Category: Canadian Light Source (CLS)

Recycling phosphorus from wastewater to grow better crops

Recycling phosphorus from wastewater to grow better crops

Scientists are helping close the loop on the sustainability cycle with research into nutrient-enhanced biochar — a charcoal-like material made by heating recycled biomass in the absence of oxygen (a process called pyrolysis). Biomass is any living or once-living material – including plants, trees, and animal waste — that can be used as a source of energy.

Daniel Strawn, Professor of Environmental Soil Chemistry at the University of Idaho, and his colleagues are interested in enhancing biochar – which can be used as an amendment to promote soil health — by adding phosphorus, a crucial nutrient for crops.

The research team, which also included scientists from the University of Saskatchewan and Washington State University, has focused its efforts on recovering phosphorus from wastewater.

“Phosphorus is a limited resource, taken out of the ground, processed to produce fertilizer, and eventually it ends up in wastewater,” says Strawn. “We are developing technology to recover it using biochar in a water treatment process.”

Biochar is an effective sponge ­that can soak up phosphorous and other nutrients, like nitrogen, from waterways. The team is testing this treatment process on municipal and agricultural wastewater systems.

With the help of the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at USask, Strawn and his colleagues confirmed in a recent paper which type of phosphorous had been absorbed by the biochar — a crucial step to understanding and refining their process.

Read more on the CLS website

Taking the stress out of growing corn

Taking the stress out of growing corn

Global warming is bringing longer growing seasons, allowing producers to expand the types of crops they cultivate. While this can be a benefit, a longer growing season increases the risk of environmental stressors, like frost and cool overnight temperatures.

Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) are investigating how the first frost impacts corn varieties, in the hopes of finding new ways to maximize crop yields.

“With global climate change, we are realizing that you can push the corn belt northward, so we’re wondering how we can enable the production of that crop by expanding the season,” said Dr. Karen Tanino, professor of abiotic stress physiology in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources.

The team is interested in the cuticular layer of the plant, a defensive barrier that acts like the plant’s skin. If the cuticular layer is more water repellent, it is full of waxy compounds that allow water to run off the plant.

“If water is not present, then the frost is not able to form, which means the plant can avoid that first fall frost,” said Tanino.

With the help of the Mid-IR beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) located at USask, Tanino and her colleagues found that the cool temperatures preceding the first frost influence the composition and quantity of the plant’s cuticle layer, making it more susceptible to freezing temperatures. Their findings were recently published in Physiologia Plantarum.

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website

Ancient fluid in quartz provides key to finding new uranium deposits

Ancient fluid in quartz provides key to finding new uranium deposits

Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin is home to some of the world’s largest and richest uranium deposits, but it can still be tricky to find them.

Researchers at the University of Regina are studying how the deposits formed more than 1.5 billion years ago to help figure out the best places to look.

“We’re trying to understand the geological factors that control the formation of these deposits so that we know what features we should be looking for to find more uranium resources,” said Dr. Guoxiang Chi, a geologist at the University of Regina.

Chi, his Ph.D. student, Morteza Rabiei, and colleagues used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to analyze samples of quartz from areas known to contain uranium and nearby barren regions, the quartz having formed at the same time as the Athabascan uranium ore. They sliced the quartz into thin sections and studied the tiny droplets of primordial fluid trapped inside. It was from this fluid, circulating through geological fault lines billions of years ago, that today’s uranium ore formed. “By getting information about this paleo-fluid and seeing how it is distributed we can infer where the original uranium came from and what factors control its deposition,” said Chi. Understanding the conditions under which uranium ore is likely to form can help mining companies know where to look.

The results, however, were more complex than expected, he said. Fluid from ore-bearing areas had high levels of uranium, as expected, but so did the fluid from areas with no uranium ore. On the one hand, that is good news as it means that the uranium-rich fluid is more pervasive than first thought, but it also complicates the search for new deposits.

“We were hoping to see a major difference, but found uranium-rich fluid in both places,” he said. “So, if we want to use it as a guide to locate ore, we’ll have to understand the other factors that control deposition.” Chi said those other factors likely involve reducing agents that allow precipitation of the oxidized uranium in the fluid. “Without a reducing agent, you can’t have ore.”

Read more on CLS website

Undermining the foundations of bacterial resistance

Undermining the foundations of bacterial resistance

Scientists from the University of Guelph have used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to better understand how several infectious bacteria, including E. coli., build a protective sugar-based barrier that helps cloak their cells.

Published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Guelph research provides the very early steps toward new treatments for E. coli and a whole range of bacteria. Their particular focus is on strains of E. coli that cause urinary tract and bloodstream infections, particularly those that are antibiotic resistant.

The research is looking to understand the enzyme that many infectious bacteria use to build the foundations of their protective capsule. The capsule helps shield the bacterium from attack by the human immune system and exists in many clinically distinct variants.

Making vaccines or drugs that targets the capsule itself directly is impractical as such treatments would target only a few bacteria. Instead, the Guelph team is focused on a key enzyme that builds the capsule foundation. This foundation could serve as a common point of attack, allowing a single treatment for several key pathogens infecting humans and livestock.

“We are interested in the machinery that builds the bacterium’s protective layer,” said Dr. Chris Whitfield, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. “By understanding and targeting the machinery, we can render the pathogen unable to survive in the host”.

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website

Image : Matthew Kimber, Chris Whitfield, and enzyme

New catalyst twice as selective, could make chemical production cleaner and cheaper

New catalyst twice as selective, could make chemical production cleaner and cheaper

An estimated 18 million tonnes of acetic acid are produced annually around the world for industrial applications like making paints, adhesives and coatings. Now, researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) have demonstrated a new electrically powered catalyst that is twice as efficient as baseline materials at producing acetic acid. Their research has the added bonus of having a much smaller carbon footprint.

Catalysts are used to help convert raw materials into usable products, but the raw materials used to make acetic acid today are fossil fuel-based, meaning production can have negative environmental impacts. Here, the only inputs are CO2-derived CO, water and renewable electricity.

“In this project, I identified a strategy to design catalysts that might be extremely selective to a single chemical, meaning they produce more of the chemical you want, in this case acetic acid, and much less of the by-product chemicals you don’t want,” says Joshua Wicks, a doctoral student in Professor Edward Sargent’s research group at UofT.

“In our lab, we are very interested in the decarbonization of chemicals production and we’re always searching for promising opportunities to apply electrochemistry in this hard-to-decarbonize sector of the economy.”

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website

Image : Panos Papangelakis setting up in-situ XAS experiments

Tiny proteins found across the animal kingdom play a key role in cancer spread

Tiny proteins found across the animal kingdom play a key role in cancer spread

Researchers from McGill University have made an exciting discovery about specific proteins involved in the spread of certain cancers.

Dr. Kalle Gehring, professor of biochemistry and founding director of the McGill Centre for Structural Biology, and his team have focused on unravelling the mystery around phosphatases of regenerating liver (PRLs). These proteins are found in all kinds of animals and insects — from humans to fruit flies – and play a unique role in the growth of cancerous tumours and the spread of cancer throughout the body.

“It’s important for us to study PRLs because they are so important in cancer,” said Gehring, “In some cancers, like metastatic colorectal cancer, the proteins are overexpressed up to 300-fold.”

This overexpression of PRLs makes cancer cells more metastatic and drives the spread to other organs.

In his most recent paper, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Gehring and his colleagues confirmed that PRLs exist in all kinds of single- and multi-cell animals. Data collected at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan confirmed the role of PRLs in binding magnesium transporters, helping to further the understanding of how these proteins influence human disease.

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website

Organic matter found in 44-million-year-old beetle fossil

Organic matter found in 44-million-year-old beetle fossil

Remember Jurassic Park? The dinosaurs in that movie franchise were brought to life through DNA found in amber. The DNA purportedly came from mosquitoes that had taken blood from dinosaurs prior to being trapped in the tree resin that turned into amber.

Amber, a semi-precious stone that is fossilized tree resin, often contains the fossilized remains of insects and other small creatures, with little, if any, organic matter left. No organic matter, no dinosaur DNA, no Jurassic Park.

However, a team of researchers from the University of Regina, Royal Saskatchewan Museum, and Institute of Life Sciences and Technologies at Daugavpils University in Latvia, have now identified what appears to be organic matter in a 44-million-year-old beetle fossilized in amber.

This remarkable finding, and the methodology used in making it, has been published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, the fifth most-cited journal in the world.

“Using a set of advanced techniques we’ve not tried before, we took a 44-million-year-old beetle trapped in Baltic amber to see if it was possible that any preserved organic material might be present,” says U of R master’s of science student Jerit Mitchell, lead author of the study.

Dr. Mauricio Barbi, a U of R physics professor, says the team used the synchrotron radiation facilities at the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Light Source (CLS) in Saskatoon to extract high-resolution 3D micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) images of the beetle.

“The synchrotron mid-infrared radiation gave us the capability to identify possible organic compounds in the specimen. We then complemented these two synchrotron radiation techniques by using a scanning electron microscope to provide further high-resolution images of the beetle and to determine the specific chemical elements present in the sample,” says Barbi, who led the team that discovered structurally preserved fossilized dinosaur cell layers in the skin of a 72-million-year-old hadrosaur.”

Read more on the website

Image: Jerit Mitchell gazing at a millions-year-old fossilized beetle

 Credit: U of R Photography

Researchers study molecular bindings to develop better cancer treatments

Researchers study molecular bindings to develop better cancer treatments

A research team based in Winnipeg is using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to find new, cutting-edge ways to battle cancer.

Dr. Jörg Stetefeld, a professor of biochemistry and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Structural Biology and Biophysics at the University of Manitoba, is leading groundbreaking research into how netrin-1 — a commonly found molecule related to cell migration and differentiation —  creates filaments and binds to receptors in cells.

As netrin-1 is considered the key player for the migration of cancer cells, Stetefeld said this research could inform new cancer treatments.

“If you understand how netrin binds these receptors, you are sitting in the driver’s seat to develop approaches to block this interaction,” he said. “Why do we want to block it? Because if you block this interaction, you kill the cancer cell.”

Earlier research published in 2016 led to the development of new antibody treatments in Europe for combating breast cancer, said Stetefeld. He hopes this new research, which was published in the journal Nature, can lead to better drugs and treatments as well.

Read more on the CLS website

Imaging Earth’s crust reveals natural secret for reducing carbon emissions

Imaging Earth’s crust reveals natural secret for reducing carbon emissions

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan and its BMIT-ID beamline, he discovered much larger pores in samples from the Earth’s crust than predicted.

“I expected nanometer-sized pores, whereas I ended up finding pores up to 200 microns — so several orders of magnitudes larger,” said Pujatti, a scientist in the University of Calgary’s Department of Geoscience who recently defended his PhD. “This was very, very puzzling to me.”

Three-dimensional CLS imaging techniques allowed him to see the rocks’ internal structure. There, he found the pores in a mineral called olivine, which is made up largely of silica and magnesium.

As in other geologic systems, he thought the olivine would form new minerals — basically clays — as it dissolved “but I didn’t see that,” he said. “I could only see pores.”

“Finally, I realized the types of fluids that percolated through these rocks were too cold to lead to the formation of new minerals.” The ‘culprit’ was simply sea water.

“Classically, we always consider the oceanic crust as a sink for magnesium,” he said. “Instead, interactions between fluids and these olivine-rich rocks release magnesium.”

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website

Image: Simone Pujatti (right) and Benjamin Tutolo.

Researchers identify new material for creating electronic devices

Researchers identify new material for creating electronic devices

A multidisciplinary research team is developing more efficient and environmentally friendly processes to build light-emitting diodes with the help of the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Simon Trudel, professor in chemistry at the University of Calgary and director of the university’s Nanoscience Program, said his team has been studying ways to use amorphous materials to build better “optoelectronic devices” such as organic photovoltaic cells or organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which make possible digital display TV screens, computer monitors and smartphones.

By using a technique called X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) at the CLS, Trudel’s team was able to precisely examine the structure of the materials they were experimenting with to create more efficient electronic cells.

Trudel’s team focused on one of the interior layers of the diode called the hole-transport layer, which regulates the movement of electrons — and electrical energy — in a device. They identified an amorphous vanadium oxide compound that could be used for the hole-transfer layer but did not require the standard-but-intense heat treatments to crystallize the material.

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website

Image: Digital displays

Attacking cancer cells from the inside out

Attacking cancer cells from the inside out

Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) are harnessing the power of proteins to stop cancer cells in their tracks.

“Proteins are the workhorses of the cell,” said Walid A. Houry, professor of biochemistry at U of T. “They define the cell and allow it to divide or migrate if needed.”

The team is especially interested in proteases, enzymes that chew up old or misfolded proteins and act as cellular quality control. Houry and his colleagues used the CMCF beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to identify key compounds affecting these quality control mechanisms that cause cell dysfunction and, ultimately, cell death. Their research paper was recently published in Structure.

“Let’s say you have a small puppy and when you leave it in the room, it starts chewing your sofa, your carpet; it’s just hyper and eating everything up,” Houry said. The compounds cause the proteases to act like the puppy, “and the cell cannot handle this type of disruption to its machinery.”

By targeting the cell’s self-destruct button, Houry’s team, including collaborators at Madera Therapeutics, is designing a new approach to cancer therapy. Synchrotron techniques allowed the researchers to visualize the interaction between their compounds and the proteases.

Houry said hard-to-treat cancers like glioblastomas and certain types of breast cancers are good candidates for this new approach.

“Instead of inhibiting a protease, we are hyperactivating the protease, and that is unique.”

The CLS is crucial to the team’s work.

“Synchrotron technology is extremely important for us and our structure-based drug design,” he said. “We want to know why the protein is going wild when we add our compound.”

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Houry research team

Battling biofilm to prevent dangerous lung infections

Battling biofilm to prevent dangerous lung infections

Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) and The Hospital for Sick Children have identified a promising therapeutic target to help treat lung infections in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients.

“Individuals with cystic fibrosis have an impairment in their lungs where they have a hard time clearing out the mucus that accumulates within the lungs,” says Andreea Gheorghita, PhD candidate in the Department of Biochemistry at U of T.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a bacterium that causes opportunistic infections in individuals with weakened immune systems or other health concerns. For individuals with CF, repeated Pseudomonas infections often lead to long hospital stays and severe lung damage.

“Because of the impaired ability to clear mucus in the airways, these lung infections can become very persistent and prolonged, which eventually leads to lung tissue damage, loss of lung function, and eventually can cause patient mortality,” says Gheorghita.

Using the CMCF beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), the team has been able to visualize the interaction between two important proteins that are key players in Pseudomonas’s ability to make biofilm. This sticky secretion allows the bacterium to attach to the lungs and makes it difficult for antibiotics and the patient’s immune system to fight the infection.

Read more on the  Canadian Light Source website

Canadian Light Source at USask announces appointment of new CEO

Canadian Light Source at USask announces appointment of new CEO

Bill Matiko, current Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer for the CLS, will become the Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately, for a period of five years. 

“After an extensive search, the best candidate turned out to be right here, and we’re extremely pleased that he’s accepted our offer,” said Pierre Lapointe, Chair of the CLS Board of Directors. “Bill has proven he has the leadership skills to guide the CLS through the important next phase of the facilities, to ensure the CLS remains a major contributor to Canadian science, innovation, and the economy.”

As COO, Matiko has effectively led the CLS since September 2021, with full operational oversight and authority. 

“As the CLS enters this next critical phase, with the major linear accelerator upgrade that will ensure its continued leadership in the global synchrotron community, we believe Bill is in the best position to ensure the continuity of leadership and excellent management of this important University of Saskatchewan national resource,” said Dr. Baljit Singh, USask vice-president, research. 

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Bill Matiko, newly appointed CEO of the Canadian Light Source (CLS)

Credit: CLS

Blood-type conversion process informed by crystallography now in pre-clinical trials

Blood-type conversion process informed by crystallography now in pre-clinical trials

Application of a discovery that was aided in part by the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan has advanced to pre-clinical trials and is now the basis of a dynamic new startup.

In 2019 Dr. Stephen Withers and colleagues at the University of British Columbia identified a series of enzymes that can be used to modify the chemical structure of a sugar antigen on the surface of blood cells, thereby converting a Type A blood cell to a Type O blood cell — the universal donor type. The team used crystallography on the CMCF beamline at the CLS to better understand how the enzymes cause this change.

These same antigens are also present on the surface of solid organs, and Withers and colleagues have demonstrated that the enzymes they discovered are very efficient at making this conversion both on the surface of red blood cells and on the surface of donated human organs such as lungs or kidneys.

Avivo – the company launched to bring this technology to the marketplace – is now busy finetuning both applications. If successful, this exciting advance would be a huge step forward in addressing shortages in blood and organ supply here in Canada and around the world. “The idea is that we could broaden the supply considerably,” says Withers, a professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Michael Smith Laboratories at UBC. “It would remove the need to worry about blood type in transfusions (and organ donations).”

John Barclay, VP of business development with Avivo says the company is focusing first on applying their approach to organ donations because it’s considerably more straightforward to remove the conversion enzymes prior to transplantation than it is to remove them before transfusing blood.

When a donor organ is harvested, it will often be placed on a perfusion device that continuously pumps a preservation solution, or perfusate, through it to maintain the tissue’s viability. The enzymes discovered by the Withers team can be added to the fluid mixture, where they essentially convert the blood type of the organ to the universal blood type. After that conversion, the solution – including the enzymes — is essentially “rinsed” out of the organ as part of the existing transplant process. Removing the enzymes from red blood cells or whole blood is considerably more challenging, says Barclay.

The Avivo team has demonstrated the process works using a set of human lungs that were deemed not viable for transplanting into a patient. “We’ve shown that we can remove those antigens and convert an A type lung to an O type lung quite readily,” says Withers. “We’re working on kidneys at the moment…so that’s very exciting.”

This application of their technique is in pre-clinical trials now; they’re hoping to move on to clinical trials (i.e., in human patients) in 2024.

How the Canadian Light Source contributed

“The information we learned from it (crystallography) was very supportive in knowing exactly the structure of the enzymes we’re adding,” says Withers. This information, he says, will be very useful if they need to modify the structure of the enzyme.

It will also be valuable when they seek regulatory approval, to be able to present the complete structure of the enzymes. “We’ve learned a lot more through having that information, which may be useful in the future,” says Withers.

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Steve Withers, John Barclay, and John Coleman.

Building better catalysts to close the carbon dioxide loop

Building better catalysts to close the carbon dioxide loop

The best way to stave off the worst effects of climate change is to reduce CO2 emissions around the world. And one way to do that, says Zhongwei Chen, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, is to capture the CO2 and convert it into other useful chemicals, such as methanol and methane for fuels. Stopping emissions at the source, and further reducing future ones by replacing CO2-producing fuels with cleaner ones “…is a way to close the circle,” Chen says.

In order to turn CO2 into methanol, you need a catalyst to jump-start the electrochemical reaction. Traditionally, these catalysts have either been made out of precious metals like gold or palladium, or base metals like copper or tin. However, they are expensive and break down easily, hindering large-scale implementation. “Right now we can’t meet industrial requirements,” says Chen, who holds a Canada Research Chair. “So we are trying to design catalysts with better activity, selectivity, and durability.”

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Chithra Karunakaran on the SM beamline at the Canadian Light Source

Credit: David Stobbe

Innovative fuels for Small Modular Reactors

Innovative fuels for Small Modular Reactors

If Canada is to meet its target of net-zero emissions by 2050, our country must transition to a diverse, innovative range of alternative sources of energy.

Mouna Saoudi, a materials scientist at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), is using the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to explore how advanced nuclear fuels for small modular reactors (SMRs) could be used to help fill the gap between fossil fuels and renewables.

“SMRs would be an efficient way to reach net zero by 2050, which is an ambitious but hopefully achievable goal,” says Saoudi.

SMRs can power electrical grids, provide process heat, and offer energy solutions for various industries — such as remote mining operations.

Saoudi is currently investigating how types of advanced nuclear fuels behave under different reactor conditions.

“My main focus is characterization of advanced nuclear fuels for potential use in small modular reactors,” Saoudi says.

The advanced fuels combine uranium oxide — the main element used in nuclear fuel for decades —with the naturally occurring and abundant element thorium in oxide form. Saoudi says that there are many advantages to mixing the two elements, including increased efficiency and better in-reactor performance.

Using the HXMA beamline, Saoudi was able to confirm the similar distribution of the two elements, uranium and thorium, in the mixed fuel oxides. Saoudi believes this was the first time the CLS has been used for this type of study.

Saoudi has been working with USask researcher Andrew Grosvenor from the Department of Chemistry. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Nuclear Materials.

The CLS allowed Saoudi and her collaborators to investigate the electronic and local structure of the fuel — crucial information needed to identify the optimum fuel composition that would have better in-reactor performance than that of uranium oxide.

Read more on the CLS website

Image: (Left to right) Dr. Than Do, Dr. Mouna Saoudi, and Dr. Julien Lang, R&D scientists at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL).