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weedy lamentous algae are displacing an array of larger, ashier shell-building species. That could be bad news for tourism if acidifying waters spark similar changes elsewhere, she says: People are going to be much less likely to pay to go see a bunch of eshy seaweeds. A third emerging approach is to study the evolutionary implications of acidication by pursuing longer and larger experiments. Several teams, for instance, have launched years-long rapid evolution experiments to evaluate how organisms adapt to acidied conditions. In one, a team led by David Hutchins of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles spent nearly 4 years raising about 600 generations of an important marine nitrogen-f ixing bacterium, Trichodesmium, in either current or more
C H E M I ST RY
DAVID MALAKOFF
ricating portions of the protein, linking them together, and then coming up with novel chemical techniques to tie sugar chains on at precise locations. Although the version of EPO the group made has shorter sugar chains than those typically found in organisms, biochemical studies showed that it carried out the same function of stimulating the production of red blood cells. But Peng and others argue that the synVOL 338 SCIENCE
28
5 OCTOBER 2012
www.sciencemag.org
Published by AAAS
New feat. Synthesis of proteins with uniform sugar chains (colored shapes) should aid drug development.
acidic conditions. Bacteria in the acidied tanks greatly stepped up their nitrogenxing activity over time, he reported. And, surprisingly, they didnt revert back to lower activity when moved back into the less acidic tanks, suggesting true adaptive changes, he says. Genetic studies backed up that idea, he reported: Acidication could have major implications for the future of the marine nitrogen cycle by altering bacterial populations. Other researchers are taking to the eld to nd wild populations that have already adapted to acidic waters, which occur naturally in some parts of the ocean. Basically, space is substituted for time, and we just go see if Mother Nature has already created populations that are ne-tuned, says Hofmann, who is helping organize one such
collaboration, the Ocean Margin Ecosystems Group for Acidication Studies (OMEGAS). It is studying sea urchins and mussels along North Americas West Coast, where waters tend to get more acidic along a southto-north gradient from California to Canada. As a result of natural upwelling, the waters off Oregon are like it is already 2100, says Hofmann. She reported preliminary studies showing that sea urchin larvae there tolerate acidic water better than their California cousins. That early picture from OMEGASs crystal ball is good news, Hofmann says, because it suggests that the thorny urchins have the resilience and genetic variation sufcient to tolerate global acidication. Still, she says, thats an experiment shed rather not run.