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The economic impact of obtaining biomass could become significant to U.S. rural economies via the establishment of a bioeconomy. In 2023, the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory provided a road map to obtain over a billion tons of biomass for conversion to bioenergy and other products. Using information from this roadmap, this study estimates the potential positive and negative economic impacts that occur because of land use change, along with increased technological advances. This is achieved by using the input–output model, IMPLAN, and impacting 179 Bureau of Economic Analysis regions in the conterminous United States. Biomass included in the analysis comprises dedicated energy crops, crop residues, and forest residues. The analysis found that managing pastures more intensively could result in releasing land to produce dedicated energy crops on 30.8 million hectares, resulting in the production of 361 million metric tons of biomass. This, coupled with crop residues from barley, corn, oats, sorghum, and wheat (162 million metric tons), plus forest residues (41 million metric tons), provide 564 million dry metric tons of biomass. Assuming the price for biomass in 2023 dollars was USD 77 per dry metric-ton, this additional production results in an economic benefit for the nation of USD 619 billion, an increase from the Business As Is scenario (Baseline) of almost USD 100 billion per year, assuming a mature biomass industry. An additional 700,000 jobs are required to grow, harvest/collect, and transport the biomass material from the land.

The design and creation of synthetic genomes provide a powerful approach to understanding and engineering biology. However, it is often limited by the paucity of methods for precise genome manipulation. Here, we demonstrate the programmed fission of the Escherichia coli genome into diverse pairs of synthetic chromosomes and the programmed fusion of synthetic chromosomes to generate genomes with user-defined inversions and translocations. We further combine genome fission, chromosome transplant, and chromosome fusion to assemble genomic regions from different strains into a single genome. Thus, we program the scarless assembly of new genomes with nucleotide precision, a key step in the convergent synthesis of genomes from diverse progenitors. This work provides a set of precise, rapid, large-scale (megabase) genome-engineering operations for creating diverse synthetic genomes.

This research evaluated differences in yields and associated downside risk from using no-till and tillage practices. Yields from 442 paired tillage experiments across the United States were evaluated with respect to six crops and environmental factors including geographic location, annual precipitation, soil texture, and time since conversion from tillage to no-till. Results indicated that mean yields for sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) with no-till were greater than with tillage. In addition, no-till tended to produce similar or greater mean yields than tillage for crops grown on loamy soils in the Southern Seaboard and Mississippi Portal regions. A warmer and more humid climate and warmer soils in these regions relative to the Heartland, Basin and Range, and Fruitful Rim regions appear to favor no-till on loamy soils. With the exception of corn (Zea mays L.) and cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) in the Southern Seaboard region, no-till performed poorly on sandy soils. Crops grown in the Southern Seaboard were less likely to have lower no-till yields than tillage yields on loamy soils and thus had lower downside yield risk than other farm resource regions. Consistent with mean yield results, soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] and wheat grown on sandy soils in the Southern Seaboard region using no-till had larger downside yield risks than when produced with no-till on loamy soils. The key findings of this study support the hypothesis that soil and climate factors impact no-till yields relative to tillage yields and may be an important factor influencing risk and expected return and the adoption of the practice by farmers.

The encoded biosynthesis of proteins provides the ultimate paradigm for high-fidelity synthesis of long polymers of defined sequence and composition, but it is limited to polymerizing the canonical amino acids. Recent advances have built on genetic code expansion — which commonly permits the cellular incorporation of one type of non-canonical amino acid into a protein — to enable the encoded incorporation of several distinct non-canonical amino acids. Developments include strategies to read quadruplet codons, use non-natural DNA base pairs, synthesize completely recoded genomes and create orthogonal translational components with reprogrammed specificities. These advances may enable the genetically encoded synthesis of non-canonical biopolymers and provide a platform for transforming the discovery and evolution of new materials and therapeutics.The ability to reprogramme cellular translation and genomes to produce non-canonical biopolymers has wide-ranging applications, including in therapeutics, but has yet to be fully realized. In this Review, de la Torre and Chin discuss recent advances towards achieving this goal.

Cumplir con las metas del Acuerdo de Paris requiere que todos los países lleguen a cero emisiones netas de carbono alrededor de 2050. Este estudio evalúa los costos y beneficios de distintas rutas de descarbonización en los sectores de agricultura, silvicultura y otros usos de la tierra; transporte; energía; residuos; y procesos industriales en Perú. En sus páginas demuestra que es posible lograr cero emisiones netas de carbono para 2050, mediante transformaciones sectoriales como generación de electricidad a base de energía renovable, electrificación de la flota vehicular y de los usos de la energía, eficiencia energética, reducción de la deforestación, mejores prácticas agrícolas y ganaderas, cambios en las dietas, y mejoras en el manejo de residuos y en los procesos industriales. Estas transformaciones brindan un beneficio neto de US$ 140.000 millones, gracias a ahorros operativos (incluidos ahorros de energía), mejoras en la productividad e ingresos por servicios ecosistémicos, y favorecen la salud, entre otros beneficios. Además, el estudio evalúa 1.000 posibles rutas de descarbonización adicionales para analizar el efecto de 201 factores de incertidumbre sobre emisiones, costos y beneficios, utilizando el método de toma de decisiones robusta. Las transformaciones sectoriales modeladas traen beneficios netos de entre US$ 20.000 millones y US$ 391.000 millones y permiten reducir las emisiones entre 260 MtCO2e y 520 MtCO2e para 2050. Estos resultados sustentan la actualización de la Estrategia Nacional ante el Cambio climático del Gobierno del Perú y sus políticas de reactivación económica posteriores a la pandemia.

Nature uses 64 codons to encode the synthesis of proteins from the genome, and chooses 1 sense codon—out of up to 6 synonyms—to encode each amino acid. Synonymous codon choice has diverse and important roles, and many synonymous substitutions are detrimental. Here we demonstrate that the number of codons used to encode the canonical amino acids can be reduced, through the genome-wide substitution of target codons by defined synonyms. We create a variant of Escherichia coli with a four-megabase synthetic genome through a high-fidelity convergent total synthesis. Our synthetic genome implements a defined recoding and refactoring scheme—with simple corrections at just seven positions—to replace every known occurrence of two sense codons and a stop codon in the genome. Thus, we recode 18,214 codons to create an organism with a 61-codon genome; this organism uses 59 codons to encode the 20 amino acids, and enables the deletion of a previously essential transfer RNA. High-fidelity convergent total synthesis is used to produce Escherichia coli with a 61-codon synthetic genome that uses 59 codons to encode all of the canonical amino acids.

This report reviews the European, National, and Regional catalogues of protected species, focusing specifically on the Orchidaceae family to determine which species seem to be well-protected and where they are protected. Moreover, this examination highlights which species appear to be underprotected and therefore need to be included in some catalogues of protection or be catalogued under some category of protection. The national and regional catalogues that should be implemented are shown, as well as what species should be included within them. This report should be a helpful guideline for environmental policies about orchid’s conservation in Spain, at least at the regional and national level. Around 76% of the Spanish orchid flora are listed with any figure of protection or included in any red list, either nationally (about 12–17%) or regionally (72%).

In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a photon-pair source with correlations in the frequency and polarization degrees of freedom. We base our source on the spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) process in a photonic crystal fiber. We show theoretically that the two-photon state is the coherent superposition of up to six distinct SFWM processes, each corresponding to a distinct combination of polarizations for the four waves involved and giving rise to an energy-conserving pair of peaks. Our experimental measurements, both in terms of single and coincidence counts, confirm the presence of these pairs of peaks, while we also present related numerical simulations with excellent experiment-theory agreement. We explicitly show how the pump frequency and polarization may be used to effectively control the signal-idler photon-pair properties, defining which of the six processes can participate in the overall two-photon state and at which optical frequencies. We analyze the signal-idler correlations in frequency and polarization, and in terms of fiber characterization, we input the SFWM-peak experimental data into a genetic algorithm which successfully predicts the values of the parameters that characterize the fiber cross section, as well as predict the particular SFWM process associated with a given pair of peaks. We believe our work will help advance the exploitation of photon-pair correlations in the frequency and polarization degrees of freedom.

Changes in cropland production and management influence energy consumption and emissions of CO2 from fossil-fuel combustion. A method was developed to calculate on-site and off-site energy and CO2 emissions for cropping practices in the United States at the county scale. Energy consumption and emissions occur on-site from the operation of farm machinery and occur off-site from the manufacture and transport of cropland production inputs, such as fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural lime. Estimates of fossil-fuel consumption and associated CO2 emissions for cropping practices enable (i) the monitoring of energy and emissions with changes in land management and (ii) the calculation and balancing of regional and national carbon budgets. Results indicate on-site energy use and total energy use (i.e., the sum of on-site and off-site) on U.S. croplands in 2004 ranged from 1.6 to 7.9 GJ ha-1 yr-1 and from 5.5 to 20.5 GJ ha-1 yr-1, respectively. On-site and total CO2 emissions in 2004 ranged from 23 to 176 kg C ha-1 yr-1 and from 91 to 365 kg C ha-1 yr-1, respectively. During the period of this analysis (1990-2004), national total energy consumption for crop production ranged from 1204 to 1297 PJ yr-1 (Petajoule = 1 x 1015 Joule) with associated total fossil CO2 emissions ranging from 21.5 to 23.2 Tg C yr-1 (Teragram = 1 x 1012 gram). The annual proportion of on-site CO2 to total CO2 emissions changed depending on the diversity of crops planted. Adoption of reduced tillage practices in the United States from 1990 to 2004 resulted in a net fossil emissions reduction of 2.4 Tg C.

Economic and agricultural impacts of ethanol and biodiesel expansion in U.S. were measured. It was indicated that the U.S. agriculture was in position to play a significant role as a source of energy. For the entire period through 2030, the cumulative displacement could be as high as 10.48 billion barrels of oil, causing a potential reduction in imports of $629 billion. Due to geographic decentralization of the production of feedstock, economic gains were projected to accrue in the majority of regions of the country. Significant expansion beyond 60 billion gallons per year would require expansion of the region suitable for the production of bioenergy crops and/or increasing the efficiency of cellulose-to-ethanol conversion.