Project description:This trial studies the genetic analysis of blood and tissue samples from patients with cancer that has spread to other anatomic sites (advanced) or is no longer responding to treatment. Studying these samples in the laboratory may help doctors to learn how genes affect cancer and how they affect a person’s response to treatment.
Project description:The aim of this study was to investigate ecotypic adaptation in Holcus lanatus in plants selected from two widely contrasting habitats, acid bog (pH 3.5) or limestone quarry spoil (pH 7.5), using a transcriptome based analysis approach including sequence analysis of root associated Glomeromycota. Differential gene expression in root and shoot of naturally occurring H. lanatus ecotypes, selected from either habitat and grown in a full factorial reciprocal soil transplant experiment were investigated and ecotype specific SNPs identified.
Project description:Tree ring features are affected by environmental factors and therefore are the basis for dendrochronological studies to reconstruct past environmental conditions. Oak wood often provides the data for these studies because of the durability particularly of oak heartwood and, hence the availability of samples spanning long time periods of the distant past. Wood formation is regulated in part by epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation. Studies in the methylation state of DNA preserved in oak heartwood thus could identify epigenetic tree ring features informing on past environmental conditions. We investigated the feasibility of such studies using heartwood samples core-drilled from the trunks of standing oak trees spanning the AD 1776-2014. Heartwood contains little DNA, and large amounts of phenolic compounds known to hinder the preparation of high-throughput sequencing libraries. We sequenced whole-genome and DNA methylome libraries for oak heartwood up to 100 and 50 years of age, respectively. However, only 56 genomic regions with sufficient coverage for quantitative methylation analysis were identified, suggesting that the high-throughput sequencing of DNA will be in principal feasible for wood formed <100 years ago is impeded by the reduction in library complexity caused by the bisulfite treatment used to generate the oak methylome.
