Potable Water for All – More Than a Pipe Dream

ORIGINAL: OBR Review
by: Megan Barrett

15th July 2013

Many of us take for granted the availability of a clean glass of water. Yet even at the turn of the second millennium, approximately one billion people still did not have access to a sustainable source of potable water.[1] With water contamination and shortages most prevalent in the remote regions of developing countries (where money and technology can be limited), scientists are faced with a daunting challenge: to develop new ways of treating water to make it safe, using simple, locally sourced and inexpensive processes. Interestingly, the local environment may hold the key. Recent discoveries suggest that naturally occurring products, such as plant seeds and even tomato peel, may be used to help purify water.

Water is essential to our survival and health, with the human body being approximately 70% water. We use water in industry, to grow crops and cook; in sanitation; and for transportation purposes; yet, untreated water sources can contain many hidden threats including toxic heavy metals and dangerous pesticides. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 80% of illness in developing countries is known to be associated with contaminated drinking water.[2]

A number of methods for treating water currently exist, mostly involving the addition of chemical substances, such as chlorine or aluminium sulphate (alum), to contaminated bodies of water. The availability, cost and knowledge to ensure the correct dosage of such substances, however, is often lacking in remote communities.[2] Consequently, some scientists are looking for more natural solutions– ones potentially more accessible to people living away from areas of development.

Figure 1: Moringa oleifera pods

The Moringa oleifera (figure 1), a variety of plant found abundantly across rural India, Africa and Cambodia has drawn considerable attention in recent history. Parul Sharma and a team from the Faculty of Science at Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Dayalbagh investigated the ability of M. oleifera seed powder to remove cadmium, a dangerous heavy metal responsible for itai-itai disease, from water sources on a laboratory scale. Cadmium was labelled with a radioactive tracer so its levels could be tracked and the M. oleifera plant seeds were crushed to form a powder. Quite surprisingly, Sharma’s group found that cadmium levels were effectively reduced by the seed powder, suggesting this species of plant may be useful in remote and developing regions of the world to help reduce contamination of the local water supplies.[3]

A second ecologically friendly method of treating water has been developed by a group of scientists from Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. Recently, Oranso Mahlangu and colleagues tested the ‘Silver Impregnated Porous Pot (SIPP) filter’, a clay-based filtering pot, as a tool to produce safe drinking water at a household level.[4] The SIPP filter is made using certain clay types that naturally remove contaminants (e.g. toxic heavy metals) by a process known as adsorption. This is when particles in a gas, liquid or dissolved solid bind to a surface, and is not to be confused with absorption: when a gas or fluid is taken into a solid (e.g. a sponge soaking up a puddle of water).

Figure 2: Diagram illustrating the set up of Mahlangu and colleagues ‘Silver Impregnated Porous Pot (SIPP) filter’

Mahlangu’s team filtered different river sources through the SIPP filter six times, for 3 hours at a time (figure 2). They then used a method known as atomic adsorption spectrophotometry (AAS) to analyse the level of metal contaminants (such as magnesium, iron and arsenic) in the water samples before and after filtration. What they found was remarkable: the SIPP filter reduced the amounts of magnesium and iron in the water samples by more than 50% to a level below the WHO’s acceptable maximum for these heavy metals (70–100micrograms per litre and 0.2–2micrograms per litre, respectively). Arsenic levels were also reduced, though unfortunately not to within the WHO’s stated guidelines, and the effectiveness of the SIPP filter did lessen with use.[4]

Figure 3: Peeling a tomato

Nevertheless, the search for an affordable and accessible way of acquiring potable water in remote parts of the world has continued. A few months ago, Ramakrishna Mallampati and Suresh Valiyaveettil from the University of Singapore investigated a somewhat unexpected tool for water purification— the tomato peel (figure 3).[5] Remarkably, this fruit‘s “biomembrane” (or cell-covering barrier) also acts as an adsorbent to the toxic heavy metals in polluted water and removes dangerous dyes and pesticides that may have contaminated a natural water source.

Mallampati and Valiyaveettil treated their local shop-bought tomato peels by boiling them, washing them with propanol (an alcohol that removes pigment, i.e. the red colour of the tomato) and drying them. These peels were then added to different solutions containing known water contaminants and were found to effectively lower the levels of chemicals such as arsenic, alcian blue and neutral red (two dyes) and phenol which is used in pesticides. Moreover, the effectiveness of the tomato peels to help remove the water pollutants did not seem to deteriorate over time, suggesting that the easily accessible and inexpensive tomato peel may be a useful material for treating drinking water.[5]

The availability of sustainable water sources for the more isolated communities around the world; (especially in developing countries) is a serious problem facing scientists and society today. Many of the current chemical processes for treating drinking water are not obtainable or affordable for remote populations, such as those in rural India or Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet scientists have made some bio-friendly breakthroughs. The recent findings that certain heavy metals and other contaminants toxic to human health can be reduced by natural materials, such as plant seeds, clay and tomato peel, is a significant achievement in the fight to provide safe potable water for all— a battle I will definitely be thinking about the next time I turn on my tap.

References

1. Rush EC. 2013. Water: neglected, unappreciated and under researched. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1-4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23361160
2. Yongabi K, Lewis D, Harris P. 2012. Natural materials for sustainable water pollution management. In Prof Nuray Balkis (Ed). Water Pollution. InTech. http://www.intechopen.com/books/water-pollution
3. Sgarma R, Kumari P, Srivastava M, et al. 2006. Removal of cadmium from aqueous system by shelled Moringa oleifera Lam. seed powder. Bioresour Technol. 97:299-305. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15949938
4. Mahlangu O, Mamba B, Momba M. 2012. Efficiency of Silver Impregnated Porous Pot (SIPP) filters for the production of clean potable water. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 9:3014-3029. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23202668
5. Mallampati R, Valiyaweettil S. 2012. Application of tomato peel as an efficient adsorbent for water purification— alternative biotechnology? RSC Advances. 2:9914-9920. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ra/c2ra21108d

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What Would Suburbia Look Like If It Had The Same Water Resources As Africa?

The Importance of Communication; Making Science Accessible

ORIGINAL: Oxbridge Biotech

By Sarah Smith View author bio 

Monday, 29th April 2013

Sarah Smith

We are living in a time of exciting discoveries, huge technological advancement, and great scientific innovation, but only now is the scientific community finally realising that communication is the key to managing change in public opinion and understanding of research. In the past, these advances have sparked some scary news stories when scientists have had little input in writing about their research. The classic mistakes come from misinterpreting statistics – here is an example Ben Goldacre uses in his book Bad Science (2008)(1):

“Let’s say the risk of having a heart attack in your 50s is 50 % higher if you have high cholesterol: that sounds pretty bad. Let’s say the extra risk of having a heart attack if you have high cholesterol is only 2 %. That sounds OK to me. But they’re both talking about the same (hypothetical) figures. Out of a hundred men in their 50s with normal cholesterol, four will be expected to have a heart attack; whereas out of 100 men with high cholesterol, six will be expected to have a heart attack. That’s two extra heart attacks. Those are natural frequencies. Easy.”

We, as scientists, complain when journalists ‘get it wrong’ but often hesitate to talk to the press or write our own blogs. However times are changing; communicating scientific research is not the sole responsibility of celebrities like David Attenborough or Brian Cox, but is also the duty of those closely involved in primary research. The Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) based at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, is the epitome of this new scientific culture.

In February 2013 I spoke with Dr Will Grant, lecturer and researcher at CPAS, about the courses that they run and how he felt about this new era of engaging the public and policy-makers about science.

The focus of CPAS is communication, rather than the philosophy of science, which includes understanding the obstacles preventing the uptake of science by the general public. One of the biggest barriers in communicating science is language – a recent study conducted by Michigan State University, and presented at the  annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)meeting, suggests that just 28 per cent of Americans are science literate – this figure is lower in most of Europe. As scientists we have a whole arsenal of words with which to describe the precise mechanism we are interested in. For example, it is easy to forget that when we ‘transform’ bacteria with plasmid DNA we are describing a specific technique of heat-shocking the bacteria to increase the permeability of their membranes, thus facilitating the uptake of DNA. Whereas a lay audience may have no inkling for what the magical ‘transformation’ might be. As a PhD student, I’ve been told I should always have handy my ‘3 minute elevator pitch’ for when someone asks me what my research is about. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using subject-specific jargon and losing your questioner’s interest within the first minute. One way to practice this is to attempt the up-goer five challenge – try to explain your research using only the 1000 most common words, which is harder than it sounds…

Dr Grant explains that there is one key difference between a basic science PhD thesis and one written at CPAS; the student must include a conclusions section that suggests ways to implement changes flagged up by their results, and what recommendations the findings led the student to make. One example he cites is of a current student, originally from Bangladesh, who is carrying out research into rice farming in his home country. The study uses typical social-science methods including questionnaires and interviews of over 400 farmers. From this he found that a particular species of rice gave the best yields, but that most farmers were not utilising it. Once the student has written up his thesis the information will be fed back to the Bangladeshi government and he will help advise them on how to educate the farmers about different rice breeds in the future. This, however, is just one example of a CPAS-style thesis and postgraduates at the institute bring a diverse range of interests with them. Previous theses include studying the effect of scientific terms on marketing anti-wrinkle creams, lay understandings of mental illness, and the potential of computer games for science education.

Figure 1: Exponential increase in the number of DNA base pairs (bp) that can be read during one run on a sequencing machine. Data from this paper(2), credit to Simon J Watson for graphic.

Dr Grant and I also discussed how the speed of technology development could hinder our explanation of science to the public. A prime example of a fast-moving technology is whole genome sequencing. It took over ten years to completely sequence the first human genome, and this was a mammoth effort by over 20 institutions across the globe. Another ten years on and a whole human genome can be sequenced in 24 hours (Figure 1). Fast developments in the field of genetics has fuelled plans to sequence the genomes of 100,000 NHS patients suffering from cancer and rare diseases, over the next 3-5 years. This proposal has taken genome sequencing from lab-bench jargon into colloquial language – ‘to sequence’ has already become a verb! The popularisation of scientific language is a positive step, but with this familiarity some people assume they understand the whole package. However, dogmatic terms like ‘junk DNA’ are being overturned every day and it’s difficult for the public to keep up. Genetic testing often results in the assignment of a ‘risk factor’ – you have a gene that increases your risk of heart disease by X. This means that science communicators will be essential in ensuring that the public understand not only what DNA sequencing is but what information it can and cannot tell them about their current or future health.

As well as undergraduate courses and full PhD programs, CPAS also runs a 1 year Masters Outreach course in collaboration with Questacon – an interactive science museum in Canberra founded by Professor Mike Gore, originally a physics teacher at ANU. The aim of the Masters program is to give students hands-on experience in designing interactive activities to enthuse the public about scientific issues, to develop their public speaking skills, and to grow their confidence as the ‘Science Circus’ tours around Australia for up to 3 months. However, if emigrating to Australia is a bit much for you, these types of courses are beginning to appear in other places including King’s College, London, where a BSc in Science Engagement & Communication is offered.

Although science is hurtling forward at an unstoppable pace, only now are scientists realising that the way we talk about our work and findings needs to keep up. Sadly, not every science major at ANU has to take lectures in science communications, but there are electives that they can choose to take. Dr Grant thinks this could be pushed for if more funding were available. Perhaps we need to think of these skills as being as important as teaching the ethics of scientific research – fundamental! Hopefully in the future a module in science communication will be a prerequisite for any science undergraduate, to ensure that we can help the public and policy-makers to keep up with our ever-changing understanding of the world.

References

1. Goldacre, B. 2008. Bad Science. HarperCollins, London. ISBN – 978-0-00-728487-0

2. Batley, J., and D. Edwards. 2009. Genome sequence data: management, storage, and visualization. Biotechniques 46:333-4.

Biology Basics: What’s the deal with Epigenetics?

ORIGINAL: OBR Review
Written by Brian Abraham

January 17, 2013

Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

Why do we care?
With few exceptions, namely functionally variable regions in the immune system and in disease, all of a person’s cells have the same DNA sequences and genes. Yet the variety of cells in terms of shape and function is vast. How is it that a muscle cell and a blood cell have the same genes yet do such strikingly different things?

In short, not every gene is being used or transcribed by all cell types: There are certain genes that are essential for blood cells that muscle cells don’t express (transcribe) or use. For example, genes making proteins that recognize foreign bodies would be useful for an immune blood cell but would be a waste of a muscle cell’s energy. The burgeoning fields of epigenetics and epigenomics investigate these patterns of on/off genes and what regulates their expression. Epigenomics refers to the genome-wide application of epigenetics, which generally refers more to single-gene analyses.

Where does it apply?

“Epigenetic” as an adjective refers to heritable traits that are not changes to the DNA sequence itself. Heritability can be across both cell divisions as well as trans-generational. When a fat cell replicates and both daughter cells retain fat cell traits, inheritance is referred to as divisional/replication inheritance. When offspring retain traits of their parents, the inheritance is termed trans-generational inheritance.

A famous example of such trans-generational epigenetic inheritance is the Dutch Hongerwinter. In 1944, the Dutch in areas of the Nazi-occupied Netherlands were starving as the result of a blockade. Fetuses that developed in the wombs of mothers surviving the famine showed a number of characteristic traits of nutrient deprivation themselves, including glucose sensitivity. Later biochemical analyses demonstrated epigenetic marks on genes regulating insulin-like growth factors– characteristics of nutrient deprivation– despite no change in the DNA of these genes. Further tests of second-generation offspring may show that these marks and traits acquired in response to starvation are inherited across multiple generations.

Before Darwin’s famous description of evolution by natural selection, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the idea that traits acquired by the parent can be passed down to offspring. For instance, a giraffe’s neck is long because its parents had to stretch to reach higher trees. When On the Origin of Species elegantly explained population shifts by survival, the idea of heritability of acquired traits lost popularity. The theory was further buried when Mendelian genetics demonstrated the mechanism of genetic inheritance. It has lain dormant until a recent resurgence in interest implicating epigenetics as a plausible explanation for trans-generational inheritance of acquired traits.

How does it work?

Roughly 3 meters of DNA sequence is stored inside every nucleated human cell; the condensation and packaging of the DNA sequence is essential to regulation of gene expression. In general, uncondensed genes are expressed more readily than condensed genes. Following is a discussion of the various methods by and degrees to which genes are condensed into “chromatin”– the name given to the DNA/condensing protein complex.

Roundtable Review 2012: Year In Review

ORIGINAL: OBR Review

by Sandeep Pingle 

December 31, 2012

The year 2012 has witnessed seminal advances in the field of science, such as definitive proof of the existence of the Higgs boson, the Curiosity rover landing on Mars and developments in genomics, cancer and stem cell research. Roundtable Review featured articles covering such major breakthroughs in science and biotechnology, in addition to articles on science basics, policy, event coverage, and interviews that were well received by our readers. We present Roundtable Review 2012: Year In Review, a list of our ten most popular and prominent articles from 2012.

Is Biotech a Fad?

February 13, 2012

This article discusses the essential role biotech plays in bringing science ‘from bench to bedside’ and the sea of failures that necessitate a closer look into the sustainability of ‘biotech’.

Big Pharma Doing it Differently

March 28, 2012

This article describes how pharmaceutical companies are changing their approach by collaborating with academia for basic research.

Samsung defeats Apple in UK design court

July 19, 2012

This article discusses the battle between Samsung and Apple on intellectual property and patent infringements.

What’s so special about Next Generation sequencing?

August 19, 2012

This in-depth article covers the basics, recent advancements, ethics, and translational significance of next generation sequencing.

Ooh Q, I trust you took a licence?

November 2, 2012

This article talks about patents and the UK Patents Act.

Oxbridge Roundtable Solutions: Experiences of a Consultant

November 4, 2012

This article describes experiences of a consultant working with ORS, a unique Oxbridge Biotech Roundtableplatform for consultancy on science and entrepreneurship.

Angel Investor Jack Florio is optimistic about biotech

Nov 10, 2012

Jack Florio of Tech Coast Angels discusses the current biotech climate in San Diego.

Many parents. One embryo. Are we designing babies?

Nov 21, 2012

This is an article that reviews and discusses a study on creating embryos in which defective mitochondrial DNA was replaced by healthy donor mitochondrial DNA.

ENCODE: Big Data to Deal with Human Complexity

December 3, 2012

This article is an overview of the ENCODE project (the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) considered to be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the field of genomics.

An Interview with Professor Hagan Bayley

December 26, 2012

Professor Bayley discusses education and straddling the line between academia and business.

2013 comes with a lot of promise for the field of science and for us at OBR with plans for various activities, workshops and increasing opportunities for consultancy. We look forward to continue presenting prominent articles in science on Roundtable Review in the coming year and hope that 2013 brings major advances along with higher funding for science and increased productive collaborations between academia, biotech and pharmaceutical industries. We wish everyone a Happy 2013!