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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2022

To document

Abstract

Giant panda could have bamboo as their exclusive diet for about 2 million years because of the contribution of numerous enzymes produced by their gut bacteria, for instance laccases. Laccases are blue multi-copper oxidases that catalyze the oxidation of a broad spectrum of phenolic and aromatic compounds with water as the only byproduct. As a “green enzyme,” laccases have potential in industrial applications, for example, when dealing with degradation of recalcitrant biopolymers, such as lignin. In the current study, a bacterial laccase, Lac51, originating from Pseudomonas putida and identified in the gut microbiome of the giant panda’s gut was transiently expressed in the non-food plant Nicotiana benthamiana and characterized. Our results show that recombinant Lac51 exhibits bacterial laccase properties, with optimal pH and temperature at 7–8 and 40°C, respectively, when using syringaldazine as substrate. Moreover, we demonstrate the functional capability of the plant expressed Lac51 to oxidize lignin using selected lignin monomers that serve as substrates of Lac51. In summary, our study demonstrates the potential of green and non-food plants as a viable enzyme production platform for bacterial laccases. This result enriches our understanding of plant-made enzymes, as, to our knowledge, Lac51 is the first functional recombinant laccase produced in plants.

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Abstract

Democratizing learning is essential for environmental sustainability. Less privileged areas are crucial in this regard. Informal education has great such potential, but often fails to reach the less privileged, and to document learning. With the objective to identify and counter these issues, we here report on EDU-ARCTIC, an informal open schooling course in environmental science, aimed at European teachers with teenage pupils. Of the 1,181 teachers who enrolled, 73% were females and 43% were from less privileged nations (according to UN Human Development Index). This is a higher share of less privileged (females) than is the case for the general population of Europe. Teachers from less privileged nations also participated in more project activities than did those from more privileged nations, apart from in urban areas. For the project period, the teachers reported a significant increase in all the three categories of aspired learning outcomes for their pupils. We conclude that courses like ours can increase teenagers’ literacy and engagement in science and environmental issues, not the least in less privileged areas. Deliberate efforts are required to reach these target groups, who may be less inclined to join on their own.