QUIRKY SCIENCE
THE SAME BACTERIA
For all the anxiety today about the bacteria in our gut being under constant assault by antibiotics, stress and bad diets, it turns out that a lot of the bacteria in our intestines have been with us for at least 15 million years, since we were pre-human apes.
A new comparison of the gut microbiomes of humans, chimps (our closest ancestor), bonobos and gorillas shows that the evolution of two of the major families of bacteria in these apes' guts exactly parallels the evolution of their hosts.
This shows that the microbes in our guts are determined in part by our evolutionary history, not just external factors like diet, medicine and geography. Obesity, cancer and some inflammatory diseases, such as diabetes and Crohn's disease, have been linked to imbalances in the mix of microbes in our stomach and intestines.
"We are showing that some human gut bacteria are the direct descendants of gut bacteria that lived within our common ancestors with apes," said lead researcher Andrew Moeller, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow in UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "It shows there has been an unbroken line of inheritance or transfer from one generation to another for millions of years, since the dawn of African apes."
ENERGY FROM GRASS
A team of UK researchers, including experts from Cardiff University's Cardiff Catalysis Institute, have shown that significant amounts of hydrogen can be unlocked from fescue grass with the help of sunlight and a cheap catalyst.
It is the first time that this method has been demonstrated and could potentially lead to a sustainable way of producing hydrogen, which has enormous potential in the renewable energy industry due to its high energy content and the fact that it does not release toxic or greenhouse gases when it is burnt.
Co-author of the study Professor Michael Bowker, from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, said: "This really is a green source of energy.
"Hydrogen is seen as an important future energy carrier as the world moves from fossil fuels to renewable feedstocks, and our research has shown that even garden grass could be a good way of getting hold of it."
The team, which also includes researchers from Queen's University Belfast, have published their findings in the Royal Society journal Proceedings A.
Hydrogen is contained in enormous quantities all over in the world in water, hydrocarbons and other organic matter. Up until now, the challenge for researchers has been devising ways of unlocking hydrogen from these sources in a cheap, efficient and sustainable way. A promising source of hydrogen is the organic compound cellulose, which is a key component of plants and the most abundant biopolymer on Earth.