Dataset Information

Metatranscriptomic analysis of the response of river biofilms to pharmaceutical products, using anonymous DNA microarrays.

ABSTRACT: Pharmaceutical products are released at low concentrations into aquatic environments following domestic wastewater treatment. Such low concentrations have been shown to induce transcriptional responses in microorganisms, which could have consequences on aquatic ecosystem dynamics. In order to test if these transcriptional responses could also be observed in complex river microbial communities, biofilm reactors were inoculated with water from two rivers of differing trophic statuses and subsequently treated with environmentally relevant doses (ng/liter to microg/liter range) of four pharmaceuticals (erythromycin [ER], gemfibrozil [GM], sulfamethazine [SN], and sulfamethoxazole [SL]). To monitor functional gene expression, we constructed a 9,600-feature anonymous DNA microarray platform onto which cDNA from the biofilms was hybridized. Pharmaceutical treatments induced both positive and negative transcriptional responses from biofilm microorganisms. For instance, ER induced the transcription of several stress, transcription, and replication genes, while GM, a lipid regulator, induced transcriptional responses from several genes involved in lipid metabolism. SN caused shifts in genes involved in energy production and conversion, and SL induced responses from a range of cell membrane and outer envelope genes, which in turn could affect biofilm formation. The results presented here demonstrate for the first time that low concentrations of small molecules can induce transcriptional changes in a complex microbial community. The relevance of these results also demonstrates the usefulness of anonymous DNA microarrays for large-scale metatranscriptomic studies of communities from differing aquatic ecosystems.

SUBMITTER: Yergeau E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2918961 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Metatranscriptomic analysis of the response of river biofilms to pharmaceutical products, using anonymous DNA microarrays.

Yergeau Etienne E Lawrence John R JR Waiser Marley J MJ Korber Darren R DR Greer Charles W CW

Applied and environmental microbiology 20100618 16

Pharmaceutical products are released at low concentrations into aquatic environments following domestic wastewater treatment. Such low concentrations have been shown to induce transcriptional responses in microorganisms, which could have consequences on aquatic ecosystem dynamics. In order to test if these transcriptional responses could also be observed in complex river microbial communities, biofilm reactors were inoculated with water from two rivers of differing trophic statuses and subsequen ...[more]

PMID: 20562274

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND: DNA Microarrays are regarded as a valuable tool for basic and applied research in microbiology. However, for many industrially important microorganisms the lack of commercially available microarrays still hampers physiological research. Exemplarily, our understanding of protein folding and secretion in the yeast Pichia pastoris is presently widely dependent on conclusions drawn from analogies to Saccharomyces cerevisiae. To close this gap for a yeast species employed for its high capacity to produce heterologous proteins, we developed full genome DNA microarrays for P. pastoris and analyzed the unfolded protein response (UPR) in this yeast species, as compared to S. cerevisiae. RESULTS: By combining the partially annotated gene list of P. pastoris with de novo gene finding a list of putative open reading frames was generated for which an oligonucleotide probe set was designed using the probe design tool TherMODO (a thermodynamic model-based oligoset design optimizer). To evaluate the performance of the novel array design, microarrays carrying the oligo set were hybridized with samples from treatments with dithiothreitol (DTT) or a strain overexpressing the UPR transcription factor HAC1, both compared with a wild type strain in normal medium as untreated control. DTT treatment was compared with literature data for S. cerevisiae, and revealed similarities, but also important differences between the two yeast species. Overexpression of HAC1, the most direct control for UPR genes, resulted in significant new understanding of this important regulatory pathway in P. pastoris, and generally in yeasts. CONCLUSION: The differences observed between P. pastoris and S. cerevisiae underline the importance of DNA microarrays for industrial production strains. P. pastoris reacts to DTT treatment mainly by the regulation of genes related to chemical stimulus, electron transport and respiration, while the overexpression of HAC1 induced many genes involved in translation, ribosome biogenesis, and organelle biosynthesis, indicating that the regulatory events triggered by DTT treatment only partially overlap with the reactions to overexpression of HAC1. The high reproducibility of the results achieved with two different oligo sets is a good indication for their robustness, and underlines the importance of less stringent selection of regulated features, in order to avoid a large number of false negative results.

Project description:Manufactured Zn oxide nanoparticle (ZnO-NP) are extensively used world-wide in personal care and industrial products and are important contaminants of aquatic environments. To understand the overall impact of ZnO-NP contamination on aquatic ecosystems, investigation of their toxicity on aquatic biofilms is of particular consequence, given biofilms are known sinks for NP contaminants. In order to assess alterations in the functional activity of river microbial biofilm communities as a result of environmentally-relevant ZnO-NP exposure, biofilms were exposed to ionic zinc salt or ZnOPs that were uncoated (hydrophilic), coated with silane (hydrophobic) or stearic acid (lipophilic), at a total concentration of 188 μg l-1 Zn. ICP-MS analyses of biofilms indicated ZnO-NP concentrated in the biofilms, with hydrophilic, hydrophobic, and lipophilic treatments reaching 0.310, 0.250, and 0.220 μg Zn cm-2 of biofilm, respectively, while scanning transmission X-ray microspectroscopy (STXM) analyses of biofilms confirmed that Zn was extensively- and differentially-sorbed to biofilm material. Microbial community composition, based on taxonomic affiliation of mRNA sequences and enumeration of protozoa and micrometazoa, was not affected by these treatments, and the total transcriptional response of biofilms to all experimental exposures was not indicative of a global toxic-response, as cellular processes involved in general cell maintenance and housekeeping were abundantly transcribed. Transcripts related to major biological processes, including photosynthesis, energy metabolism, nitrogen metabolism, lipid metabolism, membrane transport, antibiotic resistance and xenobiotic degradation, were differentially expressed in Zn-exposures relative to controls. Notably, transcripts involved in nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis were decreased in abundance in response to Zn-exposure, while transcripts related to lipid degradation and motility-chemotaxis were increased, suggesting a potential role of Zn in biofilm dissolution. ZnO-NP and ionic Zn exposures elicited generally overlapping transcriptional responses, however hydrophilic and hydrophobic ZnO-NPs induced a more distinct effect than that of lipophilic ZnO-NPs, which had an effect similar to that of low ionic Zn exposure. While the physical coating of ZnO-NP may not induce specific toxicity observable at a community level, alteration of ecologically important processes of photosynthesis and nitrogen cycling are an important potential consequence of exposure to ionic Zn and Zn oxides.

Dataset Information

Metatranscriptomic analysis of the response of river biofilms to pharmaceutical products, using anonymous DNA microarrays.

Publications

Metatranscriptomic analysis of the response of river biofilms to pharmaceutical products, using anonymous DNA microarrays.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets