Project description:The toxicity and toxicogenomics of selected anatase and rutile nanoparticles (NP) and bulk titanium dioxide (TiO2) particles were evaluated in the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Results indicated that bulk or nano-TiO2 particles were slightly toxic to soil nematode C. elegans, as measured by reproduction EC50 values ranging from 4 to 32 mg/L. Whole-genome microarray results indicated that the regulation of glutathione-S-transferase gst-3, cytochrome P450 cypp33-c11, stress resistance regulator scl-1, oxidoreductase wah-1, and embryonic development pod-2 genes were significantly affected by nano-sized and bulk TiO2 particles. More specifically, it was determined that anatase particles exerted a greater effect on metabolic pathways, whereas rutile particles had a greater effect on developmental processes. The up-regulation of the pod-2 gene corroborated the phenotypic effect observed in the reproduction test. Our results demonstrated that C. elegans is a good genomic model for nano-TiO2 toxicity assessment.
Project description:Purpose: Deconstructing the soil microbiome into reduced-complexity functional modules represents a novel method of microbiome analysis. The goals of this study are to confirm differences in transcriptomic patterns among five functional module consortia. Methods: mRNA profiles of 3 replicates each of functional module enrichments of soil inoculum in M9 media with either 1) xylose, 2) n-acetylglucosamine, 3) glucose and gentamycin, 4) xylan, or 5) pectin were generated by sequencing using an Illumina platform (GENEWIZ performed sequencing). Sequence reads that passed quality filters were aligned to a soil metagenome using Burrows Wheeler Aligner. Resulting SAM files were converted to raw reads using HTSeq, and annotated using Uniref90 or EGGNOG databases. Results: To reduce the size of the RNA-Seq counts table and increase its computational tractability, transcripts containing a minimum of 75 total counts, but no more than 3 zero counts, across the 15 samples were removed. The subsequent dataset was normalized using DESeq2, resulting in a dataset consisting of 6947 unique transcripts across the 15 samples, and 185,920,068 reads. We identified gene categories that were enriched in a sample type relative to the overall dataset using Fisher’s exact test. Conclusions: our dataset confirms that the functional module consortia generated from targeted enrichments of a starting soil inoculum had distinct functional trends by enrichment type.
Project description:Purpose: Identify whole lung gene expression patterns in a house dust mite model of severe asthma Methods: Lung gene expression profiles of 10 week old BALB/c female mice were generated by ribosome-depleted, 100 nt, paired-end, stranded RNA-seq with Illumina HiSeq v4. Sequence reads were analyzed with Sailfish-cir to identify linear RNA transcripts and circular RNAs. Differential expression of linear RNAs was assessed with Deseq2 . QRT–PCR validation was performed using TaqMan and SYBR Green methods. Results: 100 million sequence reads per sample were mapped to the mouse genome (build mm10) using Sailfish-cir to identify linear and circular RNA transcripts. Pathway analysis of differentially expressed genes identified upregulation of gene sets for human Th17 high, Th2 low asthma. An LNA/DNA miR-155 antagonist upregulated interferon signaling pathways suggesting a general antiinflammatory effect of LNA/DNA oligos in the lung. Dexamethasone did not consistently reduce expression of Th2 or Th17 biomarker genes. Conclusions: Cyclic di-GMP plus house dust mite allergens elicited a Th2 low, Th17 high gene expression profile that was not consistently modified by treatment with dexamethasone.