Project description:Monitoring microbial communities can aid in understanding the state of these habitats. Environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques provide efficient and comprehensive monitoring by capturing broader diversity. Besides structural profiling, eDNA methods allow the study of functional profiles, encompassing the genes within the microbial community. In this study, three methodologies were compared for functional profiling of microbial communities in estuarine and coastal sites in the Bay of Biscay. The methodologies included inference from 16S metabarcoding data using Tax4Fun, GeoChip microarrays, and shotgun metagenomics.
Project description:Marine cyanobacteria are thought to be the most sensitive of the phytoplankton groups to copper toxicity, yet little is known of the transcriptional response of marine Synechococcus to copper shock. Global transcriptional response to two levels of copper shock was assayed in both a coastal and an open ocean strain of marine Synechococcus using whole genome expression microarrays. Both strains showed an osmoregulatory-like response, perhaps as a result of increasing membrane permeability. This could have implications for marine carbon cycling if copper shock leads to dissolved organic carbon leakage in Synechococcus. The two strains additionally showed a reduction in photosynthetic gene transcripts. Contrastingly, the open ocean strain showed a typical stress response whereas the coastal strain exhibited a more specific oxidative or heavy metal type response. In addition, the coastal strain activated more regulatory elements and transporters, many of which are not conserved in other marine Synechococcus strains and may have been acquired by horizontal gene transfer. Thus, tolerance to copper shock in some marine Synechococcus may in part be a result of an increased ability to sense and respond in a more specialized manner.
Project description:Tris(4-chlorophenyl)methane (TCPM) and tris(4-chlorophenyl)methanol (TCPMOH) are two marine pollutants of emerging concern, found in marine mammals and coastal bird populations. Here, we assess the response to these compounds due to acute exposures in zebrafish embryos (from 96-100 hours post fertilization).
