URBANA — A University of Illinois metabolic engineer has taken the first step toward the more efficient and economical production of biofuels by developing a strain of yeast with increased alcohol tolerance.
Biofuels are produced through microbi…
You’d think everyone could agree that something as grimly named as Pfiesteria would be toxic. It sure sounds toxic. But a researcher in North Carolina has been at the center of controversy for the last several years because of her claim that the organism does in fact harm fish and is responsible for periodic massive kills. A team at her own school, in fact, refuted her claims, saying when they repeated the experiments they were unable to observe the dinoflagellate microbe forming some of its previously reported toxic life-stages. The ball’s back in Dr. JoAnn Burkholder’s court today, with a new study that her team says refutes the findings published last summer stating that Pfiesteria is not toxic to fish or humans.
A tough microbe called Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand blasts of radiation, enduring several thousand times the lethal dose for humans. How did these little bugs develop this resistance? A team of Russian scientists has concluded that these extraordinary organisms are actually Martian microbes, here on Earth by way of meteorites. In tests on common bacteria E. coli, the scientists determined that evolution of radiation-resistance would take longer than 3.8 billion years, the time that life has been on Earth. In contrast, the bugs could develop this characteristic on the Red Planet in only a few hundred thousand years. On Mars there are much higher levels of radiation and the planet experiences regular climate swings that would induce dormancy in microbes, allowing them to accumulate sufficient doses of radiation to evolve into radiation-resistant critters.