bacterial OTUs using a metabarcoding technique. The putative hydrocarbonoclastic taxa incidence are the following: Enterobacteriaceae (31.5%), Methylobacteriaceae (19.9%), Bradyrhizobiaceae (16.9%), Oxalobacteraceae (10.2%), Comamonadaceae (7.6%) and Sphingomonadaceae (5.5%). Cumulatively, the results of this study indicate that MVs represent polyaromatic hydrocarbonoclastic hotbeds, as defined by both natural PAH input and high incidence of putative PAH-degrading bacterial OTUs.

Reymond, C., Dubuis, A., Le Masle, A., Colas, C., Chahen, L., Destandau, E., Charon, N., 2020. Characterization of liquid - liquid extraction fractions from lignocellulosic biomass by high performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry. Journal of Chromatography A 1610, 460569.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002196731930963X The conversion of lignocellulosic biomass is a major challenge in the field of renewable energies and bio-based chemicals. The diversity of biomasses and processes leads to complex products having a wide range of polarities and molecular weights. Nowadays, the molecular description of these oxygenated matrices is still largely incomplete and new analytical strategies are required to have a better understanding of biomass products properties. The present study proposes a reliable protocol based on successive liquid - liquid extractions prior to high performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry n (HPLC/MS ) using a linear ion trap-Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer (LTQ/FT- ICR). The protocol allowed to fractionate an industrial sample coming from the sulfuric acid-based pretreatment of a wheat straw into four key chemical families: carbohydrates, organic acids, phenols and neutral compounds. Each fraction was separately analyzed, which limited matrix effects during mass spectrometry ionization step. Electrospray and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization sources were used in both positive and negative n modes in order to ionize and detect a maximum of compounds. Thanks to HPLC/MS , structures of heavy lignin- carbohydrate complexes (LCC) were elucidated (up to 600 g/mol) as well as carbohydrate oligomers having acid functionalities. Mono, di, tri and tetra-aromatic compounds coming from lignin were also detected. The results reported in this paper demonstrate the complexity of pretreated biomass samples and propose an analytical approach from sample simplification to data treatment in order to describe the biomass composition.

Rezende, E.L., Bacigalupe, L.D., Nespolo, R.F., Bozinovic, F., 2020. Shrinking dinosaurs and the evolution of endothermy in birds. Science Advances 6, eaaw4486.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaaw4486.abstract The evolution of endothermy represents a major transition in vertebrate history, yet how and why endothermy evolved in birds and mammals remains controversial. Here, we combine a heat transfer model with theropod body size data to reconstruct the evolution of metabolic rates along the bird stem lineage. Results suggest that a reduction in size constitutes the path of least resistance for endothermy to evolve, maximizing thermal niche expansion while obviating the costs of elevated energy requirements. In this scenario, metabolism would have increased with the miniaturization observed in the Early-Middle Jurassic (~180 to 170 million years ago), resulting in a gradient of metabolic levels in the theropod phylogeny. Whereas basal theropods would exhibit lower metabolic rates, more recent nonavian lineages were likely decent thermoregulators with elevated metabolism. These analyses provide a tentative temporal sequence of the key evolutionary transitions that resulted in the emergence of small, endothermic, feathered flying dinosaurs.

Richardson, S.D., Kimura, S.Y., 2020. Water analysis: Emerging contaminants and current issues. Analytical Chemistry 92, 473-505.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b05269 This biennial review covers developments in water analysis for emerging environmental contaminants over the Analytical Chemistry period of October 2017 - October 2019. 's policy is to limit reviews to a maximum of ∼ 250 significant references and to mainly focus on new trends. Therefore, only a small fraction of the quality research publications is discussed. The previous Water Analysis review (with Thomas Ternes) was published in