Project description:Background: Saprobic fungi are the predominant industrial sources of Carbohydrate Active enZymes (CAZymes) used for the saccharification of lignocellulose during the production of second generation biofuels. The production of more effective enzyme cocktails is a key objective for efficient biofuel production. To achieve this objective, it is crucial to understand the response of fungi to lignocellulose substrates. Our previous study used RNA-seq to identify the genes induced in Aspergillus niger in response to wheat straw, a biofuel feedstock, and showed that the range of genes induced was greater than previously seen with simple inducers [GSE33852]. Results: In this work we used RNA-seq to identify the genes induced in A. niger in response to short rotation coppice willow and compared this with the response to wheat straw from our previous study, at the same time-point. The response to willow showed a large increase in expression of genes encoding CAZymes. Genes encoding the major activities required to saccharify lignocellulose were induced on willow such as endoglucanases, cellobiohydrolases and xylanases. The transcriptome response to willow had many similarities with the response to straw with some significant differences in the expression levels of individual genes which are discussed in relation to differences in substrate composition or other factors. Differences in transcript levels include higher levels on wheat straw from genes encoding enzymes classified as members of GH62 (an arabinofuranosidase) and CE1 (a feruloyl esterase) CAZy families whereas two genes encoding endoglucanases classified as members of the GH5 family had higher transcript levels when exposed to willow. There were changes in the cocktail of enzymes secreted by A. niger when cultured with willow or straw. Assays for particular enzymes as well as saccharification assays were used to compare the enzyme activities of the cocktails. Wheat straw induced an enzyme cocktail that saccharified wheat straw to a greater extent than willow. Genes not encoding CAZymes were also induced on willow such as hydrophobins as well as genes of unknown function. Several genes were identified as promising targets for future study. Conclusions: By comparing this first study of the global transcriptional response of a fungus to willow with the response to straw, we have shown that the inducing lignocellulosic substrate has a marked effect upon the range of transcripts and enzymes expressed by A. niger. The use by industry of complex substrates such as wheat straw or willow could benefit efficient biofuel production.
Project description:Background: Saprobic fungi are the predominant industrial sources of Carbohydrate Active enZymes (CAZymes) used for the saccharification of lignocellulose during the production of second generation biofuels. The production of more effective enzyme cocktails is a key objective for efficient biofuel production. To achieve this objective, it is crucial to understand the response of fungi to lignocellulose substrates. Our previous study used RNA-seq to identify the genes induced in Aspergillus niger in response to wheat straw, a biofuel feedstock, and showed that the range of genes induced was greater than previously seen with simple inducers [GSE33852]. Results: In this work we used RNA-seq to identify the genes induced in A. niger in response to short rotation coppice willow and compared this with the response to wheat straw from our previous study, at the same time-point. The response to willow showed a large increase in expression of genes encoding CAZymes. Genes encoding the major activities required to saccharify lignocellulose were induced on willow such as endoglucanases, cellobiohydrolases and xylanases. The transcriptome response to willow had many similarities with the response to straw with some significant differences in the expression levels of individual genes which are discussed in relation to differences in substrate composition or other factors. Differences in transcript levels include higher levels on wheat straw from genes encoding enzymes classified as members of GH62 (an arabinofuranosidase) and CE1 (a feruloyl esterase) CAZy families whereas two genes encoding endoglucanases classified as members of the GH5 family had higher transcript levels when exposed to willow. There were changes in the cocktail of enzymes secreted by A. niger when cultured with willow or straw. Assays for particular enzymes as well as saccharification assays were used to compare the enzyme activities of the cocktails. Wheat straw induced an enzyme cocktail that saccharified wheat straw to a greater extent than willow. Genes not encoding CAZymes were also induced on willow such as hydrophobins as well as genes of unknown function. Several genes were identified as promising targets for future study. Conclusions: By comparing this first study of the global transcriptional response of a fungus to willow with the response to straw, we have shown that the inducing lignocellulosic substrate has a marked effect upon the range of transcripts and enzymes expressed by A. niger. The use by industry of complex substrates such as wheat straw or willow could benefit efficient biofuel production. Six samples in total consisting of duplicate shake flask Aspergillus niger cultures from three conditions: glucose 48 h, willow 24 h, willow 24 h + glucose 5 h
Project description:We have conducted a season and subspecies comparasion on the two Willow Warbler subspecies Phylloscopus trochilus trochilus and Phylloscopus trochilus acredula. The analysis were performed by hybridizing cDNA from the Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) on a Affymetrix costum array designed for the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), the Lund-zf array.
Project description:Exploiting the full potential of insertional mutagenesis screens with retroviruses and transposons requires methods for distinguishing clonal from subclonal insertion events within heterogeneous tumor cell populations. Current protocols, based on ligation mediated PCR, depend on endonuclease based fragmentation of genomic DNA, resulting in strong biases in amplification and sequencing due to a fixed product sizes of the amplicon. We have developed a method called shear-splink, which enables the semi-quantitative high-throughput sequence analysis of insertional mutations, enabling us to count the number of cells harboring a given integration, within a heterogeneous sample. The shear-splink method enriches for (sub)clonal integrations, thereby reducing the contribution of irrelevant passenger mutations normally hampering a reliable identification of common integration sites. Additionally, this improvement allows us to identify genetic interactions between affected genes, co-occurring mutations and to study acquired resistance mechanisms both in vivo and in vitro. Sequencing of retrovrial integration sites by LM-PCR. The associated manuscript describes a new method to quantitatively determine retrovrial integration sites using an improved ligation-mediated PCR approach and subsequent 454 pyrosequencing. [GSM562151 to GSM562159]: Sequence data from different mixtures of 2 different cell lines (called AE6 and BB12) which are processed without a restriction enzyme. These cell lines are derived from an MMTV induced mammary tumor, for which we amplify the MMTV integration sites using a ligation-mediated PCR setup. We mixed these 2 cell lines, both with a different integration spectrum, to determine whether our amplification and sequencing protocol is quantitative, meaning that the coverage per integration site is decreasing upon a further dilution of the sample. [GSM641935 to GSM641950]: Unique Sleeping beauty induced lymphoma specimens (spleen) obtained from a cohort of 16 wild-type mice with the 129P2/C57BL/6J mixed background. [GSM776576 to GSM776956]: The 379 submitted specimens are originating from 127 unique leukemia/lymphoma samples, processed using 3 different techniques in order to identify Sleeping Beauty integration sites. We compared restriction enzyme based LM-PCR (RE-splink) with shearing based LM-PCR (shear-splink) on 127 unique Sleeping Beauty (SB) induced leukemia's/lymphomas. All sequence data generated by the 454 sequencing platform are submitted to GEO, including the final output of our sequence analysis pipeline (in bed format; see Supplementary files linked below). Previous submissions contained similar sequence information (integration sites of viruses or transposons driving tumorigenesis) and are all part of the same manuscript.