Project description:The present invention relates to methods for determining soil quality, and especially soil pollution, using the invertebrate soil organism Folsomia candida also designated as springtail. Specifically, the present invention relates to a method for determining soil quality comprising: contacting Folsomia Candida with a soil sample to be analysed during a time period of 1 to 5 days; isolating said soil contacted Folsomia Candida; extracting RNA from said isolated soil contacted Folsomia Candida; determing a gene expression profile based on said extracted RNA using microarray technology; comparing said gene expression profile with a reference gene expression profile; and determing soil quality based expression level differences between said gene expression profile and said control expression profile.
Project description:454 Pyrosequencing-based assessment of bacterial and fungal diversity and community structure in termite guts, mounds and surrounding soils
Project description:The present invention relates to methods for determining soil quality, and especially soil pollution, using the invertebrate soil organism Folsomia candida also designated as springtail. Specifically, the present invention relates to a method for determining soil quality comprising: contacting Folsomia Candida with a soil sample to be analysed during a time period of 1 to 5 days; isolating said soil contacted Folsomia Candida; extracting RNA from said isolated soil contacted Folsomia Candida; determing a gene expression profile based on said extracted RNA using microarray technology; comparing said gene expression profile with a reference gene expression profile; and determing soil quality based expression level differences between said gene expression profile and said control expression profile. A direct design was used where springtails were exposed to 3 field soils (2 polluted and 1 clean) and cadium and microarrays were directly contrased to those from animals exposed to clean LUFA2.2 soil. 4 biological replicates were used with each containing 25 grams of soil and 30 adult, randomly selected, age sychronized springtails
Project description:We obtained RNA-seq data from whole body springtail Folsomia candida exposed to the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid or control conditions for a total of 72 hours and sampled every 12 hours .
Project description:Ecotoxicological tests may be biased by the use of laboratory strains that usually contain very limited genetic diversity. It is therefore essential to study how genetic variation influences stress tolerance relevant for toxicity outcomes. To that end we studied sensitivity to cadmium in two distinct genotypes of the parthogenetic soil ecotoxicological model organism Folsomia candida. Clonal lines of both genotypes (TO1 and TO2) showed divergent fitness responses to cadmium exposure; TO2 reproduction was 20% less affected by cadmium. Statistical analyses revealed significant differences between the cadmium-affected transcriptomes; i) the number of genes affected by cadmium in TO2 was only minor (~22%) compared to TO1; ii) 97 genes showed a genotype M-CM-^W cadmium interaction and their response to cadmium showed globally larger fold changes in TO1 when compared to TO2; iii) the interaction genes showed a concerted manner of expression in TO1 while a less coordinated pattern was observed in TO2. We conclude that (1) there is genetic variation in parthenogenetic populations of F. candida, and (2) this variation affects life-history and molecular endpoints relative to cadmium toxicity. This sheds new light on the sources of biological variability in test results, even when the test organisms are thought to be genetically homogeneous because of their parthenogenetic reproduction. Gene expression was measured in two different clones (TO1 and TO2) of the springtail Folsomia candida, after exposure of 2 days to soil containing cadmium (Cd+) and non-spiked (Cd-) soil. A 2 x 2 factorial analysis was performed, to examine the effect of clone (TO1, TO2), of treatment (Cd+, Cd-), and the clone x treatment interaction.