Stockbridge Director and Professor Baoshan Xing has made new and award-winning contributions to environmental science and soil chemistry.
Soil Chemistry and Genetic Proliferation of Antibiotic Resistance in Soils
His collaboratively published article, on methods for slowing the production of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) in soils, has been selected as the cover article for the March/April 2023 issue of ACS Environmental, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
The presence of ARG in soil microbiota can be transferred to plant microbiotica and can potentially spread undesirable anti-microbial resistance traits to human food supplies.
Xing and his colleagues focused on how this problem can affected by moderating the amount of pyroligenous acids (PA) added to the soil as woody char. Using E.coli cells as a model, they demonstrated exactly why higher amounts of PA work to inhibit the transfer of ARG at a cellular level.
The full paper, "Hormetic Effect of Pyroligneous Acids on Conjugative Transfer of. Plasmid-mediated Multi-antibiotic Resistance Genes within Bacterial Genus" can be found in ACS Environmental Au 2023, 3, 105-120.
2023 CREST Excellent Paper Award on Safety of Nanomaterials in the Environment
Dr. Xing was also just honored with the 2023 Excellent Paper Award from Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology (CREST).
The article, "Engineered Nanomaterials in the Environment: Are They Safe?" was published in 2021. It was selected for the 2023 award not only for its overall quality, but also because it has been one of the most-read and most-cited papers published in the last two years.
As part of the award, the paper will be made freely available to the public for a full year, on the CREST website.
This research extends Dr. Xing's focus on the remediation of polluted soil with biochar, and is one of the reasons why he has received worldwide recognition as a "Most Highly Cited Author" status for nine consecutive years.
Stockbridge students have the opportunity to participate in ongoing faculty research, at the University consistently recognized as #1 in the nation and #5 in the world for Best Agricultural Sciences.
Dr. Xing was recently ranked #15 in the U.S., and #25 in the world, for Best Scientists in Environmental Sciences, and is recognized as one of the Top 100 in the U.S. for Best Scientists in Chemistry. (Research.com)