Published today (Wednesday 9 August), AIMS’ Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition for 2022/23 found that while some reefs continued to recover, their increased hard coral cover was offset by coral loss on other reefs. Most reefs underwent little change in coral cover.

This follows last year’s report, which saw the Northern and Central regions recording their highest amount of coral cover since AIMS began monitoring 37 years ago.

The pauses in recovery in the Northern and Central regions were due in part to the 2022 mass coral bleaching event. Low numbers of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish and a cyclone in January 2022 also contributed to coral loss in the Northern region. Continued crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and coral disease kept coral cover similar to last year’s levels in the Southern region, with bleaching playing less of a role.

AIMS Research Program Director Dr David Wachenfeld said that while continued recovery on some reefs was good news, the pause in recovery showed that even relatively milder mass bleaching events had consequences for the Reef.

“The 2022 coral bleaching event was not as severe as the 2016 or 2017 events but caused enough mortality to pause recent regional gains in hard coral cover. The heat stress during the bleaching event also likely had sub-lethal effects, including reductions in coral growth and reproduction,” Dr Wachenfeld said.

“Conditions were relatively mild over the 2023 summer with low levels of coral bleaching and no cyclones crossing the Reef. However, we are only one large scale disturbance away from a rapid reversal of recent recovery.

“The Reef remains a wonderful, complex and beautiful system, but it is at increased risk with climate change driving more frequent and severe bleaching events, putting increasing pressure on the ecosystem’s resilience.”

The Report found the following in average hard coral coverage for 2022/23:

• Northern region (north of Cooktown) — 35.7%, down from 36.5% last year;
• Central region (Cooktown to Proserpine) — 30.8%, down from 32.6%;
• Southern region (south of Proserpine) — 33.8%, down from 33.9%.

Reef slopes on the perimeters of 111 reefs were surveyed between August 2022 and May 2023 for the report under the AIMS Long Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) — a 37-year-long dataset which is the largest, longest and most comprehensive information source on the status of the Great Barrier Reef.

AIMS Long-Term Monitoring Program leader Dr Mike Emslie said recovery over the last few years has been driven primarily, but not exclusively, by fast-growing branching and plate corals, or Acropora. These important habitat builders are also vulnerable to disturbances such as cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish and coral bleaching.

“Acropora are highly abundant, responsible for most of the ups and downs in hard coral cover, and have been going through a rapid growth phase in recent years. But other corals on the Reef have also contributed to this recovery,” he said.

Dr Emslie noted the increased frequency of mass coral bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef with four occurring since 2016.

“The 2022 bleaching event was the first ever recorded during a La Niña year, which are usually characterised by cooler temperatures,” he said.

“If there were no disturbances, we would expect the recent increases in coral cover to continue this year. However, this pause indicates that a mass bleaching event, even if less severe, with low mortality, is still enough to put the brakes on this coral recovery.

“This means the Reef is still at risk of decline from more frequent disturbances. AIMS is working to understand the effect of this climatic instability through monitoring and research.”

Dr Wachenfeld added: “The best hope for the future of the Great Barrier Reef and all coral reefs globally requires reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to stabilise temperatures, best practice management of local pressures, and the development of interventions to help boost climate tolerance and resilience for coral reefs.”

BACKGROUND

The LTMP quantifies long term trends in the status of coral communities across the Great Barrier Reef.

Researchers use hard coral cover as one indicator of the condition of each reef, although there are many others. Percentage hard coral cover is estimated by trained scientists during manta tow surveys and is a metric which allows AIMS scientists to provide an overview of the Great Barrier Reef’s status and keep policy makers, managers and other scientists informed in a timely manner.

Manta tow surveys are an efficient way to survey large areas of reef. It is a standard method to assess percent hard coral cover, estimates of crown-of-thorns starfish, levels of coral bleaching, and fish and shark populations.

The LTMP also does detailed surveys on fixed sites on 73 reefs across the Great Barrier Reef. These data provide deeper insights into the corals, fishes and crown of thorns starfish at these sites, their abundance, their age and more detailed information about coral disease and bleaching. 3D images are taken of these reefs to assess reef complexity and their changing structures.

The AIMS monitoring team spent 120 days at sea during this survey period. They travelled 1016km around the perimeter of the 111 reefs they surveyed.

The AIMS LTMP team begin their new survey season in late August. Surveys will continue through the summer and conclude around May 2024.

The LTMP contributes to the Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program.

That’s a finding of a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MINDWATCH, a groundbreaking brain-monitoring technology.

Developed over the past six years by NYU Tandon’s Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Rose Faghih, MINDWATCH is an algorithm that analyzes a person’s brain activity from data collected via any wearable device that can monitor electrodermal activity (EDA). This activity reflects changes in electrical conductance triggered by emotional stress, linked to sweat responses.

In this recent MINDWATCH study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, subjects wearing skin-monitoring wristbands and brain monitoring headbands completed cognitive tests while listening to music, drinking coffee and sniffing perfumes reflecting their individual preferences. They also completed those tests without any of those stimulants.

The MINDWATCH algorithm revealed that music and coffee measurably altered subjects’ brain arousal, essentially putting them in a physiological “state of mind” that could modulate their performance in the working memory tasks they were performing.

Specifically, MINDWATCH determined the stimulants triggered increased “beta band” brain wave activity, a state associated with peak cognitive performance. Perfume had a modest positive effect as well, suggesting the need for further study.

“The pandemic has impacted the mental well-being of many people across the globe and now more than ever, there is a need to seamlessly monitor the negative impact of everyday stressors on one’s cognitive function,” said Faghih. “Right now MINDWATCH is still under development, but our eventual goal is that it will contribute to technology that could allow any person to monitor his or her own brain cognitive arousal in real time, detecting moments of acute stress or cognitive disengagement, for example. At those times, MINDWATCH could ‘nudge’ a person towards simple and safe interventions — perhaps listening to music — so they could get themselves into a brain state in which they feel better and perform job or school tasks more successfully.”

The specific cognitive test used in this study — a working memory task, called the n-back test — involves presenting a sequence of stimuli (in this case, images or sounds) one by one and asking the subject to indicate whether the current stimulus matches the one presented “n” items back in the sequence. This study employed a 1-back test — the participant responded “yes” when the current stimulus is the same as the one presented one item back — and a more challenging 3-back test, asking the same for three items back.

Researchers tested three types of music — energetic and relaxing music familiar to the subject, as well as novel AI-generated music that reflected the subject’s tastes. Consistent with prior MINDWATCH research, familiar energetic music delivered bigger performance gains — as measured by reaction times and correct answers — than relaxing music. While AI-generated music produced the biggest gains among all three, further research is needed to confirm those results.

Drinking coffee led to notable but less-pronounced performance gains than music, and perfume had the most modest gains.

Performance gains under all stimulations tended to be higher on the 3-back tests, suggesting interventions may have the most profound effect when “cognitive load” is higher.

Ongoing experimentation by the MINDWATCH team will confirm the efficacy of the technology’s ability to monitor brain activity consistently, and the general success of various interventions in modulating that brain activity. Determining a category of generally successful interventions does not mean that any individual person will find it works for them.

The research was performed as a part of Faghih’s National Science Foundation CAREER award on the Multimodal Intelligent Noninvasive brain state Decoder for Wearable AdapTive Closed-loop arcHitectures (MINDWATCH) project. The study’s diverse dataset is available to researchers, allowing additional research on the use of the safe interventions in this study to modulate brain cognitive states.

Faghih served as the senior author for this paper. Its first author is Hamid Fekri Azgomi, who earned his Ph.D. under Faghih and is now a postdoctoral scholar of neurological surgery at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

Dr. Adam Knowlden, associate professor of health science with the UA College of Human Environmental Sciences, investigated time management and how it influences sleep health in full-time college students in the areas of setting goals and priorities, mechanics of time management, and preference for organization.

“College students tend to deal with lifestyle-related sleep problems,” said Knowlden. “For example, balancing academic and social obligations can be challenging for college students. Stress and anxiety also impact college students and we know that stress can impact the sleep quality college students receive by causing insomnia.”

According to Knowlden, more than 65% of college students describe their sleep quality as poor.

The study, which was recently published in the American Journal of Health Education, found the three factors associated with time management significantly influenced the overall sleep quality of college students. Knowlden reported that time management explained around 20% of the sleep quality outcomes measured.

“Among the three factors, having a preference for organization was the most crucial factor influencing sleep quality,” said Knowlden. “This suggests that individuals who prioritize and maintain an organized environment tend to experience better sleep quality.”

Knowlden, who has also conducted sleep health studies related to body composition and stress, says time management strategies should be learned and implemented prior to the start of the school year.

“We know that there is a tradition of college students staying up late, sometimes an entire 24 hours, to study or cram for exams,” said Knowlden. “This is a tell-tale sign of the need for more focus on time management.

“However, until now, no study has looked specifically at time management to determine how much influence it has on the sleep of college students. We felt this was important to investigate because time management is something college students can work on improving.”

Knowlden recommends blocking out eight to nine hours of sleep and making it the most important appointment of the day.

“We know that during sleep is when learning takes place,” said Knowlden. “You can think of your mind like a computer. When we sleep, our brain is getting rid of information it doesn’t need, and keeping information it does need. This is why students that prioritize sleep do better academically.”

The new study, published August 7, 2023, in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, shows how a mitochondrial protein structure is necessary to activate the cell’s integrated stress response (ISR) — a critical pathway that helps our cells maintain health. The researchers believe this mitochondrial structure, made up of a protein called DELE1, could serve as a target for future therapeutics for age-related diseases.

“Understanding the molecular details of this signaling pathway could help us potentially develop treatments for a range of diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and heart disease,” says first author Jie Yang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Gabriel Lander at Scripps Research.

In order to maintain cellular function and health, mitochondria must continually sense and respond to stressors, such as viral infections and iron deficiency. However, their ability to do so decreases as people age.

“Just like every other part of our body, mitochondria age and become slightly less productive,” says co-author Kelsey Baron, a graduate student in the lab of Luke Wiseman at Scripps Research. “When you have this loss of mitochondrial productivity, your cells don’t have as much energy to fight different stressors, and many people believe that is a major trigger of neurodegeneration.”

One method by which mitochondria deal with stress is by activating the ISR. Prior studies have shown that the DELE1 protein is involved in activating this integrated stress response, but before now, little was known about the protein’s molecular structure. Characterizing DELE1’s structure is a key step towards understanding and treating diseases associated with mitochondrial stress.

The researchers focused on a fragment of DELE1 — the C terminus — that is known to be actively involved in initiating the ISR. When they isolated this fragment, they were surprised to find that it was much heavier than expected, which suggested that multiple copies of the protein fragment were binding together. Using electron microscopy, the team showed that this protein complex (or oligomer) was a highly symmetrical cylinder composed of eight identical fragments — in other words, an octamer.

“It was completely unexpected that it was forming this much larger, oligomeric structure,” says study co-senior author Gabriel Lander, PhD, professor in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research. “It’s kind of like two four-legged spiders whose legs are intertwined to form this flexible cylindrical structure.”

The researchers captured more than 12,000 electron microscope images of the octamer and then used algorithms to produce a three-dimensional structural model. Then, by looking at the positions of different amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) within the structure, they were able to identify which amino acids are involved in binding and assembling the octamer.

To test whether this oligomerization of DELE1 is required to activate the ISR, the researchers then introduced mutations into some of the key amino acids, which would disrupt the ability of DELE1 to bind together. When they cultured cells that contained this mutated, un-oligomerizable version of DELE1, the cells were unable to activate the ISR — suggesting that oligomerization is critical to activating this stress signaling pathway.

The next step is to find ways to use this structural information to manipulate these pathways — notably in different diseases and disorders, the researchers say.

“Knowing that this oligomerization step is a potential site of regulation gives us a platform for potential drug development,” says co-senior author Luke Wiseman, PhD, professor in the Department of Molecular medicine at Scripps Research. “We think that targeting this pathway has potential for improving outcomes in a variety of different disorders.”

As well as Jie Yang, Kelsey Baron, Luke Wiseman, and Gabriel Lander, authors of the study “DELE1 oligomerization promotes integrated stress response activation,” include Daniel E. Pride, Anette Schneemann, Wenqian Chen, and Albert S. Song of Scripps Research; and Xiaoyan Guo, Giovanni Aviles and Martin Kampmann of the University of California, San Francisco.

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants NS095892 and NS125674 and fellowship F31AG071162) and the Olson-King Endowed Skaggs Fellowship from Scripps Research.

Now, an interdisciplinary Cornell team has identified a new mechanism regulating tumor growth in the skeleton, the primary site of breast cancer metastasis: mineralization of the bone matrix, a fibrous mesh of organic and inorganic components that determines the unique biochemical and biomechanical properties of our skeleton.

The team’s paper, “Bone-Matrix Mineralization Dampens Integrin-Mediated Mechanosignalling and Metastatic Progression in Breast Cancer,” published Aug. 7 in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The co-lead authors are research associate Siyoung Choi and doctoral student Matthew Whitman.

The project is the latest collaboration between co-senior authors Claudia Fischbach, the Stanley Bryer 1946 Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Lara Estroff, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry, both in Cornell Engineering, who together have been exploring the metastatic spread of breast cancer to bone for more than a decade.

Fischbach’s lab uses biomaterials in combination with cellular and tissue engineering approaches to understand how the tissue microenvironment regulates cancer in different contexts, while Estroff’s group specializes in biomineralization – the way biological organisms control the growth of crystals in their tissues.

“We know that cancer cells behave like seeds that need the right soil to grow, and we’re very interested in how the extracellular matrix, which is basically the material in between cells that holds everything together, affects tumor growth,” Fischbach said.

During physiological mineralization, bone mineral particles are deposited in and around collagen type I fibers. This process occurs naturally and is necessary for bone health but decreases with age – for example, due to hormonal changes as seen in women undergoing menopause. It can also result from dietary changes or chemotherapy.

A connection between reduced bone health and the behavior of tumor cells is well-established. For example, decreased bone-mineral density has been correlated with increased risk for metastasis, and incomplete fracture healing has been shown to enhance bone metastasis. However, no one had been able to isolate which specific role bone-matrix mineralization plays in this process.

“You can’t study some these connections unless you have model systems in which you can control bone matrix properties in a defined way,” Fischbach said.

The researchers were able to create such systems by combining organic and inorganic matrix components, including collagen and the bone mineral hydroxyapatite, in a manner that mimicked physiological and pathologic mineralization. Estroff led the necessary materials synthesis and characterization techniques of the different bone matrix models, which the team then used to investigate tumor cell behavior, first in vitro and then in vivo through mouse models.

The presence of bone mineral reduced the growth of tumor cells in both settings. The presence of mineral also caused tumor cells to promote genes that were associated with better patient prognosis. These findings suggest that healthy bone matrix can reduce the risk for breast cancer skeletal metastasis.

Co-authors Matthew Paszek, associate professor in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Olivier Elemento, director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine and a professor of physiology and biophysics and of computational genomics in computational biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, helped elucidate how bone matrix regulates cellular mechanosignaling, and connect the potential molecular mechanisms to patient data.

“This study basically shows for the first time that physiological interactions between mineral particles and collagen may be able to inhibit the activation of tumor cells that have spread to bone,” Fischbach said. “Now we’re broadly interested in how other cell types are influenced by varied bone-matrix mineralization. And how do mineral-dependent changes of their behavior regulate tumor cells?”

Co-authors include doctoral students Adrian Shimpi and Nicole Sempertegui; Aaron Chiou, Ph.D. ’20; Joseph Druso, Ph.D. ’16; Akanksha Verma, Ph.D. ’20; Stephanie Lux ’21; and Zhu Cheng, Ph.D. ’20.

The research was supported by the Human Frontier Science Program; the National Cancer Institute through the Center on the Physics of Cancer Metabolism; the National Institutes of Health; the Stem Cell Program of Cornell University; and the National Science Foundation.

The researchers made use of the Cornell Center for Materials Research, which is supported by the National Science Foundation’s MRSEC program; the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the NSF-supported National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure; and the Cornell Biotechnology Resource Center.

Fungal infections are killing thousands of Americans each year, some with a morbidity rate of nearly 80%. To make matters worse, only a handful of antifungal treatments are available, and even those are becoming less effective as fungi become more resistant. However, University of Oklahoma researchers recently published findings in the Journal of Natural Products indicating that a novel breakthrough treatment may have been discovered.

“The molecule we’re excited about is called persephacin,” said Robert Cichewicz, Ph.D., principal investigator and Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at OU. “This antifungal discovery appears to work on a broad spectrum of infectious fungi, and it is reasonably non-toxic to human cells, which is a huge deal because many current treatments are toxic to the human body.”

The rise in fungal infections is due, in part, to the successful treatment of other diseases. As people live longer and successfully undergo treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplants, they often live with weakened immune systems. When drugs that treat arthritis and other ailments that also weaken immune systems are added to the mix, a perfect storm is created for potentially deadly fungal infections.

Cichewicz, who has been researching fungi for nearly 20 years, leads the Natural Products Discovery Group at OU. This team of researchers discovered this novel molecule and developed a unique method for testing plants for their antifungal properties.

“Fungi are found throughout the botanical world, and plants and fungi often work together. Some of these fungi kill competitors or deter insects from eating the plant,” Cichewicz said. “We hypothesized that if these plant-dwelling fungi, known as endophytes, could help the plants fight off infections by killing the invading fungi, then these molecules might also be able to protect humans and animals from fungal pathogens. As it turns out, we were right.”

The team developed a novel way to procure leaf samples using a laser device called the Fast Laser-Enabled Endophyte Trapper, or FLEET. This method helps generate samples in a sterile environment and drastically increases the number of samples that can be acquired.

“Using traditional methods, we could process roughly four to six samples per minute,” Cichewicz said. “But our FLEET system is capable of aseptically generating between 500-600 tissue specimens in 10 minutes. This allows us to rapidly screen more samples and enhances the opportunity for potential drug discoveries.”

With assistance from the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Oklahoma, Cichewicz was awarded a U.S. patent for using persephacin to control infectious pathogens.

“It’s taken us a long time to get to this point, but now we’re hoping to work with an industry partner to help us develop this treatment,” Cichewicz said. “Antifungal resistance keeps evolving, and this could provide a new alternative. That’s why this molecule is so exciting.”

If you’ve ever had a sore strep throat or painful urinary tract infection, then you’ve probably been prescribed antibiotics to help you recover. Antibiotics are one of our greatest weapons against serious bacterial infections and our need for them is increasing. Cefazolin is one such drug, which is so important to human health that it has been designated an essential medicine by the WHO. It is used to cure a broad range of ailments such as urinary tract, respiratory and joint infections, and to prevent infection after surgery.

As with most drugs, cefazolin is made via batch manufacturing, a step-by-step process enabling precise control at each stage. However, it is time-consuming and requires plenty of space in a carefully controlled site to minimize risks such as contamination. Due to the time frame, specially equipped and controlled space, and large amount of waste, production costs are not inexpensive and are particularly high when setting up new facilities.

An alternative to batch manufacturing is continuous-flow manufacturing. This method had not widely been used by drugmakers because it is more challenging to control the reactions taking place. However, researchers at the University of Tokyo have now developed a way to safely create cefazolin through continuous-flow manufacturing

“The method we have developed can cover mass production within compact manufacturing facilities, does not incur huge equipment costs, and can provide a pharmaceutical-grade drug safely and securely,” explained Professor Shu Kobayashi from the Department of Chemistry at the Graduate School of Science.

“Demand for this antibiotic fluctuates wildly and it is a drug that is better to not prepare too far in advance due to its instability,” said Project Professor Haruro Ishitani, also from the Department of Chemistry. “So a big benefit of the continuous-flow method is that it is easy to adjust the production volume as needed.”

As the name implies, continuous-flow manufacturing doesn’t require pauses in between multiple individual steps, unlike the batch method. The team used two connected reactors to produce cefazolin from readily available commercial raw materials. The raw materials and reagents, which facilitate the reaction, were pumped into the first reactor, which looks like a coiled thin metal tube, before moving into a second reactor where another raw material was added. From there flowed the cefazolin. It was a challenge for the team to optimize the environment inside the reactors, i.e., the temperature, transfer speed and mixing ratio of reagents, etc., to be able to obtain a high-purity product at the end, particularly due to the complex structure of cefazolin. According to the researchers, this method was substantially superior to conventional batch manufacturing and could even be optimized further.

Kobayashi and Ishitani were motivated to undertake this research by their concern over Japan’s lack of facilities to domestically manufacture important drugs like cefazolin when needed, instead relying heavily on imports. Their fears were realized in 2019 when Japan experienced a serious shortage of cefazolin, due to contamination of an active ingredient from overseas, causing a crisis. Not only would the continuous-flow method be easier and cheaper to implement on a nationwide level than building more batch-method facilities, but it could also help smaller communities and hospitals manufacture essential drugs as and when they want.

“Many compounds can be synthesized by continuous-flow methods,” said Ishitani. “By adopting this method, we believe that we can contribute to a stable drug supply, respond to rare diseases and disasters, and aid new drug development. In addition to that, we believe that it is possible to contribute to producing other chemicals, such as for agricultural use, and the realization of a low-carbon society, which is another pressing social issue.”