Assessing and Addressing Atmospheric Nitrogen Impacts on Natura 2000 Sites in Wales (AAANIS): project report

The aim of this work is to assist in developing an approach to address the impact of nitrogen deposition on Natura 2000 sites in Wales

Inventory of ammonia emissions from UK agriculture 2009

The National Ammonia Reduction Strategy Evaluation System (NARSES) model (spreadsheet version) was used to estimate ammonia (NH3) emissions from UK agriculture for the year 2009. Year-specific livestock numbers and fertiliser N use were added for 2009 and revised for previous years. The estimate for 2009 was 231.8 kt NH3, representing a 2.3 kt increase from the previously submitted estimate for 2008. Backward and forward projections using the 2009 model structure gave estimates of 317, 245 and 244 kt NH3 for the years 1990, 2010 and 2020, respectively. This inventory reports emission from livestock agriculture and from nitrogen fertilisers applied to agricultural land. There are a number of other minor sources reported as ‘agriculture’ in the total UK emission inventory, including horses not kept on agricultural holdings, emissions from composting and domestic fertiliser use

A synthetic biology approach to self-regulatory recombinant protein production in Escherichia coli

Background: Recombinant protein production is a process of great industrial interest, with products that range from pharmaceuticals to biofuels. Since high level production of recombinant protein imposes significant stress in the host organism, several methods have been developed over the years to optimize protein production. So far, these trial-and-error techniques have proved laborious and sensitive to process parameters, while there has been no attempt to address the problem by applying Synthetic Biology principles and methods, such as integration of standardized parts in novel synthetic circuits. Results: We present a novel self-regulatory protein production system that couples the control of recombinant protein production with a stress-induced, negative feedback mechanism. The synthetic circuit allows the down-regulation of recombinant protein expression through a stress-induced promoter. We used E. coli as the host organism, since it is widely used in recombinant processes. Our results show that the introduction of the self-regulatory circuit increases the soluble/insoluble ratio of recombinant protein at the expense of total protein yield. To further elucidate the dynamics of the system, we developed a computational model that is in agreement with the observed experimental data, and provides insight on the interplay between protein solubility and yield. Conclusion: Our work introduces the idea of a self-regulatory circuit for recombinant protein products, and paves the way for processes with reduced external control or monitoring needs. It demonstrates that the library of standard biological parts serves as a valuable resource for initial synthetic blocks that needs to be further refined to be successfully applied in practical problems of biotechnological significance. ^Finally, the development of a predictive model in conjunction with experimental validation facilitates a better understanding of the underlying dynamics and can be used as a guide to experimental design.(VLID)90663

Adaptive laboratory evolution principles and applications for biotechnology

Adaptive laboratory evolution is a frequent method in biological studies to gain insights into the basic mechanisms of molecular evolution and adaptive changes that accumulate in microbial populations during long term selection under specified growth conditions. Although regularly performed for more than 25 years, the advent of transcript and cheap next-generation sequencing technologies has resulted in many recent studies, which successfully applied this technique in order to engineer microbial cells for biotechnological applications. Adaptive laboratory evolution has some major benefits as compared with classical genetic engineering but also some inherent limitations. However, recent studies show how some of the limitations may be overcome in order to successfully incorporate adaptive laboratory evolution in microbial cell factory design. Over the last two decades important insights into nutrient and stress metabolism of relevant model species were acquired, whereas some other aspects such as niche-specific differences of non-conventional cell factories are not completely understood. Altogether the current status and its future perspectives highlight the importance and potential of adaptive laboratory evolution as approach in biotechnological engineering.(VLID)90682

Site categorisation for nitrogen measures

Final report to Natural England on project IPENS-049

Quantifying gross vs. net agricultural land use change in Great Britain using the Integrated Administration and Control System

Land use change has impacts upon many natural processes, and is one of the key measures of anthropogenic disturbance on ecosystems. Agricultural land covers 70% of Great Britain's (GB) land surface and annually undergoes disturbance and change through farming practices such as crop rotation, ploughing and the planting and subsequent logging of forestry. It is important to quantify how much of GB's agricultural land undergoes such changes and what those changes are at an annual temporal resolution. Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) data give annual snapshots of agricultural land use at the field level, allowing for high resolution spatiotemporal land use change studies at the national scale. Crucially, not only do the data allow for simple net change studies (total area change of a land use, in a specific areal unit) but also for gross change calculations (summation of all changes to and from a land use), meaning that both gains and losses to and from each land use category can be defined. In this study we analysed IACS data for GB from 2005 to 2013, and quantified gross change for over 90% of the agricultural area in GB for the first time. It was found that gross change totalled 63,500 km2 in GB compared to 20,600 km2 of net change, i.e. the real year-on-year change is, on average, three times larger than net change. This detailed information on nature of land use change allows for increased accuracy in modelling the impact of land use change on ecosystem processes and is directly applicable across EU member states, where collection of such survey data is a requirement. The modelled carbon flux associated with gross land use change was at times >100 Gg C y−1 larger than that based on net land use change for some land use transitions