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:We performed RNA-Seq based gene expression analysis of Arabidopsis Col-0 plants grown under axenic and holoxenic conditions in FlowPot system. Holoxenic plants were grown in the presence of soil slurries containing microbial communities derived from natural soils and under axenic condition in presence of heat-killed soil slurries for three weeks. We identified genes differentially enriched in response to presence of microbial communities. Our results suggested that in presence of microbiota there is a differential expression of immunity/defense-related genes in holoxenic compared to axenic plants.
Project description:Background. Coral reef communities are undergoing marked declines due to a variety of stressors including climate change, eutrophication, sedimentation, and disease. The sea fan coral, Gorgonia ventalina, is a tractable study system to investigate the hypothesis that stressors compromise immunity and lead to onset of disease. Functional studies in Gorgonia ventalina immunity indicate that several key pathways and cellular responses are involved in response to natural microbial invaders, although to date the functional and regulatory pathways remain largely un-neffectors, the primary line of defense in invertebrates. This study used short-read sequencing (Illumina GAIIx) to identify genes involved in the response of G. ventalina to a naturally occurring Aplanochytrium spp. parasite. Results. De novo assembly of the G. ventalina transcriptome yielded 90,230 contigs of which 40, 142 were annotated. RNA-Seq analysis revealed 210 differentially expressed genes in sea fans exposed to the Aplanochytrium parasite. Differentially expressed genes involved in immunity include pattern recognition molecules, anti-microbial peptides, wound repair, and reactive oxygen species. Gene enrichment analysis indicated eight biological processes were enriched representing 36 genes, largely involved with protein translation and energy production. Conclusions. This is the first report using high-throughput sequencing to characterize the host response of a coral to a natural pathogen. Furthermore, we have generated the first transcriptome for a soft coral species. G. ventalina is a non-model species for which few sequences had been previously described, and we were able to annotate a large number of genes and describe their potential roles in immune function. Expression analysis revealed genes important in invertebrate innate immune pathways, as well as those whose role is previously un-described in cnidarians. This resource will be valuable in characterizing G. ventalina immune response to infection and co-infection of pathogens in the context of environmental change. RNA seq experiment using Illumina GAIIx to compare sea fans exposed to an Aplanochytrium species compared to controls
Project description:Invertebrate antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) form the first line of defence against pathogenic microbes. Understanding AMP profiles in helminths, their importance to helminth biology, and how they shape microbial communities could reveal novel approaches for anthelmintic and/or antimicrobial development. In this study, we employed a LC-MS/MS peptidomics pipeline to validate a novel integrated homology- and computational-based pipeline for the discovery of helminth AMPs. Our peptidomics pipeline found 60 high-confidence PSMs correlating to 15 high-confidence novel AMP-LPs within Ascaris suum body-cavity fluid supporting the need for further characterisation of these peptides and their functions within helminths.
Project description:Global warming has shifted climate zones poleward or upward. However, understanding the responses and mechanism of microbial community structure and functions relevant to natural climate zone succession is challenged by the high complexity of microbial communities. Here, we examined soil microbial community in three broadleaved forests located in the Wulu Mountain (WLM, temperate climate), Funiu Mountain (FNM, at the border of temperate and subtropical climate zones), or Shennongjia Mountain (SNJ, subtropical climate).Soils were characterized for geochemistry, Illumina sequencing was used to determine microbial taxonomic communities and GeoChips 5.0 were used to determine microbial functional genes.
Project description:The thermophilic Aquificales inhabit and play important biogeochemical roles in the geothermal environments globally. Although intensive studies on physiology, microbial ecology, biochemistry, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of the Aquificales¬ species and Aquificales-containing environmental samples have been conducted, comprehensive understandings about their ecophysiology, especially in the natural niches have been limited. In the present study, an integrated suite of metagenomic, metatranscriptomic and metaproteomic analyses, for the first time, were conducted on a filamentous microbial community from the Apron and Channel Facies (ACF) of CaCO3 (travertine) deposition at Narrow Gauge, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park.