Insekten als Nahrungsmittel der Zukunft

Insects as a sustainable food of the future In Germany insects are still relatively unknown as foodstuff. However, in many countries of the world insects have been valued as foodstuff for a long time. This article examines the sustainability potential of entomophagy. Based on legal and psychological barriers it tries to explain why insects are not on the menu in Germany. Research in the fields of nutritional psychology and biodidactics is essential for the successful introduction of insects as foodstuff in Germany.     

Wasserlinsen als Nutzpflanzen

Duckweeds as crop plants Members of the plant family Lemnaceae (duckweeds) are not only interesting because they represent the smallest flowering plants; they possess also the fastest rates of producing biomass. As aquatic plants, duckweed production is not in competition with other agricultural crops that require fertile land while the cultivation of duckweeds does not contribute to further eutrophication of surface water. Instead, they can be cultivated on municipal or agricultural waste water and remove the nutrients during their propagation and growth. Duckweeds can thus be used for cleaning of waste water and the resulting biomass can be valuable starting material for animal feeds and the production of biofuels. Research focusing on these goals has begun to transfer from research laboratories to pilot plants in different parts of the world, e.g. in New Jersey and North Carolina, USA; Chengdu, P. R. China; and Armidale, Australia.     

Biodiversitätsforschung – wohin geht die Reise?

Biodiversity and biodiversity politics Extrapolations for a range of indicators suggest that based on current trends, pressures on biodiversity will continue to increase (Global Biodiversity Outlook 4, 2014). Since services of nature, like fertile soil, clear water and clean air are achieved by consortia of organisms rather than by individual species, they are already endangered. This holds, in spite of the fact, that only 10% of the earth's organisms are known to science and that therefore the loss caused by global change cannot be reliably quantified. Today, science develops new methods for recording consortia of coexisting organisms in a habitat. With the Convention on Biological Diversity, biodiversity has become a matter of politics which is welcome with respect to species and habitat conservation, but the concern of biopiracy creates bureaucratic hurdles hindering research. The most recent achievement is IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn), which strives to bring more science into biodiversity politics.     

Personalisierte Medizin – Vision oder Fiktion? Beispiel: Altersdiabetes

Typical civilization diseases, such as type II diabetes, are common, complex in the underlying pathogenic mechanisms, heterogenous in the phenotype and multifactorial due to a wide variety of possible combinations of disease susceptibility or protective genes in different relevant tissues and negative or positive environmental factors. This is in sharp contrast to classical inherited diseases, such as Chorea Huntington, which are often caused by complete loss‐ or gain‐of‐function mutations in a single gene. The causative polymorphisms of susceptibility genes, however, are characterized by relative subtle alterations in the function of the corresponding gene product, which per se do not support the pathogenesis, by high frequency, high expenditure for their identification and rather low predictive value. Consequently, the reliable and early diagnosis of civilization diseases depends on the individual determination of all (or as many as possible) polymorphisms of each susceptibility gene together with the corresponding gene products and the metabolites emerging thereof.     

Wie wachsen Tropenbäume? Jahrringe als Ausdruck von Klimabedingungen und Lebensform

Growth of tropical trees is largely depending on the seasonality of the local climate. In many trees growing in areas with a distinct dry season, cambial activity ceases resulting in the formation of annual rings. In very humid mountain rainforests, trees stop to grow already after short rainless periods. By a combination of increment measurements and wood anatomical analyses, the climatic control of wood formation can be assessed. Intra‐annual wood density variations and content of various stable isotopes enable the climatological interpretation of the “wood signals”.     

Sekundärstoffe – die Geheimwaffen der Pflanzen

Secondary metabolites Already 400 million years ago when land plants evolved, they probably produced secondary metabolites as means of defence against herbivores, microbes and competing plants. Secondary metabolites usually are bioactive agents, which can interfere with molecular targets in animals and microbes. Therefore, many plants and substances isolated from them can serve as valuable drugs in medicine and pharmacy. Some secondary metabolites also serve as signal compounds to attract pollinating animals and seed‐dispersing animals, but also for UV protection, as antioxidants or mobile nitrogen stores. Biology and evolution but also physiological and genetic bases of secondary metabolism are discussed in this overview.