Project description:Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a crucial component of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, acting as the major link between primary production and higher trophic levels with an annual predator demand of up to 470 million tonnes. It also acts as an ecosystem engineer, affecting carbon sequestration and recycling iron and nitrogen, and has increasing importance as a commercial product in the aquaculture and health industries. Here we describe the creation of a de novo assembled head transcriptome for E. superba. As an example of its potential as a molecular resource, we relate its exploitation in identifying and characterizing numerous genes related to the circadian clock in E. superba, including the major components of the central feedback loop. We have made the transcriptome openly accessible for a wider audience of ecologists, molecular biologists, evolutionary geneticists, and others in a user-friendly format at SuperbaSE, hosted at http://www.krill.le.ac.uk.
Project description:The diversity and ecological function of microorganisms associated with Euphausia superba, still remain unknown. This study identified 75 microbial isolates from E. superba, that is 42 fungi and 33 bacteria including eight actinobacteria. And all the isolates showed NaF tolerance in conformity with the nature of the fluoride krill. The maximum concentration was 10%, 3% and 0.5% NaF for actinobacteria, bacteria and fungi, respectively. The results demonstrated that 82.4% bacteria, 81.3% actinobacteria and 12.3% fungi produced antibacterial metabolites against pathogenic bacteria without NaF; the MIC value reached to 3.9??g/mL. In addition, more than 60% fungi produced cytotoxic metabolites against A549, MCF-7 or K562 cell lines. The presence of NaF led to a reduction in the producing antimicrobial compounds, but stimulated the production of cytotoxic compounds. Furthermore, seven cytotoxic compounds were identified from the metabolites of Penicillium citrinum OUCMDZ4136 under 0.5% NaF, with the IC50 values of 3.6-13.1??M for MCF-7, 2.2-19.8??M for A549 and 5.4-15.4??M for K562, respectively. These results indicated that the krill microbes exert their chemical defense by producing cytotoxic compounds to the mammalians and antibacterial compounds to inhibiting the pathogenic bacteria.
Project description:Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a key species in the Southern Ocean with an estimated biomass between 100 and 500 million tonnes. Changes in krill population viability would have catastrophic effect on the Antarctic ecosystem. One looming threat due to elevated levels of anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is ocean acidification (lowering of sea water pH by CO2 dissolving into the oceans). The genetics of Antarctic krill has long been of scientific interest for both for the analysis of population structure and analysis of functional genetics. However, the genetic resources available for the species are relatively modest. We have developed the most advanced genetic database on Euphausia superba, KrillDB, which includes comprehensive data sets of former and present transcriptome projects. In particular, we have built a de novo transcriptome assembly using more than 360 million Illumina sequence reads generated from larval krill including individuals subjected to different CO2 levels. The database gives access to: 1) the full list of assembled genes and transcripts; 2) their level of similarity to transcripts and proteins from other species; 3) the predicted protein domains contained within each transcript; 4) their predicted GO terms; 5) the level of expression of each transcript in the different larval stages and CO2 treatments. All references to external entities (sequences, domains, GO terms) are equipped with a link to the appropriate source database. Moreover, the software implements a full-text search engine that makes it possible to submit free-form queries. KrillDB represents the first large-scale attempt at classifying and annotating the full krill transcriptome. For this reason, we believe it will constitute a cornerstone of future approaches devoted to physiological and molecular study of this key species in the Southern Ocean food web.
Project description:Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a high latitude pelagic organism which plays a central role in the Southern Ocean ecosystem. E. superba shows daily and seasonal rhythms in physiology and behaviour, which are synchronized with the environmental cycles of its habitat. Recently, the main components of the krill circadian machinery have been identified and characterized. However, the exact mechanisms through which the endogenous timing system operates the control and regulation of the overt rhythms remains only partially understood. Here we investigate the involvement of the circadian clock in the temporal orchestration of gene expression by using a newly developed version of a krill microarray platform. The analysis of transcriptome data from krill exposed to both light-dark cycles (LD 18:6) and constant darkness (DD), has led to the identification of 1,564 putative clock-controlled genes. A remarkably large proportion of such genes, including several clock components (clock, period, cry2, vrille, and slimb), show oscillatory expression patterns in DD, with a periodicity shorter than 24?hours. Energy-storage pathways appear to be regulated by the endogenous clock in accordance with their ecological relevance in daily energy managing and overwintering. Our results provide the first representation of the krill circadian transcriptome under laboratory, free-running conditions.
Project description:BACKGROUND: Little is known about the genome sequences of Euphausiacea (krill) although these crustaceans are abundant components of the pelagic ecosystems in all oceans and used for aquaculture and pharmaceutical industry. This study reports the results of an expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing project from different tissues of Euphausia superba (the Antarctic krill). RESULTS: We have constructed and sequenced five cDNA libraries from different Antarctic krill tissues: head, abdomen, thoracopods and photophores. We have identified 1.770 high-quality ESTs which were assembled into 216 overlapping clusters and 801 singletons resulting in a total of 1.017 non-redundant sequences. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis was performed to quantify and validate the expression levels of ten genes presenting different EST countings in krill tissues. In addition, bioinformatic screening of the non-redundant E. superba sequences identified 69 microsatellite containing ESTs. Clusters, consensuses and related similarity and gene ontology searches were organized in a dedicated E. superba database http://krill.cribi.unipd.it. CONCLUSION: We defined the first tissue transcriptional signatures of E. superba based on functional categorization among the examined tissues. The analyses of annotated transcripts showed a higher similarity with genes from insects with respect to Malacostraca possibly as an effect of the limited number of Malacostraca sequences in the public databases. Our catalogue provides for the first time a genomic tool to investigate the biology of the Antarctic krill.