Project description:The association between soil microbes and plant roots is present in all natural and agricultural environments. Microbes can be beneficial, pathogenic, or neutral to the host plant development and adaptation to abiotic or biotic stresses. Progress in investigating the functions and changes in microbial communities in diverse environments have been rapidly developing in recent years, but the changes in root function is still largely understudied. The aim of this study was to determine how soil bacteria influence maize root transcription and microRNAs (miRNAs) populations in a controlled inoculation of known microbes over a defined time course. At each time point after inoculation of the maize inbred line B73 with ten bacterial isolates, DNA and RNA were isolated from roots. The V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified from the DNA and sequenced with the Illumina MiSeq platform. Amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene indicated that most of the microbes successfully colonized maize roots. The colonization was dynamic over time and varied with the specific bacterial isolate. Small RNA sequencing and mRNA-Seq was done to capture changes in the root transcriptome from 0.5 to 480 hours after inoculation. The transcriptome and small RNA analyses revealed epigenetic and transcriptional changes in roots due to the microbial inoculation. This research provides the foundational data needed to understand how plant roots interact with bacterial partners and will be used to develop predictive models for root response to bacteria.
Project description:Custom made functional gene micoarray (E-FGA) consisting of 13,056 mRNA-enriched anonymus microbial clones from dirverse microbial communities to profile microbial gene transcript in agricultural soils with low and high flux of N2O. A total of 96 genes displayed expression that differed significantly between low and high N2O emitting soils. Creation and validation of an cDNA microarray from environmental microbial mRNA, to use as a monitoring tool for microbial gene expression Microbial expression profiles comparing two high N2O-emitting sites (3 soil replicates and microarrays each) and two low N2O-emitting sites (3 soil replicates and microarray each) from sugarcane site in Mackay, Australia
Project description:Salvia hispanica L. (chia) is a member of the mint family that is cultivated for its seeds. The majority of seed content in chia is comprised of omega fatty acids. Furthermore, chia seeds are also rich in fiber and minerals. The human health potential of chia seeds have driven studies of dietary effects, however there is little genetic or genomic studies available. In this study we obtained RNA from seeds, shoots, cotyledons, leaf primordia, nodes, racemes, and flower tissues from different developmental stages to generate an expression atlas for chia. RNA was sequenced on an Illumina Hiseq 2500. Sequence reads were assembled de novo to produce transcripts. Sequence reads were aligned to the chia transcriptome assembly to generate counts for each tissue type. Differentially expressed transcripts were determined for each tissue type.