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Breeding rice for a changing climate by improving adaptations to water saving technologies.
Heredia, MC, Kant, J, Prodhan, MA, Dixit, S, Wissuwa, M
TAG. Theoretical and applied genetics. Theoretische und angewandte Genetik. 2022;(1):17-33
Abstract
Climate change is expected to increasingly affect rice production through rising temperatures and decreasing water availability. Unlike other crops, rice is a main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions due to methane emissions from flooded paddy fields. Climate change can therefore be addressed in two ways in rice: through making the crop more climate resilient and through changes in management practices that reduce methane emissions and thereby slow global warming. In this review, we focus on two water saving technologies that reduce the periods lowland rice will be grown under fully flooded conditions, thereby improving water use efficiency and reducing methane emissions. Rice breeding over the past decades has mostly focused on developing high-yielding varieties adapted to continuously flooded conditions where seedlings were raised in a nursery and transplanted into a puddled flooded soil. Shifting cultivation to direct-seeded rice or to introducing non-flooded periods as in alternate wetting and drying gives rise to new challenges which need to be addressed in rice breeding. New adaptive traits such as rapid uniform germination even under anaerobic conditions, seedling vigor, weed competitiveness, root plasticity, and moderate drought tolerance need to be bred into the current elite germplasm and to what extent this is being addressed through trait discovery, marker-assisted selection and population improvement are reviewed.
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2.
Metabolic engineering: Towards water deficiency adapted crop plants.
Yoshida, T, Yamaguchi-Shinozaki, K
Journal of plant physiology. 2021;:153375
Abstract
Water deficiency caused by drought is one of the severe environmental conditions limiting plant growth, development, and yield. In this review article, we will summarize the changes in transcription, metabolism, and phytohormones under drought stress conditions and show the key transcription factors in these processes. We will also highlight the recent attempts to enhance stress tolerance without growth retardation and discuss the perspective on the development of stress adapted crops by engineering transcription factors.
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3.
Potential for reduced water consumption in biorefining of lignocellulosic biomass to bioethanol and biogas.
Yuan, HW, Tan, L, Kida, K, Morimura, S, Sun, ZY, Tang, YQ
Journal of bioscience and bioengineering. 2021;(5):461-468
Abstract
Increasing ethanol demand and public concerns about environmental protection promote the production of lignocellulosic bioethanol. Compared to that of starch- and sugar-based bioethanol production, the production of lignocellulosic bioethanol is water-intensive. A large amount of water is consumed during pretreatment, detoxification, saccharification, and fermentation. Water is a limited resource, and very high water consumption limits the industrial production of lignocellulosic bioethanol and decreases its environmental feasibility. In this review, we focused on the potential for reducing water consumption during the production of lignocellulosic bioethanol by performing pretreatment and fermentation at high solid loading, omitting water washing after pretreatment, and recycling wastewater by integrating bioethanol production and anaerobic digestion. In addition, the feasibility of these approaches and their research progress were discussed. This comprehensive review is expected to draw attention to water competition between bioethanol production and human use.
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4.
Solid-in-Oil-in-Water Emulsion: An Innovative Paradigm to Improve Drug Stability and Biological Activity.
Sawant, A, Kamath, S, Kg, H, Kulyadi, GP
AAPS PharmSciTech. 2021;(5):199
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Abstract
An emulsion is a biphasic dosage form comprising of dispersed phase containing droplets that are uniformly distributed into a surrounding liquid which forms the continuous phase. An emulsifier is added at the interface of two immiscible liquids to stabilize the thermodynamically unstable emulsion. Various types of emulsions such as water-in-oil (w-o), oil-in-water (o-w), microemulsions, and multiple emulsions are used for delivering certain drugs in the body. Water (aqueous) phase is commonly used for encapsulating proteins and several other drugs in water-in-oil-in-water (w-o-w) emulsion technique. But this method has posed certain problems such as decreased stability, burst release, and low entrapment efficiency. Thus, a novel "solid-in-oil-in-water" (s-o-w) emulsion system was developed for formulating certain drugs, probiotics, proteins, antibodies, and tannins to overcome these issues. In this method, the active ingredient is encapsulated as a solid and added to an oil phase, which formed a solid-oil dispersion. This dispersion was then mixed with water to form a continuous phase for enhancing the drug absorption. This article focuses on the various studies done to investigate the effectiveness of formulations prepared as solid-oil-water emulsions in comparison to conventional water-oil-water emulsions. A summary of the results obtained in each study is presented in this article. The s-o-w emulsion technique may become beneficial in near future as it has shown to improve the stability and efficacy of the entrapped active ingredient.
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5.
Proton Hopping in Living Systems.
Kier, LB
Current computer-aided drug design. 2021;(3):333-336
Abstract
This review focuses on the two-century-old concept of proton hopping. Introduced in 1806 by Grotthuss, it has evolved into an explanation of great diversity in describing many functions in living systems. It is a process involving water, which expands on the belief that life exists only in the presence of water. This review describes the mechanism of the process as it carries information through the water. A focus is initially made on the process of water in the nerve systems. The nature of the process in these systems is described as the passage of proton hopping in living systems. In drug-receptor encounters, proton hopping is initiated, carrying specific information from these specialized encounters. The review continues with an explanation of sleep, arising from an alteration in proton hopping. A similar phenomenon of the effect of general anesthetic agents is described, as they interfere with by proton hopping. Finally, memory functions are addressed in the realm of events carried by proton hopping.
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6.
Foliar water and solute absorption: an update.
Fernández, V, Gil-PelegrÃn, E, Eichert, T
The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology. 2021;(4):870-883
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Abstract
The absorption of water and solutes by plant leaves has been recognised since more than two centuries. Given the polar nature of water and solutes, the mechanisms of foliar uptake have been proposed to be similar for water and electrolytes, including nutrient solutions. Research efforts since the 19th century focussed on characterising the properties of cuticles and applying foliar sprays to crop plants as a tool for improving crop nutrition. This was accompanied by the development of hundreds of studies aimed at characterising the chemical and structural nature of plant cuticles from different species and the mechanisms of cuticular and, to a lower extent, stomatal penetration of water and solutes. The processes involved are complex and will be affected by multiple environmental, physico-chemical and physiological factors which are only partially clear to date. During the last decades, the body of evidence that water transport across leaf surfaces of native species may contribute to water balances (absorption and loss) at an ecosystem level has grown. Given the potential importance of foliar water absorption for many plant species and ecosystems as shown in recent studies, the aim of this review is to first integrate current knowledge on plant surface composition, structure, wettability and physico-chemical interactions with surface-deposited matter. The different mechanisms of foliar absorption of water and electrolytes and experimental procedures for tracing the uptake process are discussed before posing several outstanding questions which should be tackled in future studies.
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7.
Advances in deep eutectic solvents and water: applications in metal- and biocatalyzed processes, in the synthesis of APIs, and other biologically active compounds.
Cicco, L, Dilauro, G, Perna, FM, Vitale, P, Capriati, V
Organic & biomolecular chemistry. 2021;(12):2558-2577
Abstract
Owing to a growing awareness towards environmental impact, the search for "greener", safer, and cost-effective solvents able to replace petroleum-derived solvents has never been greater today. In this context, the use of environmentally responsible solvents like water and the so-called deep eutectic solvents (DESs), constructed from bio-based compounds, has recently experienced important growth in several fields of sciences. This short review highlights the key features of the chemistry of water and (hydrated) DESs when applied to metal- and biocatalyzed transformations as well as to the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and other biologically relevant compounds by providing, through discussion of all relevant literature over the past five years, a comparison of the outcomes of the reactions when carried out in one or the other solvent.
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Application of Monolayer Graphene and Its Derivative in Cryo-EM Sample Preparation.
Wu, K, Wu, D, Zhu, L, Wu, Y
International journal of molecular sciences. 2021;(16)
Abstract
Cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) has become a routine technology for resolving the structure of biological macromolecules due to the resolution revolution in recent years. The specimens are typically prepared in a very thin layer of vitrified ice suspending in the holes of the perforated amorphous carbon film. However, the samples prepared by directly applying to the conventional support membranes may suffer from partial or complete denaturation caused by sticking to the air-water interface (AWI). With the application in materials, graphene has also been used recently to improve frozen sample preparation instead of a suspended conventional amorphous thin carbon. It has been proven that graphene or graphene oxide and various chemical modifications on its surface can effectively prevent particles from adsorbing to the AWI, which improves the dispersion, adsorbed number, and orientation preference of frozen particles in the ice layer. Their excellent properties and thinner thickness can significantly reduce the background noise, allowing high-resolution three-dimensional reconstructions using a minimum data set.
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9.
Water molecules at protein-drug interfaces: computational prediction and analysis methods.
Samways, ML, Taylor, RD, Bruce Macdonald, HE, Essex, JW
Chemical Society reviews. 2021;(16):9104-9120
Abstract
The fundamental importance of water molecules at drug-protein interfaces is now widely recognised and a significant feature in structure-based drug design. Experimental methods for analysing the role of water in drug binding have many challenges, including the accurate location of bound water molecules in crystal structures, and problems in resolving specific water contributions to binding thermodynamics. Computational analyses of binding site water molecules provide an alternative, and in principle complete, structural and thermodynamic picture, and their use is now commonplace in the pharmaceutical industry. In this review, we describe the computational methodologies that are available and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, we provide a critical analysis of the experimental data used to validate the methods, regarding the type and quality of experimental structural data. We also discuss some of the fundamental difficulties of each method and suggest directions for future study.
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10.
Hormonal and environmental signaling pathways target membrane water transport.
Maurel, C, Tournaire-Roux, C, Verdoucq, L, Santoni, V
Plant physiology. 2021;(4):2056-2070
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Abstract
Plant water transport and its molecular components including aquaporins are responsive, across diverse time scales, to an extremely wide array of environmental and hormonal signals. These include water deficit and abscisic acid (ABA) but also more recently identified stimuli such as peptide hormones or bacterial elicitors. The present review makes an inventory of corresponding signalling pathways. It identifies some main principles, such as the central signalling role of ROS, with a dual function of aquaporins in water and hydrogen peroxide transport, the importance of aquaporin phosphorylation that is targeted by multiple classes of protein kinases, and the emerging role of lipid signalling. More studies including systems biology approaches are now needed to comprehend how plant water transport can be adjusted in response to combined stresses.