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In 2018, LanzaTech opened the first production plant that uses bacteria to make ethanol from a steel mill’s waste gas (a mix of mostly carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas).LanzaTech
Microbes make carbon-negative chemicals
Bacteria have been coaxed into producing useful compounds while slashing greenhouse-gas emissions. Clostridium autoethanogenum, which originally came from rabbit faeces, is already used to make ethanol by fermenting the waste gas of steel mills. Now, researchers have gene-edited the microbe to churn out acetone and isopropanol, which are used in paint remover and hand sanitizer. The process would produce less greenhouse gas emissions than current methods, which use fossil fuels — and would be carbon-negative, locking in more than a kilogram of carbon per kilogram of product, if the bacteria were fed steel-mill waste gas.
Reference: Nature Biotechnology paper
More power needed for oxygen on the Moon
Making oxygen by electrolysing water on the Moon or Mars would be less efficient than on Earth because of the lower gravity. Scientists already knew that the method is less efficient in zero gravity because oxygen bubbles are less buoyant and they collect around the electrodes. Now, researchers have used a centrifuge on freefall flights — thanks to the European Space Agency’s Fly Your Thesis! programme — to show that the same would be true on the Moon and Mars. Mitigating the 11% drop in the efficiency of oxygen production under lunar gravity would require around 1% more power to match production on Earth.
Reference: Nature Communications paper
Research highlights: 1-minute reads
The pattern of nickel atoms in its blade reveal the relatively low temperatures at which King Tut's dagger was forged (top and middle, both sides of the object; bottom, the dagger on discovery in 1925).Credit: T. Matsui et al./Meteorit. Planet. Sci.
How a space rock became King Tut’s dagger
Chemical analysis of an iron dagger found in King Tutankhamen’s tomb has identified the type of meteorite from which the metal was derived — and suggests the knife might have been a gift from another ruler.
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Features & opinion
Chromosome contours, one dot at a time
Methods that meld imaging with sequencing are helping researchers to tackle a seemingly straightforward question: how does the genetic material arrange itself, physically, inside the nucleus? The insights gleaned are unveiling the organizational principles of the genome — and how it influences cell fates.
Don’t blame low vaccine uptake on hesitancy
Preoccupation with ‘vaccine hesitancy’ lets governments off the hook, argue three researchers who took part in a large interdisciplinary research project to understand people’s thoughts about COVID-19 vaccines. “Often, what has actually been slowing the uptake of vaccines in countries where supplies are plentiful is problems with access — problems that governments should take steps to address,” they write, along with recommendations on how governments can build trust and protect populations.
Antlions brought me back to the surface
As a teenager, behavioural ecologist Ambika Kamath fell in love with antlions. The predatory larvae of the family Myrmeleontidae live at the bottom of sand pits, waiting for prey to stumble in. “Growing up, I felt as though I lived at the bottom of a deep hole, the rest of the world bustling along on the surface far above,” writes Kamath. Eventually, she found parallels to her own childhood in her work with the creature. “They largely wait for their lives to happen to them. But by studying them, I asked questions about their agency: what did they choose to do in a life that offered them so few choices?”
Where I work
Gregorio Iraola is head of the Microbial Genomics Laboratory at the Pasteur Institute of Montevideo in Uruguay, and a Wellcome Sanger Institute International Fellow.Credit: Pablo Albarenga for Nature
Computational microbiologist Gregorio Iraola leads a consortium focused on tailoring public-health interventions for local needs. Here, in the wet lab at the Microbial Genomics Laboratory of the Pasteur Institute of Montevideo in Uruguay, one of Iraola’s long-term research goals is to better understand the gut microbiome and how it varies across populations. “It’s especially important for Latin American countries, because existing human-microbiome databases come from wealthier countries — in North America, Europe and China, especially — where much of the sampling has been done,” he says. “This leads to bias. You can’t make reliable medical decisions on gut health for a Latin American person with European data.” (Nature | 3 min read)
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