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Objectives: To evaluate (1) the state of the art in sustainability research and (2) the outcomes of professionals’ adherence to guideline recommendations in medical practice. Design: Systematic review. Data sources: Searches were conducted until August 2015 in MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) and the Guidelines International Network (GIN) library. A snowball strategy, in which reference sections of other reviews and of included papers were searched, was used to identify additional papers. Eligibility criteria: Studies needed to be focused on sustainability and on professionals’ adherence to clinical practice guidelines in medical care. Studies had to include at least 2 measurements: 1 before (PRE) or immediately after implementation (EARLY POST) and 1 measurement longer than 1 year after active implementation (LATE POST). Results: The search retrieved 4219 items, of which 14 studies met the inclusion criteria, involving 18 sustainability evaluations. The mean timeframe between the end of active implementation and the sustainability evaluation was 2.6 years (minimum 1.5–maximum 7.0). The studies were heterogeneous with respect to their methodology. Sustainability was considered to be successful if performance in terms of professionals’ adherence was fully maintained in the late postimplementation phase. Long-term sustainability of professionals’ adherence was reported in 7 out of 18 evaluations, adherence was not sustained in 6 evaluations, 4 evaluations showed mixed sustainability results and in 1 evaluation it was unclear whether the professional adherence was sustained. Conclusions: (2) Professionals’ adherence to a clinical practice guideline in medical care decreased after more than 1 year after implementation in about half of the cases. (1) Owing to the limited number of studies, the absence of a uniform definition, the high risk of bias, and the mixed results of studies, no firm conclusion about the sustainability of professionals’ adherence to guidelines in medical practice can be drawn. Results Systematic review sustainabilityFor this review, 4219 items were retrieved and screened based on title and abstract, 185 studies were assessed based on full text reading and 14 studies were selected for analyses. This data file contains the endnote file with all items and the classification.

The production of genetically modified (GM) animals is an emerging technique that could potentially impact the livestock and pharmaceutical industries. Currently, food products derived from GM animals have not yet entered the market whilst two pharmaceutical products have. The objective of this paper is twofold: first it aims to explore the socio-economic drivers affecting the use of GM animals and, second, to review the risks and benefits from the point of view of the life sciences. A scoping study was conducted to assess research relevant to understanding the main drivers influencing the adoption of GM applications and their potential risks and benefits. Public and producers’ acceptance, public policies, human health, animal welfare, environmental impact and sustainability are considered as the main factors affecting the application of GM animal techniques in livestock and pharmaceutical chains. Bio-based and Applied Economics, Vol 1 No 3 (2012): Towards a Sustainable Bio-economy: economic issues and policy challenges

Biological wastewater treatment is based on the use of microorganisms capable of intense metabolic activity that results in the removal of a large proportion of organic and inorganic contaminants. Given copious amounts of energy-dense organic molecules such as lipids accumulated by the microbial biomass, chemical energy may be directly harnessed from this for biofuel production. Here, lipid accumulating organism (LAO)-enriched microbial communities were studied using a molecular eco-systems biology approach. This involved the development of necessary methodologies including a new comprehensive biomolecular extraction method, yielding high-quality DNA, RNA, proteins and metabolites, as well as bioinformatic approaches for integrating and analysing the derived high-throughput genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data. At the inception of the project, a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) system with a strong presence of LAOs especially during winter months, i.e. the Schifflange WWTP (Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg), was identified and selected for further study. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing highlighted the presence of ubiquitous lipid accumulating bacteria closely related to Candidatus Microthrix parvicella which increase in abundance from autumn to winter over other highly abundant community members belonging to Alkanindiges spp. and Acinetobacter spp. In order to elucidate compositional, genetic and functional differences between autumn and winter LAO communities, a comparative integrative omic analysis was carried out on rationally selected autumn and winter LAO community samples. The results from metabolomic/lipidomic analyses between intra- and extracellular compartments support previous models of uptake of unprocessed long chain fatty acids (LCFAs) from the wastewater environment and their storage as triacyglycerols within LAOs. Furthermore, a tailored computational framework for the integration of multi-omic datasets into reconstructed community-wide metabolic networks and models was developed. The resulting networks provide overviews of functional capacity of the sampled LAO communities by incorporating gene copy numbers, transcript levels and protein frequency across the two studied environmental conditions. The identification of genes overexpressed, strongly associated with a specific season and/or possessing a high clustering coefficient suggests the existence of keystone genes, analogous to keystone species in species interaction networks. Examples of such keystone genes in the context of the LAO communities include genes coding for proteins involved in nitrogen and glycerolipid metabolism. The existence of such keystone genes opens up exciting possibilities for prediction and control strategies of microbial communities at the dawn of the field of Eco-Systems Biology.