Project description:Heat-evolved Symbiodiniaceae can improve the physiological performances of their coral host under heat stress, but their gene expression responses to heat remained unknown. We explore here the transcriptomic basis of differential thermal stress responses between in hospite wild-type and heat-evolved Cladocopium proliferum strains and their coral host Platygyra daedealea.
Project description:This pilot study enrolled 9 GWI (Gulf War Illness) cases identified from the Department of Veterans Affairs GWI registry, and 11 sedentary control veterans who had not been deployed to the Persian Gulf and were matched to cases by sex, body mass index (BMI) and age.<br>We exposed GWI patients and matched controls to an exercise challenge to explore differences in immune cell function measured by classic immune assays and gene expression profiling.
Project description:Samples are from a screening experiment on 5 laboratory cultures of the coral endosymbiont: Symbiodiniaceae (Symbiodinium linuchae, Breviolum psygmophilum, Durusdinium trenchii, Effrenium voratum and Fugacium kawagutii). Samples are also from a thermal stress experiment (increased temperatures from 26 to 32 degrees C) carried out on Durusdinium trenchii and Cladocopium goreaui, two common coral endosymbionts on the Great Barrier Reef. All samples were collected on Markes Tenax TA thermal desorption tubes.
Lawson, C.A., Possell, M., Seymour, J.R., Raina, J.B. and Suggett, D.J., 2019. Coral endosymbionts (Symbiodiniaceae) emit species-specific volatilomes that shift when exposed to thermal stress. Scientific reports, 9(1), pp.1-11.
Project description:Gulf War Illness (GWI) is a diverse set of neurologic and systemic symptoms affecting many veterans deployed in the Persian Gulf War, but its etiology is unknown and treatment options are limited. Veterans with GWI were exposed to a variety of agents, including pyridostigmine bromide, used as prophylaxis against nerve agents, intranasal lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from desert sandstorms, and chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) from combat. Here, we investigated the gene expression effects of these three Gulf War-related exposures (GWE) in adult rat frontal cortex (FC) and lateral amygdala (LA) using Clariom S microarrays. We found 138 transcript clusters (TCs) in LA and 38 TCs in FC differentially expressed between the group with GWE (n=2) compared to naïve controls (n=3, FDR <10%). These TCs included genes involved in inflammation such as Fosb (pmin=1.02e-5) and Junb (pmin=1.13e-5). Gene ontology analysis found enrichment of differentially expressed genes in “T cell differentiation” (pmin=8.71e-5) and “response to organophosphorus” (pmin=1.74e-8), among other categories. Lastly, we found that prophylactic treatment with rosiglitazone, a PPAR- agonist, reduced gene expression changes associated with GWE (in LA: 115/138 [83.3%] TCs with reduced changes, χ2=61.33, p=4.82e-15). These results suggest our rat model of GWI is associated with gene expression changes related to neuroinflammation and that some of these molecular changes may be mitigated by rosiglitazone prophylaxis.