Co-production from proposal to paper – Three examples show how public participation in research can be extended at every step of the process to generate useful knowledge.
Collaboration across institutes can train students in open, team science, which better prepares them for challenges to come, says Katherine Button.
Three years ago, as I prepared to start as a lecturer in the University of Bath’s psychology department, I reflected on my own undergraduate training. What should I emulate? What would I like to improve? The ‘reproducibility crisis’ was in full swing. Many of the standard research practices I had been taught were now shown to be flawed, from P-value hacking to ‘HARKing’ — hypothesizing after the results are known — and an over-reliance on underpowered studies (that is, drawing oversized conclusions from undersized samples).
It struck me that the research dissertation students do in their final year is almost a bootcamp for instilling these bad habits. Vast numbers of projects, limited time and resources, small sample sizes, the potential for undisclosed analytic flexibility (P-hacking) and a premium on novelty: together, a recipe for irreproducible results.
Scientists are under increasing pressure to perform a variety of tasks earlier in their careers.
If ideas are the flames burning from the torches of discovery, scientists are the hands that hold them. Creative minds uphold the scientific enterprise.
In recognition of their leading role, Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars profiles 11 up-and-coming researchers in the natural sciences. These scientists are highlighted based on their recent contributions to the 82 journals tracked by the Nature Index, and their standing in the League of Scholars Whole-of-Web ranking, which assesses individuals on their research quality and impact, industry links and co-authorship networks. Their work ranges from analysing peatland and permafrost, to developing wearable electronics.
This is a short article that highlights the research of eleven young investigators, in the link in the middle of the text above. Among the young scientists, the chemist Silvia Marchesan and the engineering Sahar Sharifzadeh.
A judge in Los Angeles county has dismissed a criminal case against chemist Patrick Harran, who faced charges of violating health and safety standards after an accidental death in his laboratory nine years ago.
The charges stemmed from a 2009 incident in which Sheharbano Sangji, a research assistant in Harran’s lab at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), died from third-degree burns incurred during a chemical fire. Sangji was handling t-butyl lithium with a syringe when the compound exploded into flames.
Multidrug-resistant bacteria are spreading at alarming rates, and despite extensive efforts no new class of antibiotic with activity against Gram-negative bacteria has been approved in over fifty years. Natural products and their derivatives have a key role in combating Gram-negative pathogens. Here we report chemical optimization of the arylomycins—a class of natural products with weak activity and limited spectrum—to obtain G0775, a molecule with potent, broad-spectrum activity against Gram-negative bacteria. G0775 inhibits the essential bacterial type I signal peptidase, a new antibiotic target, through an unprecedented molecular mechanism. It circumvents existing antibiotic resistance mechanisms and retains activity against contemporary multidrug-resistant Gram-negative clinical isolates in vitro and in several in vivo infection models. These findings demonstrate that optimized arylomycin analogues such as G0775 could translate into new therapies to address the growing threat of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections.
Scientists in emerging economies respond fastest to peer review invitations, but are invited least.
Scientists in developed countries provide nearly three times as many peer reviews per paper submitted as researchers in emerging nations, according to the largest ever survey of the practice.
The report — which surveyed more than 11,000 researchers worldwide — also finds a growing “reviewer fatigue”, with editors having to invite more reviewers to get each review done. The number rose from 1.9 invitations in 2013 to 2.4 in 2017.
This article is truly interesting. Some facts included in the article.
PEER REVIEW IN NUMBERS – Data from the Global State of Peer Review report for 2013–17
68.5 million hours spent reviewing globally each year
16.4 days is the median review time
5 hours is the median time spent writing each review
477 words is the average length of review reports
10% of reviewers are responsible for 50% of peer reviews
41% of survey respondents see peer review as part of their job
75% of journal editors say the hardest part of their job is finding willing reviewers
71% of researchers decline review requests because the article is outside their area of expertise
42% of researchers decline review requests because they are too busy
39% of reviewers never received any peer-review training
Some of our colleagues think that peer-review should not be considered an important academic activity. OK, then. These fellows should read this another Nature article.
Outstanding syntheses by Dr. Jun Deng’s group. In the case of the synthesis of asperchalasine A, it involved three cycloadditions, one of which is a [5+2] cycloaddition.
I recently had the pleasure of competing for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching given biennially by Baylor University. In preparing for the competition, I spent considerable time reflecting on my own past experiences as a student, as well as the key philosophies that have helped to transform organic chemistry—often dreaded by students—into one of the most popular classes on the UCLA campus. In this Guest Editorial, I focus on just one key aspect, which involves capturing the extraordinary potential of our students to innovate.
As a “pre‐med” student at NYU, I took chemistry courses out of necessity. “OChem” in particular was reputed to be an intense weed‐out class that required exhaustive memorization and regurgitation of information. On our first day of class in 1997, Professor Yorke Rhodes convinced us otherwise. He told tales of the great contemporary organic chemists who were educated at NYU, such as Professors Eric Jacobsen and Al Myers, along with recent graduate Phil Baran, who was already a rising star in graduate school at the time.
A personal selection of 32 recent papers is presented covering various aspects of current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as huperphlegmine A from Huperzia phlegmaria.
Derek Lowe – Here’s something to keep an eye on: eleven of the largest national research funding agencies in Europe have announced a plan to require open-access publication of papers arising from their grants. The plan is that by 2020, all such work must be published in compliant open-access journals or on compliant open-access platforms. (read more…)
The first author of this paper is Camila M. Crnkovic, a Brazilian student who obtained a PhD degree at the School of Pharmacy, University of Illinois, Chicago, under the supervision of Jimmy Orjala.
Reportagem publicada no jornal Folha de São Paulo comenta sobre o “odor da chuva” e alguns de seus principais componentes, que já estão sendo utilizados na composição de perfumes, como a geosmina, produzida por uma actinobactéria.
Não é só alívio, após um longo período de seca, que faz com que o cheiro da chuva seja tão bom. Há também a química envolvida.
Bactérias, plantas e até trovoadas têm influência no aroma de ar limpo e terra molhada que a gente sente após uma tempestade. Conhecido como “petrichor”, esse odor tem sido estudado por cientistas e até por fabricantes de perfume.
TERRA MOLHADA
O nome “petrichor” foi cunhado por dois pesquisadores australianos em 1960. A palavra vem do grego “petros”, que significa “pedra”, e do termo “ichor”, que quer dizer “o fluido que passa pelas veias dos deuses”.
Essa fragrância que a gente sente quanto a chuva bate no solo é produzida por uma bactéria. “Micróbios são abundantes no solo”, explica o professor Mark Buttner, diretor do departamento de microbiologia do John Innes Centre, na Inglaterra.
“Quando você diz que sente cheiro de terra molhada, na verdade está sentindo o cheiro de uma molécula sendo criada por um certo tipo de bactéria”, disse ele à BBC News.
Essa molécula é o “geosmin” (1), produzido pela bactéria Streptomyces. Presente na maioria dos solos saudáveis, essa bactéria também é usada para produzir alguns tipos de antibióticos.
Quando as gotas de água caem na terra, fazem com que o geosmin (1) seja lançado no ar, tornando-o bem mais abundante do que antes da chuva. “Vários animais são sensíveis a esse cheiro, mas os seres humanos são extremamente sensíveis a ele”, diz Buttner.
Os pesquisadores Isabem Bear e RG Thomas, que deram o nome de “petrichor” ao cheiro da chuva, descobriram que na década de 1960 ele já era “capturado” para ser vendido como uma essência chamada “matti ka attar”, em Uttar Pradesh, na Índia.
Agora, o geosmin está se tornando mais comum como ingrediente de perfume. “É uma substância potente. Há algo de bem primitivo nesse cheiro”, afirma a perfumista Marina Barcenilla. “Mesmo quando você o dilui, ainda é possível identificá-lo”, acrescenta.
Mas nós temos uma relação contraditória com o geosmin –ao mesmo tempo em que somos atraídos pelo aroma dele, muitos de nós tem aversão pelo gosto.
Embora não seja tóxico para seres humanos, pequenas quantidades podem fazer com que rejeitemos um copo de água ou de vinho que tenha sido “contaminado” pela substância. “Não sabemos por que não gostamos de geosmin. Por algum motivo, associamos a algo ruim”, diz o professor Jeppe Lund Nielson, da Universidade de Aalborg, na Dinamarca.
PLANTAS
De acordo com Nielson, pesquisas sugerem que o geosmin pode estar relacionado ao “terpeno” –fonte do perfume de várias plantas. E a chuva pode acentuar essas fragrâncias, diz o professor Philip Stevenson, pesquisador-chefe do Royal Botanic Gardens, em Londres.
“Normalmente, as químicas das plantas que têm cheiro bom são produzidas pelos ‘cabelos’ das folhas. As chuvas podem danificar as folhas e, com isso, soltar os componentes dela”, explica.
“A chuva também pode romper materiais secos das plantas, liberando substâncias químicas de forma similar a quando quebramos e esmagamos ervas. Com isso, o cheiro fica mais forte.”
Períodos de seca também podem reduzir o metabolismo das plantas. O retorno das chuvas pode desencadear uma aceleração, fazendo com que as plantas exalem um cheiro agradável.
RAIOS
As trovoadas também desempenham um papel relevante, ao criar um aroma de ozônio acentuado e limpo, em decorrência das descargas elétricas na atmosfera.
“Além dos raios, as trovoadas e chuvas ajudam a melhorar a qualidade do ar. A poeira, o aerossol e outras partículas são varridas pela chuva e pelos raios, limpando o ar”, explica a professora Maribeth Stolzenburg da Universidade do Mississippi, nos EUA.
https://qosbioiqsc.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Logo-1-300x97.png00innovarthttps://qosbioiqsc.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Logo-1-300x97.pnginnovart2018-09-12 13:09:552018-09-12 13:09:55Terpeno produzido por actinobactéria entra na composição de perfumes
Two recent papers published in TheJournal of Organic Chemistry report alkaloids isolated from a fungus culture and from the roots of the tree Ervatamia divaricata.
The first paper comes from the groups of Professors Xue, Zhu and Zhang of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. It reports the isolation of 8 new alkaloids from cultures of Aspergillus versicolor. An unusual feature observed for the congeners is the cyclization of a prenyl group, leading to a pyrano[3,2-f ]indole, a rather rare feature observed for prenylated alkaloids. The structures of four of the eight new compounds have been established by X-ray diffraction analysis. The remaining four analogues by NMR and MS analyses. Stereochemical assignments were performed by analysis of NOESY and electronic circular dichroism data. The absolute stereochemical proposition for compound 6 was based on experimental and theoretical [∝]D measurements. Robust spectroscopic data supported the structural assignments.
The alkaloids were tested as inhibitors of nitric oxid production induced by lipopolisaccharide. Compound 7, the most active one, was almost 50 times less active than the control. Structure identification came as the strongest feature of the paper. These alkaloids belong to the class of prenyl-indole alkaloids, whose biosynthesis has been unveiled mainly by David H. Sherman group at the University of Michigan.
O segundo, do grupo do Prof. Zhang da Jinan University e do grupo dos Profs. Ye e Zhang da Universidade de Macau, reporta as estruturas de dois alcaloides indólicos monoterpenoídicos triméricos. As ervadivaminas A e B foram obtidas a partir de 51,5 kg de raízes de Ervatamia divaricata. Foram isolados 6,0 e 5,0 mg dos alcaloides, em rendimento de aproximadamente 0,0001%. As estruturas dos composto 1 e 2, incluindo configuração absoluta, foram estabelecidas por difração de raios-X e análises de RMN e espectrometria de massas. O alcaloide 1 apresentou atividade citotóxica moderada contra linhagens de células tumorais A-549, MCF-7, HT-29, e HepG2/ADM. Já o alcaloide 2 foi inativo. Novamente, o ponto forte do artigo é o isolamento e determinação estrutural de alcaloides complexos o suficiente para dar muita dor de cabeça a químicos orgânicos sintéticos. Todavia, a ciência do artigo é considerada irrelevante e pouco inovadora.
É urgentemente necessário avisar o editor do Journal of Organic Chemistry que a revista está aceitando para publicação artigos de ciência irrelevante e pouco inovadora.
Refs
Huaqiang Li, Weiguang Sun, Mengyi Deng, Qun Zhou, Jianping Wang, Junjun Liu , Chunmei Chen, Changxing Qi, Zengwei Luo, Yongbo Xue, Hucheng Zhu, and Yonghui Zhang. Asperversiamides, Linearly Fused Prenylated Indole Alkaloids from the Marine-Derived Fungus Aspergillus versicolor. J. Org. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/acs.joc.8b01087.
Zhi-Wen Liu, Jian Zhang, Song-Tao Li, Ming-Qun Liu, Xiao-Jun Huang, Yun-Lin Ao, Chun-Lin Fan, Dong-Mei Zhang, Qing-Wen Zhang, Wen-Cai Ye, and Xiao-Qi Zhang. Ervadivamines A and B, Two Unusual Trimeric Monoterpenoid Indole Alkaloids from Ervatamia divaricata. J. Org. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/acs.joc.8b01371.
https://qosbioiqsc.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Logo-1-300x97.png00innovarthttps://qosbioiqsc.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Logo-1-300x97.pnginnovart2018-09-12 13:08:162018-09-12 13:08:16Remarkable alkaloids from Aspergillus versicolor and Ervatamia divaricata
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