Inside a Carbon Capture System, Two New Lifeforms are Discovered

Dr. Ten-Tsao Wong borrowed two small peptides from human viruses – one from Hepatitis C, one from Influenza A – to build a stronger vaccine for farmed fish. Viral disease is among the biggest threats to aquaculture, and existing subunit vaccines, which use just a piece of pathogen, tend to be too weak on their own. When Wong’s team attached the peptides (AH1 and AH3) to a test protein and vaccinated rainbow trout, the fish produced 300 to 1,500 times more antibodies than unmodified vaccines – no genetic modification needed. The next step is testing the peptides on real fish virus proteins, bringing a deployable aquaculture vaccine much closer.

While growing microalgae in tanks fed by industrial flue gas – a way to pull CO2 from the air – the team found two entirely new bacterial species, now named Phycocordibacter aenigmaticus and Minusculum obligatum, from a barely-explored branch of life scientists call microbial dark matter. What makes these new species remarkable is that they lack the metabolic machinery to produce their own energy or proteins, and therefore rely entirely on other species for these essential elements. Yet, despite those limits, they dominated the tanks – over 95% of the bacteria in some samples. Finding so many in the tanks raises questions about whether they help or hinder the community’s ability to utilize CO2 from flue gases. 

The adaptive immune system is compartmentalized into primary and secondary lymphoid organs. In mammals, primary lymphoid organs include the thymus and the bone marrow where immature T cells and B cells develop, respectively. In both tissues, developing lymphocytes undergo RAG-mediated somatic recombination of their antigen receptors followed by several tolerance checkpoints which prevent reactivity to self-antigens. Given the enormous diversity of B cell receptors (BCRs) and T cell receptors (TCRs) generated by the recombination process, the frequency of lymphocytes able to respond to a specific antigen is very low.1 Secondary lymphoid organs (SLOs) provide a structured environment to facilitate interactions between low frequency antigen-specific B and T cells as well as cognate antigen displayed by antigen presenting cells (APCs), resulting in the initiation of effective adaptive immune responses. The spleen is the most evolutionary ancient SLO, being present in all jawed vertebrate lineages.2,3 Generally, splenic cellular organization increases in complexity from the ancient jawed vertebrate lineages, such as cartilaginous fishes, to more recently diverged lineages such as mammals. However, in almost all lineages the spleen contains defined white pulp, where immune cells are primarily located, and red pulp which filters dead and dying red blood cells and helps transport antigens to the white pulp. Embedded within the white pulp are B cell follicles which are bordered by organized T cell zones (eg, mammals) or scattered T cell clusters (eg, cartilaginous fishes).3,4 It is within these B cell follicles that antigen accumulates and is displayed in an intact form, thus maintaining structural epitopes for antigen-specific B cell selection.