PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Bacteria the newest tool in detecting environmental damage

2015-05-12
(Press-News.org) KNOXVILLE--The reaction most people have when they hear the word bacteria is rarely a good one.

While it's true that food- and water-borne bacteria cause untold illnesses and even death around the world, a team of researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found a way to use bacteria to help prevent some of the very symptoms most people associate with them.

Terry Hazen, the Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology, a joint UT-ORNL appointment, is working with a team of researchers who have developed a method of using bacteria to help test for the presence of a wide array of pollutants.

"Bacteria can be a great bio-sensor for the environment," said Hazen, who holds appointments in environmental engineering, microbiology and earth and planetary sciences at UT. "Critically, even if you can't see the contaminant, the bacteria will react a certain way if pollutants have been there in the past."

For example, someone considering seaside construction who wants to know if there has ever been an oil spill could use the bacteria testing method being developed to be sure about the environmental health of the area, even if the obvious physical signs of a spill have long since passed.

The test also can detect the presence of things even less visible than an oil spill, such as uranium contamination or nitrate pollution.

For the billions of people worldwide who rely on well water, having such a test could make a huge difference in their health and quality of life.

The test isn't overly complicated or time consuming, either.

Starting with the knowledge that bacteria respond to their changing environment in predictable ways, the team used DNA sequencing and gene tracking to come up with a model to help predict contamination.

"By using the latest techniques in DNA sequencing we can determine the community structure and model it to test for contamination," said Hazen. "We've used it on our testing grounds of 93 well clusters in Oak Ridge with hundreds of different parameters and were able to get consistent results for uranium, nitrate and pH concentrations in the groundwater.

"It also accurately predicted oil in water samples taken during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

All told, the process can be done and results returned overnight for up to 100 or so tests a night.

The findings were published in the American Society for Microbiology's online journal, mBio. The full report on the breakthrough is available at http://mbio.asm.org/content/6/3/e00326-15.executive-summary.

INFORMATION:

Berkeley Laboratory helped fund the project, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provided computational analysis.

For more on the Governor's Chairs program, visit http://govchairs.utk.edu.

For more on the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, visit http://cee.utk.edu.

For more on the Department of Microbiology, visit http://micro.utk.edu.

For more on the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, visit http://eps.utk.edu.

For more on Oak Ridge National Laboratory, visit http://ornl.gov.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Survival from rare bone cancer remains low

2015-05-12
MAYWOOD, IL - Among the deadliest cancers is a rare malignancy called mesenchymal chondrosarcoma, which begins in cartilage around bones and typically strikes young adults. Ten-year survival has been reported to be as low as 20 percent. But a Loyola University Medical Center study has found survival is not as dismal as prior reports. Among 205 cases examined, more than half (51 percent) of patients survived at least five years, and 43 percent survived at least 10 years, the study found. The study by senior author Lukas Nystrom, MD, and colleagues was reported at the Mid-America ...

Rethinking the rebound: Unexpected effects of rejection

2015-05-12
May 12, 2015 - It's portrayed in movies again and again - a character gets rejected by someone attractive and then falls willingly into the arms of someone perhaps less attractive. According to a new study, it's not so simple: Rejection by an attractive man actually led women to socially distance themselves from an unattractive man, even when he offered acceptance. "We hadn't expected to see derogation of the unattractive male when women had been rejected by the attractive male," says Geoff MacDonald of the University of Toronto and lead author of the new study in Social ...

Cause of regression in individuals with down syndrome identified

2015-05-12
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Down syndrome, the most common chromosomal disorder in America, can be complicated by significant deterioration in movement, speech and functioning in some adolescents and young adults. Physicians previously attributed this regression to depression or early-onset Alzheimer's, and it has not responded to treatments. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has found that Catatonia, a treatable disorder, may cause regression in patients with Down syndrome. Individuals with regressive Down syndrome who were treated for Catatonia showed improvement, the ...

The weakest magnetic field in the solar system

The weakest magnetic field in the solar system
2015-05-12
This news release is available in German. Magnetic fields easily penetrate matter. Creating a space practically devoid of magnetic fields thus presents a great challenge. An international team of physicists has now developed a shielding that dampens low frequency magnetic fields more than a million-fold. Using this mechanism, they have created a space that boasts the weakest magnetic field of our solar system. The physicists now intend to carry out precision experiments there. Magnetic fields exist everywhere in the universe. Here on the Earth, we are permanently ...

Out with heavy metal

Out with heavy metal
2015-05-12
RICHLAND, Wash - Researchers have demonstrated a new process for the expanded use of lightweight aluminum in cars and trucks at the speed, scale, quality and consistency required by the auto industry. The process reduces production time and costs while yielding strong and lightweight parts, for example delivering a car door that is 62 percent lighter and 25 percent cheaper than that produced with today's manufacturing methods. In partnership with General Motors, Alcoa and TWB Company LLC, researchers from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ...

Children exposed to multiple languages may be better natural communicators

2015-05-12
Young children who hear more than one language spoken at home become better communicators, a new study from University of Chicago psychologists finds. Effective communication requires the ability to take others' perspectives. Researchers discovered that children from multilingual environments are better at interpreting a speaker's meaning than children who are exposed only to their native tongue. The most novel finding is that the children do not even have to be bilingual themselves; it is the exposure to more than one language that is the key for building effective social ...

New research will help forecast bad ozone days over the western US

New research will help forecast bad ozone days over the western US
2015-05-12
New research published in Nature Communications led by Meiyun Lin of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NOAA's cooperative institute at Princeton University, reveals a strong connection between high ozone days in the western U.S. during late spring and La Niña, an ocean-atmosphere phenomena that affects global weather patterns. Recognizing this link offers an opportunity to forecast ozone several months in advance, which could improve public education to reduce health effects. It would also help western U.S. air quality managers prepare to track these ...

Political talk on Facebook mirrors political talk offline

Political talk on Facebook mirrors political talk offline
2015-05-12
LAWRENCE -- Political discussions conducted on social networking sites like Facebook mirror traditional offline discussions and don't provide a window into previously untapped participants in the political process, according to a new study that includes two University of Kansas researchers. "Social networking is important, but what we've shown in political science is that the people who are using the Internet, be it Facebook, Twitter or whatever else for political activities, are really the same people who are politically active offline anyway," said Patrick Miller, a ...

CU Anschutz researchers create microscope allowing deep brain exploration

2015-05-12
AURORA, Colo. (May 12, 2015) - A team of neuroscientists and bioengineers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have created a miniature, fiber-optic microscope designed to peer deeply inside a living brain. The researchers, including scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder, published details of their revolutionary microscope in the latest issue of Optics Letters journal. "Microscopes today penetrate only about one millimeter into the brain but almost everything we want to see is deeper than that," said Prof. Diego Restrepo, PhD, one of the ...

Family genetics study reveals new clues to autism risk

2015-05-12
A study of 2,377 children with autism, their parents and siblings has revealed novel insights into the genetics of the condition. The findings were reported May 11 in Nature Genetics. By analyzing data from families with one child with autism and one or more children without the condition, the researchers collected new information on how different types of mutations affect autism risk. The genetic data was obtained from exome sequencing, which looks at only the protein-coding portions of the genome. Significant progress in the past five years has been made in ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Multi-resistance in bacteria predicted by AI model

Tinker Tots: A citizen science project to explore ethical dilemmas in embryo selection

Sensing sickness

Cost to build multifamily housing in California more than twice as high as in Texas

Program takes aim at drinking, unsafe sex, and sexual assault on college campuses

Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

A borrowed bacterial gene allowed some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet

Balance between two competing nerve proteins deters symptoms of autism in mice

Use of antifungals in agriculture may increase resistance in an infectious yeast

Awareness grows of cancer risk from alcohol consumption, survey finds

[Press-News.org] Bacteria the newest tool in detecting environmental damage