Project description:The fate of the carbon stocked in permafrost soils following global warming and permafrost thaw is of major concern in view of the potential for increased CH4 and CO2 emissions from these soils. Complex carbon compound degradation and greenhouse gas emissions are due to soil microbial communities, but their composition and functional potential in permafrost soils are largely unknown. Here, a 2 m deep permafrost and its overlying active layer soil were subjected to metagenome sequencing, quantitative PCR, and microarray analyses. The active layer soil and 2 m permafrost soil microbial community structures were very similar, with Actinobacteria being the dominant phylum. The two soils also possessed a highly similar spectrum of functional genes, especially when compared to other already published metagenomes. Key genes related to methane generation, methane oxidation and organic matter degradation were highly diverse for both soils in the metagenomic libraries and some (e.g. pmoA) showed relatively high abundance in qPCR assays. Genes related to nitrogen fixation and ammonia oxidation, which could have important roles following climatic change in these nitrogen-limited environments, showed low diversity but high abundance. The 2 m permafrost soil showed lower abundance and diversity for all the assessed genes and taxa. Experimental biases were also evaluated and showed that the whole community genome amplification technique used caused large representational biases in the metagenomic libraries. This study described for the first time the detailed functional potential of permafrost-affected soils and detected several genes and microorganisms that could have crucial importance following permafrost thaw.
Project description:The fate of the carbon stocked in permafrost soils following global warming and permafrost thaw is of major concern in view of the potential for increased CH4 and CO2 emissions from these soils. Complex carbon compound degradation and greenhouse gas emissions are due to soil microbial communities, but their composition and functional potential in permafrost soils are largely unknown. Here, a 2 m deep permafrost and its overlying active layer soil were subjected to metagenome sequencing, quantitative PCR, and microarray analyses. The active layer soil and 2 m permafrost soil microbial community structures were very similar, with Actinobacteria being the dominant phylum. The two soils also possessed a highly similar spectrum of functional genes, especially when compared to other already published metagenomes. Key genes related to methane generation, methane oxidation and organic matter degradation were highly diverse for both soils in the metagenomic libraries and some (e.g. pmoA) showed relatively high abundance in qPCR assays. Genes related to nitrogen fixation and ammonia oxidation, which could have important roles following climatic change in these nitrogen-limited environments, showed low diversity but high abundance. The 2 m permafrost soil showed lower abundance and diversity for all the assessed genes and taxa. Experimental biases were also evaluated and showed that the whole community genome amplification technique used caused large representational biases in the metagenomic libraries. This study described for the first time the detailed functional potential of permafrost-affected soils and detected several genes and microorganisms that could have crucial importance following permafrost thaw. A 2m deep permafrost sample and it overlying active layer were sampled and their metagenome analysed. For microarray analyses, 8 other soil samples from the same region were used for comparison purposes.
Project description:The response of soil microbial community to climate warming through both function shift and composition reorganization may profoundly influence global nutrient cycles, leading to potential significant carbon release from the terrain to the atmosphere. Despite the observed carbon flux change in northern permafrost, it remains unclear how soil microbial community contributes to this ecosystem alteration. Here, we applied microarray-based GeoChip 4.0 to investigate the functional and compositional response of subsurface (15~25cm) soil microbial community under about one year’s artificial heating (+2°C) in the Carbon in Permafrost Experimental Heating Research site on Alaska’s moist acidic tundra. Statistical analyses of GeoChip signal intensities showed significant microbial function shift in AK samples. Detrended correspondence analysis and dissimilarity tests (MRPP and ANOSIM) indicated significant functional structure difference between the warmed and the control communities. ANOVA revealed that 60% of the 70 detected individual genes in carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur cyclings were substantially increased (p<0.05) by heating. 18 out of 33 detected carbon degradation genes were more abundant in warming samples in AK site, regardless of the discrepancy of labile or recalcitrant C, indicating a high temperature sensitivity of carbon degradation genes in rich carbon pool environment. These results demonstrated a rapid response of northern permafrost soil microbial community to warming. Considering the large carbon storage in northern permafrost region, microbial activity in this region may cause dramatic positive feedback to climate change, which is important and necessary to be integrated into climate change models.
Project description:Over 20% of Earth’s terrestrial surface is underlain by permafrost that represents one of the largest terrestrial carbon pools, with an estimated ~1700 Pg of carbon (C) contained in the upper 3 m of permafrost. Models estimate that C release from thawing permafrost might represent the largest new transfer of C from the biosphere to the atmosphere as the climate warms. Here we investigated microbial community phylogeny, genetic functional potential gene expression, and protein production patterns along a natural thaw gradient, including permafrost, the seasonally thawed active layer and nearby thawed thermokarst bog, using a combination of molecular “omics” approaches: metagenomics (MG), metatranscriptomics (MT) and metaproteomics (MP). Highlights from these analyses reveal energy yielding microbial processes and potential strategies for microbial survival in permafrost soils, and linkages between biogeochemical process rates and –omics measurements. The results provide new knowledge about microbial life and activity potential in permafrost, the potential importance of iron reduction as a survival strategy under frozen conditions in mineral soils, and the importance of methanogenesis following thaw. The multi-omics strategy demonstrated here enables better mechanistic understanding of the ecological strategies utilized by soil microbial communities in response to climate change. Associated metagenomics data available at the EBI Metagenomics portal under the accession number <a href="https://www.ebi.ac.uk/metagenomics/projects/SRP052575">SRP052575</a>.
Project description:The global transcriptional response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was investigated in low temperature chemostat cultures grown in carbon or nitrogen limitation. During steady state chemostats, the growth rates and in vivo fluxes were kept constant however the growth-limiting nutrient was significantly higher at 12oC than at 30oC and had significant effects on transcriptional responses. Growth at 12oC resulted in a rearrangement of transporters for the limiting nutrient, where hexose transporters (HXTs) and ammonium permeases (MEPs) were differentially expressed in cultures grown at 30oC in carbon and nitrogen limitations, respectively. In addition, we found repression of genes encoding proteins in reserve carbohydrates metabolism and metabolism of alternative carbon or nitrogen sources other than glucose or ammonia. However, there were also similar responses when the transcriptional response was evaluated regardless of the growth-limiting nutrient. In particular, induction of ribosome biogenesis genes emphasizes the significance of transcription and translational adaptation at low temperature. In contrast, genes encoding proteins during stress response were downregulated. This down-regulation of stress elements better known as environmental stress response (ESR) is in contradiction with previous low temperature transcriptome analyses. During continuous steady state low temperature cultivation, ESR no longer plays an integral role in S. cerevisiae’s response to temperature change. Similarly, trehalose accumulation, consistent with its gene expression, was not indispensable for growth at 12oC. This response, however, does not exclude that ESR may be required for transition phase in low temperature growth when cells are transferred from one temperature to another. Keywords: chemostat temperature 12 degree celsuis 30 degree celsius
Project description:The global transcriptional response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was investigated in low temperature chemostat cultures grown in carbon or nitrogen limitation. During steady state chemostats, the growth rates and in vivo fluxes were kept constant however the growth-limiting nutrient was significantly higher at 12oC than at 30oC and had significant effects on transcriptional responses. Growth at 12oC resulted in a rearrangement of transporters for the limiting nutrient, where hexose transporters (HXTs) and ammonium permeases (MEPs) were differentially expressed in cultures grown at 30oC in carbon and nitrogen limitations, respectively. In addition, we found repression of genes encoding proteins in reserve carbohydrates metabolism and metabolism of alternative carbon or nitrogen sources other than glucose or ammonia. However, there were also similar responses when the transcriptional response was evaluated regardless of the growth-limiting nutrient. In particular, induction of ribosome biogenesis genes emphasizes the significance of transcription and translational adaptation at low temperature. In contrast, genes encoding proteins during stress response were downregulated. This down-regulation of stress elements better known as environmental stress response (ESR) is in contradiction with previous low temperature transcriptome analyses. During continuous steady state low temperature cultivation, ESR no longer plays an integral role in S. cerevisiaeM-bM-^@M-^Ys response to temperature change. Similarly, trehalose accumulation, consistent with its gene expression, was not indispensable for growth at 12oC. This response, however, does not exclude that ESR may be required for transition phase in low temperature growth when cells are transferred from one temperature to another. Keywords: chemostat temperature 12 degree celsuis 30 degree celsius The global transcriptional response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was investigated in low temperature chemostat cultures grown in carbon or nitrogen limitation at a dilution rate of 0.03h-1
Project description:DNA samples of G. fascicularis were used to investigate the GeoChip 5.0 based functional gene arrays, which contains 57,000 probes and covered over 144,000 gene sequences from 393 functional gene families associated with a variety of microbial functional traits, such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur cycling, pathogenicity and secondary metabolism.