science 4 Fall Farewell Issue 2016
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An independent student newspaper, serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison community since 1892 Volume 126, Issue 30
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News and Editorial
Researcher rethinks lactic acid bacteria
edit@dailycardinal.com Editor-in-Chief Theda Berry
Managing Editor Negassi Tesfamichael
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Stevie Kenyon/photo courtesy of uw-madison
By genetic engineering lactic acid bacteria, James Steele turns a negative into a positive in food science industries. By Rachael Andrew the daily cardinal
Fermented products can range anywhere from beer to sourdough bread to soy sauce to ethanol fuels. In the microbial realm of fermentation, the process is fundamentally the same: Microorganisms such as bacteria and yeast metabolize sugars into alcohol. But often, the process can be plagued by a major drawback. Lactic acid bacteria are a contaminant in the fermentation process that don’t produce alcohol, the desired product. Instead, they produce lactic acid, an unwanted byproduct. “We start with the contaminant, which is the lactic acid bacteria. Basically it steals sugars from the yeast, and the yeast could use those sugars to make ethanol,” James Steele, a professor of food science at
UW-Madison explained. These bacteria can be combatted in several ways. In the beer industry, hops were a natural solution. “The ethanol industry has a lot in common with the beer industry … A couple hundred years ago, they came up with hops as being something that’s an antimicrobial,” Steele said. “But hops are extremely expensive.” Antibiotics are another solution. “Some of those antibiotics can make it through the process and end up in a byproduct of ethanol production, which is animal feed,” Steele explained. “Which means that those residues can find their way into the human food supply or form antibiotic resistant bacteria.” These antibiotic resistant bacteria are a growing concern
for the general public. They can cause serious human disease, and since they have bred to be resistant to antibiotics, there isn’t really a good way to combat them. “They come in a large part from use and misuse of antibiotics by the medical community,” Steele expressed. “But they also come from the use and misuse of antibiotics in the agricultural industry. We’d like to see different alternatives to the use of antibiotics in the agricultural industry.” Steele’s research is offering these alternatives. Through genetic engineering, Steele is turning lactic acid bacteria from an issue to a solution. According to Steele, his team is reengineering that contaminant to now make ethanol rather than lactic acid. So not only do these genetically engineered bacteria no longer produce lactic acid, they produce additional alcohol. So successful are these new bacteria that Steele has secured two patents on the research. With these patents and the help of several investors that assist startups, Steele was able to found his business, Lactic Solutions. Ethanol plants can look to Steele’s company to procure his modified bacteria and improve efficiency in their ethanol production. Even in light of his personal business success, Steele is most excited by the prospects of making a significant contribution to the agriculture industry through his research.
A ‘luckier’ way to build plastics By Julie Spitzer the daily cardinal
Professor Ive Hermans has a different philosophy when it comes to running a research group and laboratory full of brilliant students. When Hermans instructs his students, he isn’t angered when they deviate from the original plan and opt from a more imaginative idea. In doing so, Hermans helps them extend the bounds of their knowledge and make new discoveries. The newest discovery from Hermans’ lab, sparked by this sort of defiant-yet-creative methodology, may change the way plastics are made. Hermans, who holds a joint appointment within the chemistry and chemical & biological engineering departments at UW-Madison, said that some are calling the lead author lucky. Joseph Grant, a graduate student in Hermans’ group, sustainability chemistry and catalysis engineering, recently discovered a new catalyst for making plastics, ultimately leading to a potentially new sustainable method for producing the everyday material. Plastics are essentially made
up of building blocks called polymers. In recent years, the chemical industry has been attempting to use a process called oxidative dehydrogenation of propane, ODHP, to better synthesize the components of plastics. Grant helped crack this complex code. Instead of using the field’s standard chemical material, Silicon Carbide, as a catalyst, Grant used Boron Nitride despite his adviser’s directions. His “serendipitous” idea, as Hermans said some might call it, took the academic world by storm. During reaction, SiC releases carbon dioxide and other unwanted byproducts, but using BN as a catalyst produced ethene and propene, two industrially useful components. “If a student would have asked me ‘should I try this?’ I probably would have said no because everyone recognizes this wouldn’t work,” Hermans said, although he was glad Grant explored new options in research. Hermans noted that Grant made another contribution to the field, also by chance, a few months earlier regarding impurities and their effects. Both of these findings were featured on
the front covers of Science. “Some people just attract luck by being very diligent and systematic and precise and carefully analyzing things,” Hermans said, demonstrating his uneasiness to attribute Grant’s findings to luck alone. “If you are carefully looking and systematically analyzing which variables are important in a certain system, you have a higher chance that you will discover something than if you just shoot around some arrows in the dark and hope that you will get lucky,” Hermans added. While it may be a long time before this method is implemented in industrial plants, Hermans, who teaches an introductory chemistry course at UW-Madison, said there is a lesson to be learned from Grant’s discovery. Hermans’ message to all graduate students is to go beyond the guidance of what your adviser expects of you and to do more. If a student feels something is worth their time and is important to their field, Hermans suggests doing it anyways. “The more systematic you look at something, precisely try to understand something, the easier it is to get lucky,” Hermans said.
Dear Ms. Scientist, Why are some winters colder than others? Nick S. One reason why we have different winters from year to year is two special climate patterns: El Niño and La Niña. These two climate patterns alternate with each other, often year by year. El Niño and La Niña are defined by how they affect the average ocean temperatures around the world; El Niño raises ocean temperatures, while La Niña lowers them. However, their biggest impact on us is how they affect our weather and amount of rainfall. In the northern U.S., La Niña episodes mean that we get a lot more precipitation than usual, meaning if La Niña happens in the winter, we get a lot of snow. Episodes of El Niño don’t make a huge difference in the north where we are, but they make the winters in the southern portion of the U.S. a lot wetter and colder. So, be sure to bundle up this winter and stay warm, regardless of the episode we’re in.
Dear Ms. Scientist, What is black ice? Kris K. Winter is officially here and it brought along slippery roads and sidewalks coated in ice sheets. But, certain patches of ice are more slippery than others. These are often referred to as “black ice” patches. However, what exactly is black ice, and what makes it so much more slippery than other ice patches? Here is some helpful information to help you identify the slippery spots when walking to class this week. To start, black ice is not actually black. The name comes from the typical color of the road that the black ice patches are found on. The ice freezes over a relatively dry spot on the sidewalk or road making it hard to identify without much snow around. The ice patch freezes clear, which makes it appear the color of the road. It is often caused by a light drizzle of rain or icy rain, and the thin patch is nearly invisible. Automobile exhaust can also be a causing factor. Salt can help to alleviate black ice, but once the temperature dips below zero degree Fahrenheit, salt only adds to the problem. Be careful on those slick sidewalks this winter.
Ask Ms. Scientist is written by Maggie Liu and Jordan Gaal. Burning science question? science@dailycardinal.com