To understand these biological processes, researchers have been using the high-energy X-rays at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS). These intense beams of light are critical to solving the structure of these proteins, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will help ensure that this research continues.
As photosynthesis rates rise, leaves ultimately become net nutrient sources, supplying carbohydrates to the remainder of the plant. This sink-to-source transition is likely to have profound effects on mineral distribution, sequestration, and compartmentalization of essential elements in plants. But determining these effects is challenging due to the difficulty in measuring such distributions over large areas, such as a whole leaf or plant.
The global demand for high-yield crops is increasing with growing population and decreasing farmland resources.
The process they observed uses CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) sites, where the cell’s DNA can be snipped to insert additional DNA.
Biologists use CRISPR for genetic engineering experiments, but cells may have evolved the mechanism as part of a defense system. The cell uses these locations to store molecular memories of invaders so that they can be selectively eradicated at the next encounter.
The annual awards support women life scientists conducting innovative, risk-taking research.
Margaret Bynoe, associate professor of immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine; Carolyn Sevier, assistant professor of molecular medicine, also in the veterinary college; and Olena Vatamaniuk, associate professor of crop and soil sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, each received awards of $15,000.
Synchrotron x-ray sources are a key tool in this investigation, helping to address questions about HIV infection, cancer, nervous system function and cellular signaling, photosynthesis, and toxic contamination, to name a few. Identifying the molecular structure or detecting elemental composition in biological specimens is extremely important. Examples range from determining how RNA molecules unfold during DNA transcription to scientists hunting down potentially poisonous substances, such as Mercury, Arsenic, and Lead in marketplace shrimp. These studies have impacts ranging from developing new pharmaceuticals to better understanding natural and man-made environmental factors on human health via environment, food supply, and physiology.
CHESS runs multiple high-powered x-ray stations that support a number of techniques needed to study biological systems. “Protein crystallography” employs x-ray diffraction to create high-resolution images showing individual atoms in a macromolecule. Another technique called “biological small-angle x-ray scattering” (BioSAXS) determines the overall “envelope” shape of large molecules and molecular complexes, such as RNA. Researchers using these tools are supported by an NIH-funded group of scientists and engineers under a program called MacCHESS. MacCHESS works with CHESS to develop x-ray beam focusing advances, new methods of specimen handling and automation, hoping to make it nearly routine (and exciting!) to record data from protein crystals ten or fewer microns in size. Research and development projects include developing x-ray techniques at longer wavelengths, and lower energies, to study protein systems with natural sulfur constituents as well as inventing ways to freezing crystals under pressure preserve molecular order and avoid additives.
Another popular and versatile x-ray technique, used to “fingerprint” materials, is called x-ray fluorescence or XRF. When high-energy x-rays hit an object, the atoms in the material create “fluorescence” and give off light. The colors of this light, or its wavelength spectrum, are unique to the particular atoms being struck. CHESS staff works to develop and disseminate new x-ray experimental techniques that further the frontier of what is possible to measure with sources. Recently CHESS scientists have collaborated with outside groups to commission a new type of fluorescence detector comprised of almost 400 individual x-ray detectors. This system allows data to be collected at very fast rates, which makes it possible to scan large objects like shrimp or artists paintings in just a few hours.
The human population is expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050, and meeting future food and energy needs requires increases in agricultural production by enhancing productivity on existing land or by increasing the amount of land used for production. Achieving these gains depends on adequate levels of soil micronutrients like copper, low levels of which can impact yield by reducing fertility and, in extreme cases, lead to total crop failure.
At a later stage, 3-nucleotide RNA sequences are translated into protein according to the genetic code.