Photorespiration Fuels Vitamin B9 Production in Plants
Photorespiration, the so-called “wasteful” recycling process plants use when their main carbon-fixing enzyme makes mistakes, has now been shown to channel carbon into the production of folates – including vitamin B9, a prenatal vitamin critical for preventing birth defects.
In a study led by Michigan State University and published in Nature Plants, researchers quantified for the first time how much carbon flows through photorespiration to make folates. Using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model, they found that around 6 percent of the carbon absorbed by plants is directed into folate production. When photorespiration was suppressed, that figure dropped fivefold.
To capture this, the team clamped leaves in an infrared gas analyzer to measure CO₂ uptake, then flash-froze them with liquid nitrogen before analyzing their chemical composition by mass spectrometry. Tracking how isotopically labeled carbon was incorporated into metabolites revealed the central role of photorespiration in producing folates.
The findings highlight a potential nutritional challenge under climate change: as atmospheric CO₂ rises, plants rely less on photorespiration, reducing the carbon available for vitamin B9 synthesis. “Understanding how nature makes this vitamin will help us engineer plants fortified with this nutrient,” commented lead researcher Berkley Walker in the team’s press release.
The team now plans to extend the work to major crops grown outdoors, testing whether similar reductions in folate production occur in real-world conditions.
Mapping Lipids in Four Dimensions
A first-of-its-kind 4D atlas has revealed how lipids pattern organ development in zebrafish embryos, offering a new lens on metabolism during early life.
Researchers at EPFL combined MALDI mass spectrometry imaging with a new computational pipeline, uMAIA, to chart over 100 lipid species across embryonic tissues and time points. The method transforms vast, noisy datasets into clear spatial and temporal maps, effectively creating a “movie” of lipid dynamics as embryos grow.
The study found that lipids organize into precise patterns aligned with anatomical structures – such as sphingolipids clustering in the swim bladder, a fish organ comparable to human lungs, and others localizing to brain and skeletal regions. These results highlight lipids’ active roles beyond energy storage, suggesting they help shape organ identity and function.
“From this effort emerges not only a powerful resource but a Swiss army knife for doing this kind of mapping again and again across other systems in health and disease,” said co-senior author Gioele La Manno. The atlas provides a foundational reference for investigating congenital metabolic disorders, regenerative medicine, and diseases like cancer or Alzheimer’s where lipid metabolism is disrupted.
Mxenes and Match
A thermodynamic lens on MXenes – the fast-growing family of 2D nanomaterials first discovered at Drexel University in 2011 – has revealed how atomic ordering and disordering shape their structure and properties. The findings could provide the parameters needed to accelerate MXene discovery through artificial intelligence.
A multi-university team synthesized 40 layered carbides, transforming them into MXenes while systematically varying the number of metallic elements in each lattice. Using dynamic secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to probe the atomic arrangements, they found that systems containing up to six metals tended to adopt ordered structures driven by enthalpic forces, while those with seven or more metals shifted toward entropic stabilization – perfectly random atomic mixing. This balance of order and disorder was also linked to electronic behaviors, such as resistance and infrared transparency, highlighting the structural fingerprints of thermodynamic control.
With more than 50 MXenes already identified and countless possible combinations, the new framework offers a foundation for AI-assisted design of materials tailored for extreme environments, clean energy, and advanced electronics.
“Guidance from computational science, machine learning and AI will be crucial for navigating the infinite sea of new materials,” said Babak Anasori, the study’s co-lead author.
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