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​A framework designed to provide detailed information on agricultural groundwater use in arid regions has been developed by KAUST researchers in collaboration with the Saudi Ministry of Environment Water and Agriculture (MEWA). 

“Groundwater is a precious resource, but we don’t pay for it to grow our food, we just pump it out,” says Oliver López, who worked on the project with KAUST's Matthew McCabe and co-workers. “When something is free, we are less likely to keep track of it, but it is critical that we measure groundwater extraction because it impacts both food and water security, not just regionally, but globally.”

Saudi Arabia’s farmland is often irrigated via center pivots that tap underground aquifer sources. The team has built a powerful tool that captures details of water use from the regional scale down to individual fields. “This is the first operational system in the world for monitoring and modeling agricultural water use at such fine spatial and time scales,” notes López.

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Image: Crops in Saudi Arabia are often irrigated via center pivots that tap underground aquifer sources, which are rapidly depleting.
© 2021 KAUST; Prof. McCabe's HALO Research Group

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​Clear rules for engineering transgenes that can be inserted and propagated over multiple generations of nematodes include ways to protect inserted genes from the organism’s natural defenses against foreign DNA. Developed by KAUST researchers, the rules have implications for many research fields, including gene therapy development.

Scientists often study biological processes, such as normal and mutant gene functions, in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans because it has many genes and molecular pathways in common with humans. Specific gene functions can be investigated by injecting DNA into the worm’s reproductive organs, where it links into what is known as an extra-chromosomal array. This array is eventually incorporated into the nucleus, where it is duplicated and segregated into daughter cells. The injected genetic material is then potentially inherited across generations, which last only two days in C. elegans, allowing researchers to study gene functions over multiple generations in a short time period.

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Image: KAUST scientists have designed silencing-resistant fluorescent proteins that can be localized to, for example, the cell membranes of C. elegans germ cells.
© 2021 KAUST; Monika Priyadarshini

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​The largest cohort of stem cell lines derived from patients with Klinefelter syndrome has been developed by KAUST researchers. These powerful cellular tools could be used to develop regenerative medicine therapeutic approaches and study a wide variety of diseases associated with chromosomal abnormalities, such as metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes, both of which are increasing in Saudi Arabia.

“We’ve created the first inducible pluripotent stem cell lines,” says Ph.D. student Maryam Alowaysi. “These have great potential because they can be differentiated into all known possible cells in the body. This means we can study the onset of disease and the genes associated with it.”

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Image: Klinefelter syndrome is a genetic condition that causes males to be born with an extra copy of the X chromosome.
© Zuzana Egertova / Alamy Stock Photo

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​Small-scale optical devices capable of using photons for high-speed information processing can be fabricated with unprecedented ease and precision using an additive manufacturing process developed at KAUST.

Fiber optics are conventionally produced by drawing thin filaments out of molten silica glass down to microscale dimensions. By infusing these fibers with long narrow hollow channels, a new class of optical devices termed "photonic crystal fibers" were introduced. The periodic arrangement of air holes in these photonic crystal fibers act like near-perfect mirrors, allowing trapping and long propagation of light in their central core.

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Image: Advanced 3D-printing technology can successfully create tiny photonic crystal fibers layer by layer at much faster speeds than conventional fabrication methods.
© 2021 KAUST; Anastasia Serin

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​“Conserving the world's oceans and coastal ecosystems is a no-regrets strategy posing huge benefits for people and planet,” explains Carlos Duarte, KAUST’s leading marine ecologist. For three decades, Duarte has led research into “blue carbon” ecosystems that can help both mitigation and adaptation to climate change and that include coasts, sandy beaches, mangroves, kelp forests, salt marshes and seagrasses.

These ecosystems generate multiple benefits, both as carbon sinks and the other ecosystem services they provide such as habitats for fisheries and many marine species; regulators of coastal water quality; protectors from storms, floods and sea-level rise; and sources of food and employment opportunities from transport to tourism.

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Image: Blue carbon ecosystems, such as mangroves, saltmarshes, kelp forests and seagrass meadows, act as carbon sinks by removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it below ground in their sediments.
© 2021 KAUST; Xavier Pita

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​Several research groups around the world are analyzing wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Studies show that the virus can be detected in the feces of some infected patients. There is hope that "wastewater-based epidemiology" could hold promise for monitoring COVID-19 outbreaks in communities.

To understand more about the potential of this research, KAUST Discovery spoke with Peiying Hong, an applied environmental microbiologist at KAUST. Hong has conducted years of research monitoring microbial contaminants in wastewater and reclaimed waters, including bacteria, viruses and genes.

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Image: Analyzing wastewater for the SARS-CoV-2 virus could provide an early warning system that the virus is spreading in a community.
© 2020 KAUST

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​High levels of dissolved calcium carbonate present in their bedrock indicate that Red Sea mangroves are capable of removing more carbon than previously thought, KAUST researchers have found. The study's findings highlight the need to consider calcium carbonate dissolution in mangroves growing on carbonate platforms as an important carbon storage mechanism.

Blue carbon ecosystems, such as mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrass beds, sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere in the form of organic carbon locked in their soils. In the Red Sea and much of the tropics, mangroves grow on calcium carbonate sediments formed by shells and skeletons of marine organisms dating back to the Pleistocene, about 100,000 years ago. The dissolution of calcium carbonate in seawater is a source of total alkalinity, which increases the ocean’s capacity to store CO2 from the atmosphere.

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Image: Red Sea mangroves represent an effective natural way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
© 2020 Morgan Bennett Smith

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​Wafer-thin membranes tailored to separate specific molecules from liquids could improve the efficiency of oil refining and pharmaceutical manufacture.

Filtering organic solvents—carbon-based liquids, such as oils and alcohols, that dissolve other substances—is crucial for petroleum, chemical and pharmaceutical companies that must consistently create the purest product.

Traditional extraction techniques, such as distillation, use vast amounts of energy, and emerging green alternatives, such as membranes, face other challenges. For instance, porous materials must withstand often highly reactive solvents while filtering out target molecules of a particular size and shape. Some very efficient membranes are available for separating salt from water in seawater desalination, but they are not as effective at separating smaller, very similar molecules in organic solvents.

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Image: KAUST scientists have developed an ultrathin membrane that can make organic solvent separation more sustainable and greener.
© 2020 KAUST; Ivan Gromicho

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​Analyses by KAUST researchers of sand temperatures at marine turtle nesting sites around the Red Sea indicate that turtle hatchlings born in the region could now be predominantly female. These findings hold significant implications for the survival of marine turtle species as temperature increases take hold, driven by anthropogenic climate change. 

“Marine turtles are particularly vulnerable to temperature shifts because they demonstrate temperature-dependent sex determination, meaning that the sex of hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the nest during incubation,” says Lyndsey Tanabe, a KAUST Ph.D. student investigating the nesting ecology and conservation strategies of marine turtles, under the supervision of Michael Berumen. 

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Image: Increasing sand temperatures driven by climate change may tip the delicate balance of gender distribution in Red Sea turtle populations.
© 2020 Morgan Bennett Smith

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​Warming waters and oxygen depletion in the Red Sea could slow the flow of organic carbon from the surface into the deep ocean where it can be stored, out of reach of the atmosphere. A KAUST team has used an underwater robot to investigate the little-studied mesopelagic, or "twilight," zone, at depths of between 100 and 1000 meters.

The oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere each year that either dissolves or is transformed into organic carbon by plants and phytoplankton in the sunlit shallows (0 – 100m). Most of this organic carbon is converted back into CO2 by microorganisms as it falls through the mesopelagic zone, but some of it eventually sinks into the deep ocean, where it can remain for centuries.

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Image: By studying the fate of organic carbon in the Red Sea, KAUST researchers hope to refine models that predict the carbon sink capacity of the world's oceans in the future.
© Susann Rossbach