Exosomes are stable nanovesicles secreted by cells into the circulation. Their reported sizes differ substantially, which likely reflects the difference in the isolation techniques used, the cells ...that secreted them, and the methods used in their characterization. We analyzed the influence of the last factor on the measured sizes and shapes of hydrated and desiccated exosomes isolated from the serum of a pancreatic cancer patient and a healthy control. We found that hydrated exosomes are close-to-spherical nanoparticles with a hydrodynamic radius that is substantially larger than the geometric size. For desiccated exosomes, we found that the desiccated shape and sizing are influenced by the manner in which drying occurred. Isotropic desiccation in aerosol preserves the near-spherical shape of the exosomes, whereas drying on a surface likely distorts their shapes and influences the sizing results obtained by techniques that require surface fixation prior to analysis.
Osteoporosis is a common disease diagnosed primarily by measurement of bone mineral density (BMD). We undertook a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in 142,487 individuals from the UK Biobank to ...identify loci associated with BMD as estimated by quantitative ultrasound of the heel. We identified 307 conditionally independent single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that attained genome-wide significance at 203 loci, explaining approximately 12% of the phenotypic variance. These included 153 previously unreported loci, and several rare variants with large effect sizes. To investigate the underlying mechanisms, we undertook (1) bioinformatic, functional genomic annotation and human osteoblast expression studies; (2) gene-function prediction; (3) skeletal phenotyping of 120 knockout mice with deletions of genes adjacent to lead independent SNPs; and (4) analysis of gene expression in mouse osteoblasts, osteocytes and osteoclasts. The results implicate GPC6 as a novel determinant of BMD, and also identify abnormal skeletal phenotypes in knockout mice associated with a further 100 prioritized genes.
•Safe Sampling Volumes determined for 15 VOC / sorbent combinations: Aldehydes (C5, C6, C8, C9), Ketones (C4, C6), Alcohols (C3, C4), Furan, Limonene, Isoprene & Ethyl Acetate on Carboxen 1003, ...Carbopack-X & Tenax-TA.•Unsuitable VOC / sorbent combinations: Furan on Carbopack-X, Isovaleraldehyde on Tenax TA & Methyl Ethyl Ketone on Tenax TA.
Pumped sorbent tube sampling is a well established method for the sampling of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and semi volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in ambient, indoor and workplace atmospheres1. Safe sampling volumes and breakthrough volumes have been published for commonly found VOCs on widely used sorbents such as Tenax, however for newer sorbents and less commonly found VOCs there is less robust data.
The Safe Sampling Volumes (SSVs) were determined from 15 tests of Retention Volume on 12 VOCs across the 3 sorbents. VOCs tested were: Aldehydes (C5, C6, C8, C9), Ketones (C4, C6), Alcohols (C3, C4), Furan, Limonene, Isoprene and Ethyl Acetate.
12 VOC / sorbent combinations gave SSVs large enough for practical sampling of indoor atmospheres, while SSVs for Furan on Carbopack-X, Isovaleraldehyde on Tenax TA and Methyl Ethyl Ketone on Tenax TA gave SSVs that were too small to be of practical use. This work identifies suitable sorbents and sampling volumes for the complete range of species tested.
The seasonal characteristics of air pollutant concentrations are important for understanding variations in emissions released into the air and in atmospheric chemistry. The patterns seen can be ...influenced by anthropogenic emissions, meteorological conditions, and the transport of pollutants over long and short distances. Whilst seasonality is well understood for some pollutants such as ozone and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, it is poorly understood and under-investigated for heavy metals in particulate matter (PM). This work studies long-term datasets of heavy metals in PM from a relevant UK air quality monitoring network, demonstrating the seasonal characteristics of the concentrations of these metals for the first time. Surprisingly, both ‘high in winter–low in summer’ and ‘low in winter–high in summer’ seasonality was observed, with some metals showing little or no seasonality. The ‘high in winter–low in summer’ seasonality (particularly for As) is attributable to the dominant contribution being from local primary sources, such as burning process producing larger PM sizes. The ‘low in winter–high in summer’ seasonality (particularly for V) is attributable to weak or non-seasonal local sources being dominated by contributions from medium and long-range transport during the summer months, when pollutant transport is more efficient. The findings contribute significantly to our understanding of the seasonality of metals in PM concentrations and the role played by the long-range transport of pollutants. Conclusions are also drawn about the implications for the calculation of annual averages on compliance-based air quality networks if data from a time series of a pollutant that displays seasonal characteristics are missing.
One of the biggest planetary challenges is the accelerating loss of biodiversity threatening ecosystem functioning on a global scale. The WWF Living Planet Report (https://livingplanet.panda.org/) ...estimates a 69% decline in populations since 1970. The Convention on Biological Diversity and related international treaties ask countries to monitor shifts in community composition and assess rates of species decline to quantify extant biodiversity relative to global targets1. However, quantifying biodiversity is a challenge, and monitoring continual change is impossible at almost any scale due to a lack of standardized data and indicators2,3. A common problem is that the required infrastructure for such global monitoring does not exist. Here, we challenge this notion by analysing environmental DNA (eDNA) captured along with particulate matter by routine ambient air quality monitoring stations in the UK. In our samples, we identified eDNA from >180 vertebrate, arthropod, plant and fungal taxa representative of local biodiversity. We contend that air monitoring networks are in fact gathering eDNA data reflecting local biodiversity on a continental scale, as a result of their routine function. In some regions, air quality samples are stored for decades, presenting the potential for high resolution biodiversity time series. With minimal modification of current protocols, this material provides the best opportunity to date for detailed monitoring of terrestrial biodiversity using an existing, replicated transnational design and it is already in operation.
Littlefair and colleagues demonstrate that networks of air quality monitoring stations also collect eDNA as a byproduct of regular operation, which may represent an opportunity to collect high resolution biodiversity data.
A novel application of the Theil-Sen robust regression method for determining the temporal trends in the concentration of heavy metals in UK ambient air over the period 2005–2020 is presented and ...compared to other regression methods. We have demonstrated improvements over non-robust methods of regression, proving the ability to tease out trends that are small with respect to the variability of the concentration measurement. The method is used to identify, in general, large and significant trends in the concentrations of Ni, As, Pb and V over the period 2005–2020, either across the UK as a whole or at groupings of site classifications in the UK. These trends have been compared to trends in emission data determined in the same manner. Although the results for most metals provide confidence that the UK metal network of monitoring sites is successful in appropriately capturing changes in emissions, a key finding of this work is the disagreement between trends in measured concentrations and emissions for Cu, Mn and Ni, for which we suggest improvements in future network design. The results also indicate that UK emission data for V should be reviewed, as we propose that the rate of reduction of V emissions is likely to have been overestimated.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) mole fractions were measured at four near-ground sites located in and around London during the summer of 2012 with a view to investigating the potential of ...assimilating such measurements in an atmospheric inversion system for the monitoring of the CO2 and CH4 emissions in the London area. These data were analysed and compared with simulations using a modelling framework suited to building an inversion system: a 2 km horizontal resolution south of England configuration of the transport model CHIMERE driven by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) meteorological forcing, coupled to a 1 km horizontal resolution emission inventory (the UK National Atmospheric Emission Inventory). First comparisons reveal that local sources, which cannot be represented in the model at a 2 km resolution, have a large impact on measurements. We evaluate methods to filter out the impact of some of the other critical sources of discrepancies between the measurements and the model simulation except that of the errors in the emission inventory, which we attempt to isolate. Such a separation of the impact of errors in the emission inventory should make it easier to identify the corrections that should be applied to the inventory. Analysis is supported by observations from meteorological sites around the city and a 3-week period of atmospheric mixing layer height estimations from lidar measurements. The difficulties of modelling the mixing layer depth and thus CO2 and CH4 concentrations during the night, morning and late afternoon lead to focusing on the afternoon period for all further analyses. The discrepancies between observations and model simulations are high for both CO2 and CH4 (i.e. their root mean square (RMS) is between 8 and 12 parts per million (ppm) for CO2 and between 30 and 55 parts per billion (ppb) for CH4 at a given site). By analysing the gradients between the urban sites and a suburban or rural reference site, we are able to decrease the impact of uncertainties in the fluxes and transport outside the London area and in the model domain boundary conditions. We are thus able to better focus attention on the signature of London urban CO2 and CH4 emissions in the atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations. This considerably improves the statistical agreement between the model and observations for CO2 (with model–data RMS discrepancies that are between 3 and 7 ppm) and to a lesser degree for CH4 (with model–data RMS discrepancies that are between 29 and 38 ppb). Between one of the urban sites and either the rural or suburban reference site, selecting the gradients during periods wherein the reference site is upwind of the urban site further decreases the statistics of the discrepancies in general, though not systematically. In a further attempt to focus on the signature of the city anthropogenic emission in the mole fraction measurements, we use a theoretical ratio of gradients of carbon monoxide (CO) to gradients of CO2 from fossil fuel emissions in the London area to diagnose observation-based fossil fuel CO2 gradients, and compare them with the fossil fuel CO2 gradients simulated with CHIMERE. This estimate increases the consistency between the model and the measurements when considering only one of the two urban sites, even though the two sites are relatively close to each other within the city. While this study evaluates and highlights the merit of different approaches for increasing the consistency between the mesoscale model and the near-ground data, and while it manages to decrease the random component of the analysed model–data discrepancies to an extent that should not be prohibitive to extracting the signal from the London urban emissions, large biases, the sign of which depends on the measurement sites, remain in the final model–data discrepancies. Such biases are likely related to local emissions to which the urban near-ground sites are highly sensitive. This questions our current ability to exploit urban near-ground data for the atmospheric inversion of city emissions based on models at spatial resolution coarser than 2 km. Several measurement and modelling concepts are discussed to overcome this challenge.
Measurement of the composition of ambient air has become increasingly widespread over the last 50 years as the detrimental health effects of some air pollutants have become clearer and requirements ...for these measurements has been embedded in national and international legislation. The aim of this has been not only to assess exposure of the general population to air pollutants but also to assess the effectiveness of abatement strategies to reduce emissions of these pollutants at source. With a rich industrial heritage, the Swansea Valley (South Wales, UK) has long been associated with the refining and production of metal products, especially nickel. Despite a decline in output during the latter part of the twentieth century there is still sufficient activity to prompt a requirement for targeted air monitoring in the area. This is most important for nickel where there is a local history of measured concentrations exceeding legislative target values. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of nickel emissions abatement strategies over the last 50 years by tracking the falling air concentration of nickel over this period. It also demonstrates how the monitoring network in the Swansea Valley has expanded over this time and become significantly more sensitive to nickel emissions. The data presented represents a significant public health achievement - it is likely that the exposure to nickel in air of the population in the Swansea Valley has decreased more than 100-fold over the last 50 years - and reflects the progress in regulation, industrial efficiency, emissions abatement technology and air quality monitoring science achieved during this period.
The effect on population exposure of falling nickel concentrations in air in the Swansea Valley over the last 50 years is assessed.
The monitoring of metals in ambient air has been undertaken for over 40 years on a national basis in the UK. During this period, the UK pollution landscape has continued to evolve in terms of ...emission sources, and the measurement framework for metals in ambient air, the UK Heavy Metals Monitoring Network, has also been subject to significant configuration changes. Therefore, this work provides a timely review of more recent concentration trends in the context of current emission profiles. Overall, throughout this time period, there has been a significant downward trend in the emissions and consequently, the measured concentrations of most metals in UK ambient air. Ambient concentrations were generally found to be well correlated with emission estimates. Analysis of the sensitivity of measured concentrations to emissions suggests that concentrations have fallen faster than the reduction in emission estimates would have predicted at typical median urban background sites.
PDF
