Project description:Metagenome data from soil samples were collected at 0 to 10cm deep from 2 avocado orchards in Channybearup, Western Australia, in 2024. Amplicon sequence variant (ASV) tables were constructed based on the DADA2 pipeline with default parameters.
Project description:Genome-wide microarray analysis was performed using RNA extracted from soil cultures of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) in the presence or absence of chitin. The vast majority of genes in chitin and amino sugar metabolism, as well as many other genes for carbon and energy, nitrogen and sulfur metabolism, were differentially expressed in response to addition of chitin. Moreover, the gene expressions of eight gene clusters for secondary metabolites were also significantly up-regulated in the chitin amended soil. To reveal the role of a pleiotropic transcriptional regulator, DasR, which has been reported to be involved in regulation of chitin metabolism, antibiotic production and morphological differentiation, the gene expression patterns of wild type and dasR mutant in soil amended with chitin were compared by microarray analysis. The dasR mutation resulted in up-regulation of four antibiotic gene clusters and down-regulation of chitin metabolism.
Project description:Increasing concern about pollution of our environment calls for advanced and rapid methods to estimate ecological toxicity. The use of gene expression microarrays in environmental studies can potentially meet this challenge. We present a novel method to examine soil toxicity. We exposed the collembolan Folsomia candida to soil containing an ecologically relevant cadmium concentration, and found a cumulative total of 1586 differentially expressed transcripts across three exposure durations, including transcripts involved in stress response, detoxification, and hypoxia. Additional enrichment analysis of gene ontology (GO) terms revealed that antibiotic biosynthesis is important at all time points examined. Interestingly, genes involved in the "penicillin and cephalosporin biosynthesis pathway" have never been identified in animals before, but are expressed in F. candida’s tissue. The synthesis of antibiotics can possibly be a response to increased cadmium-induced susceptibility to invading pathogens, which might be caused by repression of genes involved in the immune-system (C-type lectins and Toll receptor). This study presents a first global view on the environmental stress response of an arthropod species exposed to contaminated soil,and provides a mechanistic basis for the development of a gene expression soil quality test. Keywords: cadmium, soil, Collembola, environmental genomics
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:Background: The soil environment is responsible for sustaining most terrestrial plant life on earth, yet we know surprisingly little about the important functions carried out by diverse microbial communities in soil. Soil microbes that inhabit the channels of decaying root systems, the detritusphere, are likely to be essential for plant growth and health, as these channels are the preferred locations of new root growth. Understanding the microbial metagenome of the detritusphere and how it responds to agricultural management such as crop rotations and soil tillage will be vital for improving global food production. Methods: The rhizosphere soils of wheat and chickpea growing under + and - decaying root were collected for metagenomics sequencing. A gene catalogue was established by de novo assembling metagenomic sequencing. Genes abundance was compared between bulk soil and rhizosphere soils under different treatments. Conclusions: The study describes the diversity and functional capacity of a high-quality soil microbial metagenome. The results demonstrate the contribution of the microbiome from decaying root in determining the metagenome of developing root systems, which is fundamental to plant growth, since roots preferentially inhabit previous root channels. Modifications in root microbial function through soil management, can ultimately govern plant health, productivity and food security.
Project description:Appropriate soil nutrient management is critical for modern Canola (Brassica napus L.) varieties and hybrids to meet their yield potentials. Canola fields are typically supplemented by the application of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and to a lesser extent, potassium fertilizers to maximize yield, while deficiency in these key macronutrients can result in severe growth phenotypes and significant yield losses. To date, our understanding of canola nutrient deficiency responses is disparate, encompassing a large number of varieties using a variety of technologies and assessment criteria, with seminal understanding of the overlaps between nutrient deficiencies responses, having not yet been defined, placing limitations on our ability to increase the nutrient efficiency of this critical oil seed. To address this, we performed a comparative quantitative proteomics analysis of both shoot and root tissue harvested from soil-grown Canola plants experiencing either nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, or sulphur deficiency. Our results show intriguing similarities in plant responses to deficiency in multiple nutrients. We also find very distinct proteome-level changes between shoot and root tissue of plants experiencing nutrient stress, suggesting the presence of highly organ-specific responses to nutrient deficiency. Our results pave the way for a more comprehensive understanding of the shared and distinct response mechanisms of plants to multiple essential nutrients.
Project description:Genome-wide microarray analysis was performed using RNA extracted from soil cultures of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) in the presence or absence of chitin. The vast majority of genes in chitin and amino sugar metabolism, as well as many other genes for carbon and energy, nitrogen and sulfur metabolism, were differentially expressed in response to addition of chitin. Moreover, the gene expressions of eight gene clusters for secondary metabolites were also significantly up-regulated in the chitin amended soil. To reveal the role of a pleiotropic transcriptional regulator, DasR, which has been reported to be involved in regulation of chitin metabolism, antibiotic production and morphological differentiation, the gene expression patterns of wild type and dasR mutant in soil amended with chitin were compared by microarray analysis. The dasR mutation resulted in up-regulation of four antibiotic gene clusters and down-regulation of chitin metabolism. A study using total RNA extracted from soil cultures of Streptomyces ceolicolor A3(2). A whole genome microarray of S. coelicolor (NimbleGen Custom Prokaryotic Gene Expression 72K 4-plex Arrays) was designed and manufactured by Roche (Roche NimbleGen, Madison, WI). Each array contained four sets of 8 sequence-specific 60-mer probes per gene corresponding to 7825 genes from the S. coelicolor A3(2) genome.
Project description:Soil transplant serves as a proxy to simulate climate change in realistic climate regimes. Here, we assessed the effects of climate warming and cooling on soil microbial communities, which are key drivers in Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, four years after soil transplant over large transects from northern (N site) to central (NC site) and southern China (NS site) and vice versa. Four years after soil transplant, soil nitrogen components, microbial biomass, community phylogenetic and functional structures were altered. Microbial functional diversity, measured by a metagenomic tool named GeoChip, and phylogenetic diversity are increased with temperature, while microbial biomass were similar or decreased. Nevertheless, the effects of climate change was overridden by maize cropping, underscoring the need to disentangle them in research. Mantel tests and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) demonstrated that vegetation, climatic factors (e.g., temperature and precipitation), soil nitrogen components and CO2 efflux were significantly correlated to the microbial community composition. Further investigation unveiled strong correlations between carbon cycling genes and CO2 efflux in bare soil but not cropped soil, and between nitrogen cycling genes and nitrification, which provides mechanistic understanding of these microbe-mediated processes and empowers an interesting possibility of incorporating bacterial gene abundance in greenhouse gas emission modeling.