Experts in the News

Earth might be the showiest blue marble, but Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, and more objects in the outer solar system have turned out to be remarkably active ocean worlds. Their interiors are filled with exotic forms of ice and vast seas of water. They may have hydrothermal vents feeding into oceans. All of these characteristics add up to potential habitability. The driver for much of this dynamism is volcanism. The mix of heat, water, ice, and rock makes these worlds fascinating to planetary and Earth scientists alike. Could these icy, volcanic moons host life? What does it take to create habitable zones in the outer solar system? One of the scientists interviewed for their thoughts on this is Jennifer Glass, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Gloeocapsopsis dulcis strain AAB1 is an extremely xerotolerant cyanobacterium isolated from the Atacama Desert (the driest and oldest desert on Earth) that holds astrobiological significance due to its ability to biosynthesize compatible solutes at ultra-low water activities. A team including Postdoctoral Scholar Rachel A. Moore (the study's lead author) and Assistant Professor Christopher Carr, both with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, developed a genome-scale model to explore the metabolic capacity of G. dulcis undergoing desiccation. Understanding specific metabolic adaptations employed by extremely desiccation-tolerant cyanobacteria like G. dulcis could be critical in identifying strategies for the survival of life in arid planetary environments such as Mars, especially given that the Atacama Desert is an established Martian analog.

Anheuser-Busch says it will end the practice of amputating the tails of its signature Budweiser Clydesdale horses, following a pressure campaign from the animal rights group PETA. The beer company said the practice of equine tail docking was discontinued earlier this year, according to a statement from an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson. The practice of docking has its roots in a tradition meant to keep a horse's tail from becoming tangled in the harness or equipment, but today it is mainly done for cosmetic purposes. A tail is important for a horse's welfare, as it is its instrument for swatting away biting insects, wrote David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, in a 2018 Scientific American article. (This story was also covered at 90.5 WESA.) 

The baculovirus–insect cell expression system — insect cells used in conjunction with the baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) —  remains a crucial technology for manufacturing large and complex proteins. This eukaryotic expression system offers inherent safety, ease of scale-up, flexible product design, and versatility for a broad range of proteins. This Insight from Industry Report features comments from Amy Sheng, currently Chief Research Officer at Sino Biological, who received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2017 from the School of Biological Sciences.

As an organic chemist who designs molecules to exhibit traits needed by other researchers, James Wilson relies on team science to shape his work. Outside of the classroom and lab, Wilson is a solo warrior who pushes his body to the limits as a competitive cyclist. He recently completed the infamous GAPCO (Great Allegheny Passage and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal), a 335-mile gravel ride from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., in 19 hours and 39 minutes — one of the fastest times ever recorded. He did it by himself, without sleeping and without support. A track athlete in high school, Wilson began cycling as an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. He competed in local and national events, then tapered his riding while completing his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2004 from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

A $72.5 million investment from the National Science Foundation will drive the design, discovery and development of advanced materials needed to address major societal challenges. The Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program will fund 37 new four-year projects. One of those projects, Organic Materials Architectured for Researching Vibronic Excitations with Light in the Infrared (MARVEL-IR), will be led by principal investigator Jason Azoulay, Associate Professor and Georgia Research Aliance Vasser Woolley Distinguished Investigator in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. (This research is also covered at Manufacturing.net.)

Lynn Ingram writes that she thought she'd found the state seashell of North Carolina, a Scotch bonnet, on one of the state's beaches. But she soon discovered that the shell was a species of sea snail that is only found in the Pacific Ocean. How did it end up in the Atlantic? Joseph Montoya, professor in the School of Biological Sciences who is also director of Georgia Tech's Ocean Science and Engineering program, says one possibility involves ballast tanks of oceangoing ships; sometimes these shells start as larvae living in plankton that may have been caught up in a ship's ballast water. 

Southern California is no stranger to earthquakes, but tropical storms like Hilary are rare. It’s even rarer for a magnitude-5.1 earthquake near Ojai, Calif. to strike on the same Sunday afternoon (Aug. 20, 2023) that a tropical storm swept through Southern California. This uncommon confluence of events has sparked a heightened curiosity in the general public, including popular memes and the portmanteau “hurriquake.” But is there a physical connection between these events beyond mere coincidence in space and time? Zhigang Peng, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was part of a research team that studied available meteorological and seismic data to reveal that the quake near Ojai, Calif. was almost certainly not triggered by Hilary, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm at the time the earthquake struck.

The winners of the 2023 World Laureates Association Prize were recently announced, and the Prize in Computer Science or Mathematics was awarded to Arkadi Nemirovski, adjunct professor in the School of Mathematics, and Professor Yurii Nesterov at Université Catholique de Louvain "for their seminal work in convex optimization theory, including self-concordant function and interior-point methods, a complexity theory of optimization, accelerated gradient methods, and robust optimization methodological advances." Nemirovski is also Professor and John P. Hunter Chair in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. (This story was also covered in Science, Technode Global, Yahoo! Finance, China Daily, ecns.cn and Cision.)

The first enzyme was discovered in 1833, almost 200 years ago and long before the nature of proteins was appreciated. The field of enzymology came into its own in the 20th century. Technological advances in the hands of creative enzymologists led to an ever-growing understanding of how enzymes achieve enormous rate accelerations as well as the structural basis for substrate specificity and allosteric regulation. A session scheduled for the Discover BMB convention in San Antonio March 23-26 will feature Raquel Lieberman, Professor and Sepcic-Pfiel Chair in Chemistry in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, speaking on the topic, Enzymes for a Sustainable Future.

At the apex of the Greenland ice sheet, a community of 41 scientists and support staff carry out cutting-edge research into everything from climate change to particle physics. This story details recent research underway at Summit Station, located close to the apex of the Greenland ice sheet and one of the most remote scientific stations on Earth. One of two ice-coring projects at Summit Station involved Rachel Moore, a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Moore will use the core samples to study bacteria and other latent biological entities once afloat in the atmosphere and now buried in the ice sheet. Her research will provide a window into the Earth’s environmental history and changing atmospheric patterns that goes back about six centuries.

Zhong Lin Wang, Hightower Chair and Regents' Professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, will take part in a webinar sponsored by the IOP Publishing journal, JPhys Materials, to explore the immense potential of ambient energy harvesting materials. Wang pioneered the nanogenerators field for distributed energy, self-powered sensors, and large-scale blue energy. The webinar is scheduled for 11 a.m.-1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, September 26; click here for registration.