Project description:Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are bio-based, biodegradable polyesters that can be produced from organic-rich waste streams using mixed microbial cultures. To maximize PHA production, mixed microbial cultures may be enriched for PHA-producing bacteria with a high storage capacity through the imposition of cyclic, aerobic feast-famine conditions in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). Though enrichment SBRs have been extensively investigated a bulk solutions-level, little evidence at the proteome level is available to describe the observed SBR behavior to guide future SBR optimization strategies. As such, the purpose of this investigation was to characterize proteome dynamics of a mixed microbial culture in an SBR operated under aerobic feast-famine conditions using fermented dairy manure as the feedstock for PHA production. At the beginning of the SBR cycle, excess PHA precursors were provided to the mixed microbial culture (i.e., feast), after which followed a long duration devoid of exogenous substrate (i.e., famine). Two-dimensional electrophoresis was used to separate protein mixtures during a complete SBR cycle, and proteins of interest were identified.
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.
2020-03-06 | GSE146427 | GEO
Project description:Metagenome from PHA-accumulating mixed microbial cultures
| PRJNA398362 | ENA
Project description:Syngas biomethanation and upgrading mediated by different microbial consortia
| PRJNA611762 | ENA
Project description:Establishment of Mixed microbial/methanotrophic consortia
| PRJEB17609 | ENA
Project description:Microbial mat enrichment cultures
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.