microbes – Lightsources.org

Adding calcium to soils can help increase organic matter, trap more carbon

2023/11/202023/11/22

armers add calcium to their soil for many reasons related to increasing crop yields — including regulating pH and improving soil structure.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, scientists from Cornell University and Purdue University have identified a previously undiscovered mechanism triggered by calcium when it’s added to soil. Their finding could lead to more strategic use of the mineral in agriculture.

Researchers already knew that calcium impacts the way organic matter is stabilized in soil. What wasn’t known was whether calcium had an effect on which microbes were involved and how they acted. Microbes are microscopic organisms that live in the air, soil, and water; in soil, they process soil organic matter and help promote plant growth.

“We showed that by adding calcium to soil, we changed the community of microbes in the soil and the way they process organic matter,” says lead researcher Itamar Shabtai, an assistant scientist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. “They processed it in a more efficient manner – more carbon was retained in the soil and less was lost to the atmosphere as CO₂.”

Carbon, which makes up about half of the organic matter in soil, is incredibly important to almost all soil properties, says Shabtai, who carried out the research as part of his postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell. “Soils that contain more carbon are generally healthier. They are better able to hold on to water in drought conditions. Soils with higher amounts of organic carbon are also are able to deliver nutrients more efficiently to plants and promote plant growth, and they’re more resistant to erosion.”

Read more on Canadian Light Source website

Know your ennemy

2018/12/212019/01/08

Light source identifies a key protein interaction during E. coli infection

Escherichia coli is a common source for contaminated water and food products, causing the condition known as gastroenteritis with symptoms that include diarrhea, vomiting, fever, loss of energy, and dehydration. In fact, for children or individuals with weakened immune systems, this bacterial infection in the gut can be life-threatening.

One of the microbes responsible for gastroenteritis, known formally as enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC), causes infections by directing a pointed, needle-like projection into the human intestinal tract, releasing toxins that make people sick.

“Enteropathogenic E. coli can fire toxic proteins from inside the bacterium right into the cells of your gut lining,” says Dustin Little, a post-doctoral researcher in the Brian Coombes lab at McMaster University’s Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.

Image: Dustin Little and Brian Coombes in the lab.
Credit: Dustin Little.

Infrared beams show cell types in a different light

2018/08/232018/08/30

Berkeley Lab scientists developing new system to identify cell differences.

By shining highly focused infrared light on living cells, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) hope to unmask individual cell identities, and to diagnose whether the cells are diseased or healthy.
They will use their technique to produce detailed, color-based maps of individual cells and collections of cells – in microscopic and eventually nanoscale detail – that will be analyzed using machine-learning techniques to automatically sort out cell characteristics.

Using microscopic color maps to unlock cell identity

Their focus is on developing a rapid way to easily identify cell types, and features within cells, to aid in biological and medical research by providing a way to probe living cells in their native environment without harming the cells or requiring obtrusive cell-labeling techniques.
“This is totally noninvasive,” said Cynthia McMurray, a biochemist and senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division who is leading this new imaging effort with Michael Martin, a physicist and senior staff scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS).
The ALS has dozens of beamlines that produce beams of intensely focused light, from infrared to X-rays, for a broad range of experiments.

Image: From left to right: Aris Polyzos, Edward Barnard, and Lila Lovergne, pictured here at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, are part of a research team that is developing a cell-identification technique based on infrared imaging and machine learning.
Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab