurospora intermedia from a traditional fermented food enables waste-to-food conversion
Article Publication Date
29-Aug-2024
UK
Muslims felt excluded from health policies during COVID
University of Leeds
People from diverse backgrounds must be included in the development of healthcare policies to ensure all groups' needs are met, new research into palliative care for the Muslim community has found.
The study investigated the experience of British Muslim people and their families who were accessing palliative care services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It found that language barriers, problems using or accessing smartphones, and uncertainty about how to access information led to a sense of exclusion from COVID-19-related policies and messaging for this population. An apparent lack of consideration of important festivals in the Muslim calendar in the implementation of policies around lockdowns only exacerbated this problem.
The researchers say that this highlights the need for people from minoritised ethnic groups to be involved in the design and delivery of health and care policies and messaging, to ensure that people from all backgrounds can access health care services, understand how to get the help they need, and advocate for their own and their family members' needs, no matter what their background.
Dr Gemma Clarke, Senior Research Fellow in the University of Leeds’ Academic Unit of Palliative Care, said: "Our study provides a unique view on the experiences of British Muslims during the pandemic. It shows the hidden work, challenges and emotional stress taken on by carers during this time.
“The findings highlight how crucial it is that people from minority backgrounds are consulted when healthcare policies are designed to avoid marginalising populations, especially during vulnerable times in their lives.
“We hope that our findings will help shape future delivery of culturally aware and inclusive healthcare.”
The research project was a collaboration between the University of Leeds, University College London (UCL), Marie Curie and the Muslim Council of Britain. It was funded by Marie Curie and was led by Dr Briony Hudson from UCL.
Co-author Dr Nuriye Kupeli, Principal Research Fellow in the UCL Division of Psychiatry’s Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, said: “Our work highlights that while families and those closest to people living with life limiting illness took on additional caring responsibilities, they faced many challenges in accessing healthcare.
“By exploring and understanding the needs of people from minority backgrounds, including British Muslims, we can work in partnership to build trust, inform future service and policy development and reduce exclusion.”
To investigate the experiences of British Muslims accessing palliative care during the pandemic, the study team recruited three peer researchers from Pakistani Asian ethnic groups who spoke multiple languages including Urdu, Punjabi, French and English. They were all part of the Muslim Council of Britain Research and Documentation Committee. They conducted 11 telephone interviews between August and September 2021, with five British Muslims with palliative care needs and seven family carers.
The interviews revealed that the pandemic had exacerbated existing challenges to accessing health care services for British Muslims with palliative care needs.
Family members reported experiencing the cumulative impact of supporting people with palliative needs whilst also advocating for and supporting them to access the care they required.
The research team made several recommendations to address inequities in palliative care access, including:
Research, services and policy should be developed in partnership with people experiencing inequity
Healthcare providers and organisations must endeavour to understand their local context and population and consider this in the development, delivery and communication about their services.
Zara Mohammed, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “As the elderly population continues to grow, British Muslims face significant challenges due to the increasing need for comprehensive palliative care—an issue made even more urgent by the devastating effects of the pandemic. The disproportionate impact of this issue must be addressed. I commend this important body of research for shedding light on the issue and offering the relevant recommendations to guide the way forward.”
Contact University of Leeds press officer Lauren Ballinger with media enquiries via email on l.ballinger@leeds.ac.uk or by phone on 0113 3438059.
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About Marie Curie
• Marie Curie is the UK’s leading end of life charity.
• The charity provides expert end of life care for people with any illness they are likely to die from, and support for their family and friends, in our hospices and where they live. It is the largest charity funder of palliative and end of life care research in the UK, and campaigns to ensure everyone has a good end of life experience. Whatever the illness, we’re with you to the end.
• If you’re living with a terminal illness or have been affected by dying, death and bereavement, Marie Curie can help. Visit www.mariecurie.org.uk or call the free Marie Curie Support Line on 0800 090 2309.
Whatever the illness, wherever you are, Marie Curie is with you to the end.
Please note, Marie Curie is not a cancer charity but the UK’s leading ‘end of life charity’. We care for people with - any illness they are likely to die from including Alzheimer’s (and other forms of dementia), heart, liver, kidney and lung disease, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, and advanced cancer.
Somebody who understands the culture and their needs that can cater for them in their retirement time: a peer research study exploring the challenges faced by British Muslims with palliative care needs during the COVID-19 pandemic
