ALBERT

Description: Tropical South America is one of the three main centres of the global, zonal overturning circulation of the equatorial atmosphere (generally termed the 'Walker' circulation1). Although this area plays a key role in global climate cycles, little is known about South American climate history. Here we describe sediment cores and down-hole logging results of deep drilling in the Salar de Uyuni, on the Bolivian Altiplano, located in the tropical Andes. We demonstrate that during the past 50,000 years the Altiplano underwent important changes in effective moisture at both orbital (20,000-year) and millennial timescales. Long-duration wet periods, such as the Last Glacial Maximum—marked in the drill core by continuous deposition of lacustrine sediments—appear to have occurred in phase with summer insolation maxima produced by the Earth's precessional cycle. Short-duration, millennial events correlate well with North Atlantic cold events, including Heinrich events 1 and 2, as well as the Younger Dryas episode. At both millennial and orbital timescales, cold sea surface temperatures in the high-latitude North Atlantic were coeval with wet conditions in tropical South America, suggesting a common forcing.

Description: To the Editor: Mass spectrometry–based proteomics has become an important component of biological research. Numerous proteomics methods have been developed to identify and quantify the proteins in biological and clinical samples1, identify pathways affected by endogenous and exogenous perturbations2 and characterize protein complexes3. Despite successes, the interpretation of vast proteomics data…

Description: The Atlantic Ocean receives warm, saline water from the Indo-Pacific Ocean through Agulhas leakage around the southern tip of Africa. Recent findings suggest that Agulhas leakage is a crucial component of the climate system and that ongoing increases in leakage under anthropogenic warming could strengthen the Atlantic overturning circulation at a time when warming and accelerated meltwater input in the North Atlantic is predicted to weaken it. Yet in comparison with processes in the North Atlantic, the overall Agulhas system is largely overlooked as a potential climate trigger or feedback mechanism. Detailed modelling experiments—backed by palaeoceanographic and sustained modern observations—are required to establish firmly the role of the Agulhas system in a warming climate.

Description: Experts release a roadmap for harnessing the potential of assisted evolution to help save corals. The IPCC predicts that if warming reaches 2°C, 99% of all coral reefs will be lost in less than 30 years. It is clear that to ensure the future of corals, the highest priority must be reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. However, even with swift and substantial reductions in emissions, corals will continue to face increasing temperatures for the foreseeable future, which can result in extensive coral mortality and local extinction of some coral species. While recent studies have shown that corals may exhibit some degree of adaptation to ocean warming, it is unclear whether corals are able to survive the rate of temperature change during heat waves that will become more frequent under several climate change scenarios. If corals lack what it takes to naturally rapidly adapt to new environmental regimes, they may fail to survive a warming ocean. This is where assisted evolution could be a game-changer. Growing our understanding of the power of adaptation In January 2023, we held a workshop on assisted evolution co-organized with the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) as part of CORDAP’s Scoping Studies (a series of planning sessions and technology roadmap studies to shape our funding priorities). Our aim was to develop a visionary roadmap, offering recommendations on how to prioritise assisted evolution in R&D investment in the future. Assisted evolution is the use of human interventions to speed up the natural evolutionary process. It may allow coral species to adapt faster than they would if left unaided, allowing reefs and corals to keep better pace with the ocean’s environmental changes. The first step in creating this strategy was to pinpoint where we are now in our understanding regarding the potential and impacts of assisted evolution on enhancing coral tolerance to stress conditions like ocean warming. Our experts unanimously agreed that assisted evolution methods cannot be understood and evaluated without a solid foundational understanding of natural adaptation, and identified some knowledge gaps that can be closed with relatively minimal effort and others that will require substantial investment of time and resources. Key Findings: - Standardising methods, experimental designs, species selection guidelines, and terminologies will help to understand natural adaptation and assisted evolution more rapidly. - Long-term funding is critical to facilitate multigenerational studies, which are needed to deliver essential but largely missing information about coral evolution. Building the best pathway for research and investment This roadmap sets out tangible recommendations for future investment and research, to help fill critical knowledge gaps that could assist natural adaptation and evolution of coral reefs in a warming world. Overall, the roadmap recommends investment in a mixed portfolio of R&D, ranging from technologies with lower perceived risks to those with higher percieved risks and longer R&D horizons. This strategy is advised because of the uncertainty around future heating trajectories and thus requirements for enhancement of tolerance. The roadmap outlined four main areas of work that need to be undertaken: 1. Leading global coordination and synthesis. Recommendation: Building global infrastructure to support research would dramatically accelerate the generation of knowledge around the natural and assisted evolution of corals. This could include compiling and committing to a set of standards and methods that will allow more studies to be used in predictive models, as well as establishing a global resource-sharing network and database to facilitate meta-analysis and synthesis. 2. Optimising generation and use of knowledge. Recommendation: Make sure new studies are well designed and timely. Optimize published and future studies by characterizing relationships between heat stress metrics and other facets of coral fitness. Having funding set aside to be able to quickly respond to bleaching events will ensure vital knowledge is captured rather than lost if and when those events occur. 3. Filling critical knowledge gaps in multigenerational coral data in the laboratory and field. Recommendation: Given the slow-growing nature of coral, longer-term funding would allow researchers to gain critical knowledge needed to estimate the multi-generational benefits and risks of implementing assisted evolution methods in the wild. Standardised approaches repeated in different parts of the world would add confidence to generalise those results. 4. Supporting the advance of existing and new technologies. Recommendation: Methods that may yield a larger effect (e.g., gene editing, hybridisation between species, and assisted migration) are also potentially of greater risk and would need considerable R&D. Expanding support for some of the riskier long-term projects currently being overlooked, could potentially offer a greater return on investment, but should be balanced with continued investment in less risky technologies. CORDAP will be using these recommendations to prepare new accelerator program and we believe that they will assist academia in understanding gaps and needs for future research as well as helping to guide funding agencies on where their money will be most effective. The roadmap identifies the funding structures and research priorities that are most likely to yield the knowledge needed to ensure that assisted evolution methods can be implemented effectively. Ultimately, conserving and restoring coral reefs in warming climates will require an inclusive infrastructure involving many partners at a local, national, and international level.

Description: Vibrios are rod-shaped bacteria, and are a functionally and phylogenetically diverse grouping of Gram-negative microbes found widely in aquatic, estuarine, and marine habitats. Approximately a dozen Vibrio species are known to cause disease in humans, and infection is usually initiated from exposure to seawater or consumption of raw or undercooked seafood. Although a wide range of different bacterial species contain multiple chromosomes, Vibrio species are noted in that they possess two circular chromosomes. Bacteria of the genus Vibrio are commonly found in tropical and temperate coastal and estuarine waters. Vibrios are among the most common bacteria that inhabit surface waters throughout the world and are responsible for a number of severe infections both in humans and animals. Vibriosis is characterized by diarrhea, primary septicemia, wound infections, or other extraintestinal infections. Select strains of V. cholerae, V. parahaemolyticus, V. vulnificus, and V. alginolyticus are perhaps considered the most serious human pathogens from this genus. Two Vibrio species in particular, V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus are significant foodborne human pathogens, and most frequently infections occur via the consumption of naturally contaminated shellfish produce. It is worth noting that these pathogens represent a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. For example, an estimated 80,000 people contract Vibrio infections each year in the United States, with a sizeable fraction originating from foodborne sources, such as consumption of raw or undercooked seafood produce. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States have indicated that there has been a significant increase in reported infections associated with vibrios, particularly in the last two decades. The annual incidence of reported vibriosis per 100,000 population has increased significantly in the United States from 1996 to 2010, highlighting the importance of these pathogens from a clinical context. Calculations based upon probable incidence of vibriosis have estimated that V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus are the first and third most costly marine-borne pathogens, costing $233 and $20 million, respectively. From a foodborne perspective V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus represent the major pathogens from the Vibrio genus in terms of clinical impact and relevance, and as such this chapter is mostly concerned with these species. These taxa do not sustain prolonged presence in clinical or agricultural settings, where it would likely undergo human-induced selection for antibiotic resistance. As such, these bacteria represent a particularly interesting group of pathogens to study antibiotic resistance, as they provide a “snapshot” of resistance presumably acquired from environmental rather than clinical settings. Despite their public-health significance, strains of V. parahaemolyticus and V. vulnificus have not been extensively monitored for antimicrobial resistance, in contrast to enteric pathogens such as Salmonella or Campylobacter. Given their increasing incidence, global distribution, and severity of disease progression (especially V. vulnificus) it is critical to gain a better understanding of the antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus originating from the environment (Shaw et al., 2014). Data from such sources is invaluable, particularly from routine antimicrobial screening of large numbers of environmental and clinical Vibrio strains as it can provide effective baseline data for treatment purposes.