A 115‐year coral record from Kenya has been found to preserve the history of rainfall anomalies in East Africa in relation to global warming‐induced Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) variability. The coral IOD index demonstrates a dominantly decadal periodicity in the early part of the 20th century. This low‐frequency IOD occurred more frequently before 1924 with mostly quasi‐biennial ranging from 18 months to 3 years events since 1960. The mode shift has also coincided with an intensified coupling with Indian summer monsoon rainfall. We suggest that a warming of the western Indian Ocean, which has attenuated and replaced the El Niño/Southern Oscillation effect over the Indian Ocean, has driven the observed shift.

Pathogenic bacteria remove iron from the haem of host tissues and use it as a catalytic center of many enzymes. Haem uptake by pathogenic bacteria is facilitated by the membrane-integrated haem importer, which belongs to the type II ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter. Here we present crystal structures of Burkholderia cenocepacia haem importer BhuUV complexed with the periplasmic haem-binding protein BhuT and in the absence of BhuT. The transmembrane helices of these structures show an inward-facing conformation, in which the cytoplasmic gate of the haem translocation pathway is completely open. Since this conformation is found in both the haem- and nucleotide-free form, the structure of BhuUV-T provides the post-translocation state and the missing piece in the transport cycle of the type II importer. Structural comparison with the outward-facing conformation reported for the haem importer ortholog HmuUV from Yersenia pestis gives mechanistic insights into conformational transitions and haem secretion during the haem transport cycle.

Protein engineering has great potential for devising multifunctional recombinant proteins to serve as next-generation protein therapeutics, but it often requires drastic modifications of the parental protein scaffolds e.g., additional domains at the N/C-terminus or replacement of a domain by another. A discovery platform system, called RaPID (Random non-standard Peptides Integrated Discovery) system, has enabled rapid discovery of small de novo macrocyclic peptides that bind a target protein with high binding specificity and affinity. Capitalizing on the optimized binding properties of the RaPID-derived peptides, here we show that RaPID-derived pharmacophore sequences can be readily implanted into surface-exposed loops on recombinant proteins and maintain both the parental peptide binding function(s) and the host protein function. We refer to this protein engineering method as lasso-grafting and demonstrate that it can endow specific binding capacity toward various receptors into a diverse set of scaffolds that includes IgG, serum albumin, and even capsid proteins of adeno-associated virus, enabling us to rapidly formulate and produce bi-, tri-, and even tetra-specific binder molecules.

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which governs climate variability not only over the Indian Ocean but also globally, produces precipitation anomalies in the East African short rain period from October to November. These precipitation anomalies were recorded in annual bands from a coral core obtained in the Malindi Marine Park, Kenya. A signature of the IOD in precipitation was detected in the coral core by luminescence intensity under UV light and by oxygen isotope values dated to January, a few months after the short rain period. Anomalies of the oxygen isotope values correlated well with high and low precipitation, which were related to positive and negative IOD indices, respectively. This study suggests that the coral annual band record is effective for reconstructing IOD events and should be able to reconstruct the IOD record prior to instrumental observations.