Impacts from hydropower production on biodiversity in an LCA framework—review and recommendations

Purpose

Expanding renewable energy production is widely accepted as a promising strategy in climate change mitigation. However, even renewable energy production has some environmental impacts, some of which are not (yet) covered in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). We aim to identify the most important cause-effect pathways related to hydropower production on biodiversity, as one of the most common renewable energy sources, and to provide recommendations for future characterization factor (CF) development.

Methods

We start with a comprehensive review of cause-effect chains related to hydropower production for both aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. Next, we explore contemporary coverage of impacts on biodiversity from hydropower production in LCA. Further, we select cause-effect pathways displaying some degree of consistency with existing LCA frameworks for method development recommendations. For this, we compare and contrast different hydrologic models and discuss how existing LCIA methodologies might be modified or combined to improve the assessment of biodiversity impacts from hydropower production.

Results and discussion

Hydropower impacts were categorized into three overarching impact pathways: (1) freshwater habitat alteration, (2) water quality degradation, and (3) land use change. Impacts included within these pathways are flow alteration, geomorphological alteration to habitats, changes in water quality, habitat fragmentation, and land use transformation. For the majority of these impacts, no operational methodology exists currently. Furthermore, the seasonal nature of river dynamics requires a level of temporal resolution currently beyond LCIA modeling capabilities. State-of-the-art LCIA methods covering biodiversity impacts exist for land use and impacts from consumptive water use that can potentially be adapted to cases involving hydropower production, while other impact pathways need novel development.

Conclusions

In the short term, coverage of biodiversity impacts from hydropower could be significantly improved by adding a time step representing seasonal ecological water demands to existing LCIA methods. In the long term, LCIA should focus on ecological response curves based on multiple hydrologic indices to capture the spatiotemporal aspects of river flow, by using models based on the “ecological limits to hydrologic alteration” (ELOHA) approach. This approach is based on hydrologic alteration-ecological response curves, including site-specific environmental impact data. Though data-intensive, ELOHA represents the potential to build a global impact assessment framework covering multiple ecological indicators from local impacts. Further, we recommend LCIA methods based on degree of regulation for geomorphologic alteration and a fragmentation index based on dam density for “freshwater habitat alteration,” which our review identified as significant unquantified threats to aquatic biodiversity.

     

Impacts of onshore wind energy production on birds and bats: recommendations for future life cycle impact assessment developments

Purpose

Models for quantifying impacts on biodiversity from renewable energy technologies are lacking within life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). We aim to provide an overview of the effects of wind energy on birds and bats, with a focus on quantitative methods. Furthermore, we investigate and provide the necessary background for how these can be integrated into new developments of LCIA models in future.

Methods

We reviewed available literature summarizing the effects of wind energy developments on birds and bats. We provide an overview of available quantitative assessment methods that have been employed outside of the LCIA framework to model the different impacts of wind energy developments on wildlife. Combining the acquired knowledge on impact pathways and associated quantitative methods, we propose possibilities for future approaches for a wind energy impact assessment methodology for LCIA.

Results and discussion

Wind energy production has impacts on terrestrial biodiversity through three main pathways: collision, disturbance, and habitat alterations. Birds and bats are consistently considered the most affected taxonomic groups, with different responses to the before-mentioned impact pathways. Outside of the LCIA framework, current quantitative impact assessment prediction models include collision risk models, species distribution models, individual-based models, and population modeling approaches. Developed indices allow scaling of species-specific vulnerability to mortality, disturbance, and/or habitat alterations.

Conclusions

Although insight into the causes behind collision risk, disturbance, and habitat alterations for bats and birds is still limited, the current knowledge base enables the development of a robust assessment tool. Modeling the impacts of habitat alterations, disturbance, and collisions within an LCIA framework is most appropriate using species distribution models as those enable the estimation of species’ occurrences across a region. Although local-scale developments may be more readily feasible, further up-scaling to global coverage is recommended to allow comparison across regions and technologies, and to assess cumulative impacts.

     

Addressing water needs of freshwater ecosystems in life cycle impact assessment of water consumption: state of the art and applicability of ecohydrological approaches to ecosystem quality characterization

Purpose

In recent history, human development overbalanced towards economic growth has often been accompanied by the degradation and reduction of freshwater resources at the expense of freshwater dependent ecosystems. For their subsistence and correct functioning, understanding environmental water requirements (EWR) represents an area of great interest for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and it has been only marginally explored. The aim of this paper is to investigate how this concept has evolved in ecological and hydrological literature and how it can be better integrated in LCIA, to identify potential options for improvement of LCIA indicators in the short, mid and long term.

Methods

To address the limitations of existing LCIA approaches in modelling EWR, four families of EWR methods have been reviewed, namely hydrological, hydraulic, habitat simulation and holistic methods. Based on existing scientific literature and their broad application, 24 methods have been selected and their suitability to be adopted in LCIA has been evaluated against nine criteria, with regard to data management issues, accuracy, scientific robustness, and potential for future development. A semi-quantitative performance score has been subsequently assigned for each criterion, showing the main strengths and weaknesses of selected methods.

Results and discussion

The underlying rationale of the chosen approaches is markedly different, likewise the input information needed and results applicability. Hydrological methods are well suited for the development of global models and they are the only ones currently considered in LCIA, although their applicability remains limited to water stress indicators. Habitat modelling is identified as an essential step for the development of mechanistic LCIA models and endpoint indicators. In this respect, hydraulic, habitat simulation and holistic methods are fit for the purpose. However, habitat simulation methods represent the best compromise between scientific robustness and applicability in LCIA. For this reason, a conceptual framework for the development of habitat-based characterization factors has been proposed. Among the evaluated habitat simulation methods, ESTIMHAB showed the best performance and was the method retained for the development of an LCIA model that will assess the consequences of water consumption on stream ecosystems.

Conclusions

This study identifies the advantages of specific modelling approaches for the assessment of water requirements for ecosystems. Selected methods could support the development of LCIA models at different levels. In the short-term for improving environmental relevance of water stress indicators, and in the mid/long-term to build up midpoint habitat indicators relating water needs of ecosystems with new endpoint metrics.

     

Ecosystem damage assessment of land transformation using species loss

Purpose

The objectives of this study are to develop life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods that enable an assessment of the impact on the biodiversity by land use categorized in general land use types and to obtain the implications for an assessment of global land use impact, using the methods in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method based on Endpoint Modeling (LIME).

Methods

Expected Increase in Number of Extinct Species (EINES), which was calculated by summing the increments in extinction risks of each threatened vascular plant species due to land transformation, was used as an indicator of damage to biodiversity. EINES per land use category was calculated using data from the “Threatened Wildlife of Japan, Red Data Book 2nd ed. Volume 8, Vascular Plants” (hereinafter referred to as “RDB”).

Results and discussion

The EINES of wetlands and grassland was relatively high. The number of species that were assumed to exist in forestland was large; however, the EINES of forestland was relatively low. It was considered to be influenced by the huge area of forestland in Japan. EINES of other land was also relatively high, and it was considered to be the reflection of the existence of species whose habitat is peculiar, such as limestone areas or high mountains.

Conclusions

Damage factors developed for Japan in this study have broad potential application, as they have more general land use categories than those in LIME 1 and 2; however, it will be necessary to develop damage factors in other countries, taking into account threatened species categories and regional differences in the importance of various land use categories. It is also necessary to accumulate detailed data on threatened species across the planet to develop worldwide damage factors.

     

Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators: impacts of climate change,fine particulate matter formation,water consumption and land use

Purpose

Guidance is needed on best-suited indicators to quantify and monitor the man-made impacts on human health, biodiversity and resources. Therefore, the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative initiated a global consensus process to agree on an updated overall life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) framework and to recommend a non-comprehensive list of environmental indicators and LCIA characterization factors for (1) climate change, (2) fine particulate matter impacts on human health, (3) water consumption impacts (both scarcity and human health) and 4) land use impacts on biodiversity.

Methods

The consensus building process involved more than 100 world-leading scientists in task forces via multiple workshops. Results were consolidated during a 1-week Pellston Workshop? in January 2016 leading to the following recommendations.

Results and discussion

LCIA framework: The updated LCIA framework now distinguishes between intrinsic, instrumental and cultural values, with disability-adjusted life years (DALY) to characterize damages on human health and with measures of vulnerability included to assess biodiversity loss. Climate change impacts: Two complementary climate change impact categories are recommended: (a) The global warming potential 100 years (GWP 100) represents shorter term impacts associated with rate of change and adaptation capacity, and (b) the global temperature change potential 100 years (GTP 100) characterizes the century-scale long term impacts, both including climate-carbon cycle feedbacks for all climate forcers. Fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) health impacts: Recommended characterization factors (CFs) for primary and secondary (interim) PM_2.5 are established, distinguishing between indoor, urban and rural archetypes. Water consumption impacts: CFs are recommended, preferably on monthly and watershed levels, for two categories: (a) The water scarcity indicator “AWARE” characterizes the potential to deprive human and ecosystems users and quantifies the relative Available WAter REmaining per area once the demand of humans and aquatic ecosystems has been met, and (b) the impact of water consumption on human health assesses the DALYs from malnutrition caused by lack of water for irrigated food production. Land use impacts: CFs representing global potential species loss from land use are proposed as interim recommendation suitable to assess biodiversity loss due to land use and land use change in LCA hotspot analyses.

Conclusions

The recommended environmental indicators may be used to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals in order to quantify and monitor progress towards sustainable production and consumption. These indicators will be periodically updated, establishing a process for their stewardship.

     

Ecosystem quality in LCIA: status quo,harmonization, and suggestions for the way forward

Purpose

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results are used to assess potential environmental impacts of different products and services. As part of the UNEP-SETAC life cycle initiative flagship project that aims to harmonize indicators of potential environmental impacts, we provide a consensus viewpoint and recommendations for future developments in LCIA related to the ecosystem quality area of protection (AoP). Through our recommendations, we aim to encourage LCIA developments that improve the usefulness and global acceptability of LCIA results.

Methods

We analyze current ecosystem quality metrics and provide recommendations to the LCIA research community for achieving further developments towards comparable and more ecologically relevant metrics addressing ecosystem quality.

Results and discussion

We recommend that LCIA development for ecosystem quality should tend towards species-richness-related metrics, with efforts made towards improved inclusion of ecosystem complexity. Impact indicators—which result from a range of modeling approaches that differ, for example, according to spatial and temporal scale, taxonomic coverage, and whether the indicator produces a relative or absolute measure of loss—should be framed to facilitate their final expression in a single, aggregated metric. This would also improve comparability with other LCIA damage-level indicators. Furthermore, to allow for a broader inclusion of ecosystem quality perspectives, the development of an additional indicator related to ecosystem function is recommended. Having two complementary metrics would give a broader coverage of ecosystem attributes while remaining simple enough to enable an intuitive interpretation of the results.

Conclusions

We call for the LCIA research community to make progress towards enabling harmonization of damage-level indicators within the ecosystem quality AoP and, further, to improve the ecological relevance of impact indicators.

     

Principles for life cycle inventories of land use on a global scale

Purpose

To assess the diverse environmental impacts of land use, a standardization of quantifying land use elementary flows is needed in life cycle assessment (LCA). The purpose of this paper is to propose how to standardize the land use classification and how to regionalize land use elementary flows.

Materials and methods

In life cycle inventories, land occupation and transformation are elementary flows providing relevant information on the type and location of land use for land use impact assessment. To find a suitable land use classification system for LCA, existing global land cover classification systems and global approaches to define biogeographical regions are reviewed.

Results and discussion

A new multi-level classification of land use is presented. It consists of four levels of detail ranging from very general global land cover classes to more refined categories and very specific categories indicating land use intensities. Regionalization is built on five levels, first distinguishing between terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biomes and further specifying climatic regions, specific biomes, ecoregions and finally indicating the exact geo-referenced information of land use. Current land use inventories and impact assessment methods do not always match and hinder a comprehensive assessment of land use impact. A standardized definition of land use types and geographic location helps to overcome this gap and provides the opportunity to test the optimal resolution of land cover types and regionalization for each impact pathway.

Conclusions and recommendation

The presented approach provides the necessary flexibility to providers of inventories and developers of impact assessment methods. To simplify inventories and impact assessment methods of land use, we need to find archetypical situations across impact pathways, land use types and regions, and aggregate inventory entries and methods accordingly.

     

ReCiPe2016: a harmonised life cycle impact assessment method at midpoint and endpoint level

Purpose

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) translates emissions and resource extractions into a limited number of environmental impact scores by means of so-called characterisation factors. There are two mainstream ways to derive characterisation factors, i.e. at midpoint level and at endpoint level. To further progress LCIA method development, we updated the ReCiPe2008 method to its version of 2016. This paper provides an overview of the key elements of the ReCiPe2016 method.

Methods

We implemented human health, ecosystem quality and resource scarcity as three areas of protection. Endpoint characterisation factors, directly related to the areas of protection, were derived from midpoint characterisation factors with a constant mid-to-endpoint factor per impact category. We included 17 midpoint impact categories.

Results and discussion

The update of ReCiPe provides characterisation factors that are representative for the global scale instead of the European scale, while maintaining the possibility for a number of impact categories to implement characterisation factors at a country and continental scale. We also expanded the number of environmental interventions and added impacts of water use on human health, impacts of water use and climate change on freshwater ecosystems and impacts of water use and tropospheric ozone formation on terrestrial ecosystems as novel damage pathways. Although significant effort has been put into the update of ReCiPe, there is still major improvement potential in the way impact pathways are modelled. Further improvements relate to a regionalisation of more impact categories, moving from local to global species extinction and adding more impact pathways.

Conclusions

Life cycle impact assessment is a fast evolving field of research. ReCiPe2016 provides a state-of-the-art method to convert life cycle inventories to a limited number of life cycle impact scores on midpoint and endpoint level.

     

MIDAS-G: a computational platform for investigating fragmentation rules of tandem mass spectrometry in metabolomics

Introduction

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has been widely used for identifying metabolites in many areas. However, computationally identifying metabolites from MS/MS data is challenging due to the unknown of fragmentation rules, which determine the precedence of chemical bond dissociation. Although this problem has been tackled by different ways, the lack of computational tools to flexibly represent adjacent structures of chemical bonds is still a long-term bottleneck for studying fragmentation rules.

Objectives

This study aimed to develop computational methods for investigating fragmentation rules by analyzing annotated MS/MS data.

Methods

We implemented a computational platform, MIDAS-G, for investigating fragmentation rules. MIDAS-G processes a metabolite as a simple graph and uses graph grammars to recognize specific chemical bonds and their adjacent structures. We can apply MIDAS-G to investigate fragmentation rules by adjusting bond weights in the scoring model of the metabolite identification tool and comparing metabolite identification performances.

Results

We used MIDAS-G to investigate four bond types on real annotated MS/MS data in experiments. The experimental results matched data collected from wet labs and literature. The effectiveness of MIDAS-G was confirmed.

Conclusion

We developed a computational platform for investigating fragmentation rules of tandem mass spectrometry. This platform is freely available for download.

     

Comparing land use impacts using ecosystem quality,biogenic carbon emissions,and restoration costs in a case study of hydropower plants in Norway

Purpose

Habitat destruction is today the most severe threat to global biodiversity. Despite decades of efforts, there is still no proper methodology on how to assess all aspects of impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes (LULUC) in life cycle analysis (LCA). A majority of LCA studies on land extensive activities still do not include LULUC. In this study, we test different approaches for assessing the impact of land use and land use change related to hydropower for use in LCA and introduce restoration cost as a new approach.

Methods

We assessed four hydropower plant projects in planning phase (two upgrading plants with reservoir and two new run-of-river plants) in Southern Norway with comparable geography, biodiversity, and annual energy production capacity. LULUC was calculated for each habitat type, based on mapping of present and future land use, and was further allocated to energy production for each power plant. Three different approaches to assess land use impact were included: ecosystem scarcity/vulnerability, biogenic greenhouse gas (bGHG) emissions, and the cost of restoring affected habitats. Restoration cost represents a novel approach to LCA for measuring impact of LULUC.

Results and discussion

Overall, the three approaches give similar rankings of impacts: larger impact for small and new power plants and less for larger and expanding existing plants. Reservoirs caused a larger total area affected. Permanent infrastructure has a more similar absolute impact for run-of-river and reservoir-based hydropower, and consequently give relatively larger impact for smaller run-of-river hydropower. All approaches reveal impacts on wetland ecosystems as most important relative to other ecosystems. The methods used for all three approaches would benefit from higher resolution data on land use, habitats, and soil types. Total restoration cost is not accurate, due to uncertainty of offset ratios, but relative restoration costs may still be used to rank restoration alternatives and compare them to the costs of biodiversity offsets.

Conclusions

The different approaches assess different aspects of land use impacts, but they all show large variation of impact between the studied hydropower plants, which shows the importance of including LULUC in LCA for hydropower projects. Improved data of total restoration cost (and cost accounting) are needed to implement this approach in future LCA.

     

Urinary antihypertensive drug metabolite screening using molecular networking coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry fragmentation

Introduction

Mass spectrometry is the current technique of choice in studying drug metabolism. High-resolution mass spectrometry in combination with MS/MS gas-phase experiments has the potential to contribute to rapid advances in this field. However, the data emerging from such fragmentation spectral files pose challenges to downstream analysis, given their complexity and size.

Objectives

This study aims to detect and visualize antihypertensive drug metabolites in untargeted metabolomics experiments based on the spectral similarity of their fragmentation spectra. Furthermore, spectral clusters of endogenous metabolites were also examined.

Methods

Here we apply a molecular networking approach to seek drugs and their metabolites, in fragmentation spectra from urine derived from a cohort of 26 patients on antihypertensive therapy. The mass spectrometry data was collected on a Thermo Q-Exactive coupled to pHILIC chromatography using data dependent analysis (DDA) MS/MS gas-phase experiments.

Results

In total, 165 separate drug metabolites were found and structurally annotated (17 by spectral matching and 122 by classification based on a clustered fragmentation pattern). The clusters could be traced to 13 drugs including the known antihypertensives verapamil, losartan and amlodipine. The molecular networking approach also generated clusters of endogenous metabolites, including carnitine derivatives, and conjugates containing glutamine, glutamate and trigonelline.

Conclusions

The approach offers unprecedented capability in the untargeted identification of drugs and their metabolites at the population level and has great potential to contribute to understanding stratified responses to drugs where differences in drug metabolism may determine treatment outcome.

     

Optimization of fecal sample preparation for untargeted LC-HRMS based metabolomics

Introduction

Collecting feces is easy. It offers direct outcome to endogenous and microbial metabolites.

Objectives

In a context of lack of consensus about fecal sample preparation, especially in animal species, we developed a robust protocol allowing untargeted LC-HRMS fingerprinting.

Methods

The conditions of extraction (quantity, preparation, solvents, dilutions) were investigated in bovine feces.

Results

A rapid and simple protocol involving feces extraction with methanol (1/3, M/V) followed by centrifugation and a step filtration (10 kDa) was developed.

Conclusion

The workflow generated repeatable and informative fingerprints for robust metabolome characterization.

     

Leaf extracts from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Nitraria retusa</Emphasis> promote cell population growth of human cancer cells by inducing apoptosis

Background

In this report the phytochemical profile of Nitraria. Retusa (N. Retusa) leaf extracts were identified and their ability to induce apoptosis in human chronic myelogenous erythroleukaemia (K562) was evaluated.

Methods

Apoptosis of the human chronic myelogenous erythroleukaemia (K562) was evidenced by investigating DNA fragmentation, PARP cleavage and caspases 3 and 8 inducing activities, in the presence of N. retusa extracts.

Results

Our study revealed that the tested extracts from N. Retusa contain many useful bioactive compounds. They induced in a time-dependent manner the apoptosis the tested cancerous our cell line. This result was confirmed by ladder DNA fragmentation profile and PARP cleavage, as well as a release in caspase-3 and caspase-8 level.

Conclusion

Our results indicate that the tested compounds have a significant antiproliferative effect which may be due to their involvement in the induction of the extrinsic apoptosic pathway.

     

Development of weighting factors for G20 countries. Part 2: estimation of willingness to pay and annual global damage cost

Purpose

This paper is the second part of a series of articles presenting the results of research on monetary weighting factors (MWFs) for the G20 countries, which together account for approximately 90% of the global GDP. We developed their MWFs with regard to Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and evaluated them via a large-scale questionnaire survey. We estimated the economic value of one unit of damage caused by human activities.

Methods

To ensure that the MWFs covered all areas of protection as defined by the LCIA method based on Endpoint Modeling (human health, social assets, biodiversity, and primary production), we conducted a choice experiment in all G20 countries. We conducted face-to-face interviews to minimize survey bias and ensure that the questions were understood by the emerging G20 countries’ respondents. Internet surveys were adopted to collect samples from the developed G20 countries’ respondents, where Internet diffusion rates are generally high. We obtained response data from 200 to 250 and 500 to 600 households of all the emerging and all the developed G20 countries, respectively. We gathered 6400 responses in all. We estimated preference intensities using the random parameter logit model. We calculated MWFs based on each respondent’s willingness to pay.

Results and discussion

We devised MWFs providing the costs of damage to four safeguard subjects. All the estimated values are statistically significant at the 1% level, with the exception of monetary attributes from Mexico. The MWFs for the G20 are 23,000 USD for human health (per year), 2.5 USD for social assets (per USD of resources), 11 billion USD for biodiversity (per species), and 5.6 billion USD for primary production (per 100 million tons). The differences between the developed and emerging G20 countries are considerable, with the values generally being smaller for the latter in purchasing power parity (USD) terms. The estimated global total economic annual impact was approximately 5.1 trillion USD (6.7% of the world’s total GDP).

Conclusions

We obtained reasonable and conservative global-scale MWFs compared with previous studies. Moreover, the cross-country heterogeneity in this study potentially helps extrapolate future/global value developments from current/local estimates. The variations in human health and social asset MWFs are small enough within developed countries to allow international transfers among them, while significant variations in biodiversity and primary production MWFs are a caveat to up-front international transfers even within developed countries.

     

Towards harmonizing natural resources as an area of protection in life cycle impact assessment

Purpose

In this paper, we summarize the discussion and present the findings of an expert group effort under the umbrella of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative proposing natural resources as an Area of Protection (AoP) in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA).

Methods

As a first step, natural resources have been defined for the LCA context with reference to the overall UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) framework. Second, existing LCIA methods have been reviewed and discussed. The reviewed methods have been evaluated according to the considered type of natural resources and their underlying principles followed (use-to-availability ratios, backup technology approaches, or thermodynamic accounting methods).

Results and discussion

There is currently no single LCIA method available that addresses impacts for all natural resource categories, nor do existing methods and models addressing different natural resource categories do so in a consistent way across categories. Exceptions are exergy and solar energy-related methods, which cover the widest range of resource categories. However, these methods do not link exergy consumption to changes in availability or provisioning capacity of a specific natural resource (e.g., mineral, water, land etc.). So far, there is no agreement in the scientific community on the most relevant type of future resource indicators (depletion, increased energy use or cost due to resource extraction, etc.). To address this challenge, a framework based on the concept of stock/fund/flow resources is proposed to identify, across natural resource categories, whether depletion/dissipation (of stocks and funds) or competition (for flows) is the main relevant aspect.

Conclusions

An LCIA method—or a set of methods—that consistently address all natural resource categories is needed in order to avoid burden shifting from the impact associated with one resource to the impact associated with another resource. This paper is an important basis for a step forward in the direction of consistently integrating the various natural resources as an Area of Protection into LCA.

     

A lost opportunity for science: journals promote data sharing in metabolomics but do not enforce it

Introduction

Data sharing is being increasingly required by journals and has been heralded as a solution to the ‘replication crisis’.

Objectives

(i) Review data sharing policies of journals publishing the most metabolomics papers associated with open data and (ii) compare these journals’ policies to those that publish the most metabolomics papers.

Methods

A PubMed search was used to identify metabolomics papers. Metabolomics data repositories were manually searched for linked publications.

Results

Journals that support data sharing are not necessarily those with the most papers associated to open metabolomics data.

Conclusion

Further efforts are required to improve data sharing in metabolomics.

     

IFN-λ1 in CHO cells: its expression and biological activity

Background

Many studies have investigated the characteristics and biological activities of type III interferon (IFN), finding that it has similar features to type I IFN but also unique actions because it is recognized by a different receptor.

Results

A full-length recombinant human IFN-λ1 (rhIFN-λ1) cDNA was cloned into the pDF expression vector and stably expressed in Flp-In-CHO cells. After four purification steps (ammonium sulfate precipitation, SP Sepharose chromatography, Blue Sepharose 6 fast flow affinity chromatography and molecular sieve chromatography), the rhIFN-λ1 had a purity of about 90% and was found to have the predicted biological activities. The anti-viral activity of rhIFN-λ1 was determined as 10⁶ IU/mg using the vesicular stomatitis virus (WISH-VSV) assay system. The anti-proliferation activity of rhIFN-λ1 was measured using the MTS method and the growth inhibition ratio was 57% higher than that for recombinant human IFN-α2b (rhIFN-α2b) when the rhIFN-λ1 concentration was 1000 IU/ml. rhIFN-λ1 had lower natural killer cell cytotoxicity than rhIFN-α2b.

Conclusion

The Flp-In-CHO system is suitable for stably expressing rhIFN-λ1 that possesses the predicted anti-viral, anti-proliferation and natural killer cell cytotoxicity-promoting activities.

     

Salinisation impacts in life cycle assessment: a review of challenges and options towards their consistent integration

Purpose

Salinisation is a threat not only to arable land but also to freshwater resources. Nevertheless, salinisation impacts have been rarely and only partially included in life cycle assessment (LCA) so far. The objectives of this review paper were to give a comprehensive overview of salinisation mechanisms due to human interventions, analyse the completeness, relevance and scientific robustness of existing published methods addressing salinisation in LCA and provide recommendations towards a comprehensive integration of salinisation within the impact modelling frameworks in LCA.

Methods

First, with the support of salinisation experts and related literature, we highlighted multiple causes of soil and water salinisation and presented induced effects on human health, ecosystems and resources. Second, existing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods addressing salinisation were analysed against the International Reference Life Cycle Data System analysis grid of the European Commission. Third, adopting a holistic approach, the modelling options for salinisation impacts were analysed in agreement with up-to-date LCIA frameworks and models.

Results and discussion

We proposed a categorisation of salinisation processes in four main types based on salinisation determinism: land use change, irrigation, brine disposal and overuse of a water body. For each salinisation type, key human management and biophysical factors involved were identified. Although the existing methods addressing salinisation in LCA are important and relevant contributions, they are often incomplete with regards to both the salinisation pathways they address and their geographical validity. Thus, there is a lack of a consistent framework for salinisation impact assessment in LCA. In analysing existing LCIA models, we discussed the inventory and impact assessment boundary options. The land use/land use change framework represents a good basis for the integration of salinisation impacts due to a land use change but should be completed to account for off-site impacts. Conversely, the land use/land use change framework is not appropriate to model salinisation due to irrigation, overuse of a water body and brine disposal. For all salinisation pathways, a bottom-up approach describing the environmental mechanisms (fate, exposure and effect) is recommended rather than an empirical or top-down approach because (i) salts and water are mobile and theirs effects are interconnected; (ii) water and soil characteristics vary greatly spatially; (iii) this approach allows the evaluation of both on- and off-site impacts and (iv) it is the best way to discriminate systems and support a reliable eco-design.

Conclusions

This paper highlights the importance of including salinisation impacts in LCA. Much research effort is still required to include salinisation impacts in a global, consistent and operational manner in LCA, and this paper provides the basis for future methodological developments.

     

Untargeted metabolomics suffers from incomplete raw data processing

Introduction

Untargeted metabolomics is a powerful tool for biological discoveries. To analyze the complex raw data, significant advances in computational approaches have been made, yet it is not clear how exhaustive and reliable the data analysis results are.

Objectives

Assessment of the quality of raw data processing in untargeted metabolomics.

Methods

Five published untargeted metabolomics studies, were reanalyzed.

Results

Omissions of at least 50 relevant compounds from the original results as well as examples of representative mistakes were reported for each study.

Conclusion

Incomplete raw data processing shows unexplored potential of current and legacy data.