the literature till 2019 are highlighted. The differentiation between non-polar and polar lipids and the limitations in the conversion of polar lipids to biodiesel are reported. The basic and advanced factors contributing to the Scenedesmus accumulation of lipids convertible to biodiesel is discussed. Microalgal species including obliquus Ourococcus multisporus Chlamydomonas pitschmannii Micractinium reisseri Botryococcus , , , , and braunii with high lipid content are potential candidates for biomass/biodiesel production and nutrient removal from wastewater. Application of lipidomics and transcriptomics to manipulate the lipid associated gene acetyl- CoA synthetase in microalgae improves the accumulative lipid content.

Arif, S., Reitner, J., Hoppert, M., 2019. Composition, diversity and functional analysis of the modern microbiome of the Middle Triassic Cava superiore beds (Monte San Giorgio, Switzerland). Scientific Reports 9, 20394.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55955-5 Organic-rich laminated shales and limestones from the Monte San Giorgio (Lugano Prealps, Switzerland) are known as famous fossil lagerstätten for excellently preserved fossils from the Middle Triassic Period. The various bituminous shales from Monte San Giorgio are thermally immature and rich in diverse organic compounds, which provide unique substrates for active soil microbial communities. We selected the Cava superior beds of the Acqua del Ghiffo site for this study. To investigate its microbial structure and diversity, contig assembly, Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) clustering, and rarefaction analysis were performed for bacterial 16S rDNA preparations from bituminous and non-bituminous limestone strata with the MetaAmp pipeline. Principal coordinates analysis shows that the microbial communities from the bituminous strata differ significantly from limestone samples (P < 0.05 Unifrac weighted). Moreover, metagenomic tools could also be used effectively to analyze the microbial communities shift during enrichment in specific growth media. In the nutrient-rich media, one or few taxa, mainly Proteobacteria and Firmicutes, were enriched which led to the drastic diversity loss while oligotrophic media could enrich many taxa simultaneously and sustain the richness and diversity of the inoculum. Piphillin, METAGENassist and MicrobiomeAnalyst pipeline also predicted that the Monte San Giorgio bituminous shales and oligotrophic enriched microbiomes degrade complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Ash, J.L., Hu, H., Yeung, L.Y., 2020. What fractionates oxygen isotopes during respiration? Insights from multiple isotopologue measurements and theory. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry 4, 50-66.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.9b00230 The precise mass dependence of respiratory O consumption underpins the 'oxygen triple - isotope' approach to 2 quantifying gross primary productivity in modern and ancient environments. Yet, the physical-chemical origins 18 16 17 16 of the key O/ O and O/ O covariations observed during respiration have not been tied to theory; thus, the approach remains empirical. First-principles calculations on enzyme active-site models suggest that changes in the O - O bond strength upon electron transfer strongly influence respiratory isotopic fractionation. However, molecular diffusion may also be important. Here, we use measurements of the relative abundances of rare 17 18 18 18 isotopologues O O and O Oas additional tracers of mass dependence during dark respiration experiments of lacustrine water. We then compare the experimental results to first-principles calculations of O interacting 2 with heme-oxidase analogues. We find a significantly steeper mass dependence, supported by theory, than has 17 18 18 18 been previously observed. Enrichments of O O and O O in the O residue suggest that θ values are 2 strongly influenced by chemical processes, rather than being dominated by physical processes (i.e., by bond alteration rather than diffusion). In contrast, earlier data are inconsistent with theory, implying that analytical artifacts may have biased those results. Implications for quantifying primary productivity are discussed.

Attias, E., Amalokwu, K., Watts, M., Falcon-Suarez, I.H., North, L., Hu, G.W., Best, A.I., Weitemeyer, K., Minshull, T.A., 2020. Gas hydrate quantification at a pockmark offshore Norway from joint effective medium modelling of resistivity and seismic velocity. Marine and Petroleum Geology 113, 104151.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264817219306038