Project description:The analysis of 2.5 million SNPs in 142 samples from the western Mediterranean area, including southern Spain, Andalusia (Huelva: 35 samples, Granada: 35), southern Portugal (36 samples) and Moroccan Berbers (Asni: 15, Bouhria: 12 and Figuig: 9).
Project description:Species identification of fragmentary bones remains a challenging task in archeology and forensics. A species identification method for such fragmentary bones that has recently attracted interest is the use of bone collagen proteins. We developed a method similar to DNA barcoding that reads collagen protein sequences in bone and automatically determines the species by performing sequence database searches. We tested our method using bone samples from 30 vertebrate species ranging from mammals to fish.
Project description:DNA barcoding unveiling rare species: the case of Pruvotfolia pselliotes (Labbé, 1923) (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Nudibranchia) in the Mediterranean Sea
Project description:Groupers (Epinephelidae) are ecologically, commercially, and culturally important predatory fishes throughout their global distribution range in tropical, subtropical and occasionally temperate regions. They are key species for modern and ancient fisheries in the Mediterranean which have been heavily overfished in the past century leading to smaller catch sizes, lower CPUE, and decreased biomass. There are four species of grouper native to the Mediterranean within the Epinephelus genus.The abundance and distribution of grouper species prior to the 20th century in the Mediterranean remains poorly known. Using peptide mass fingerprinting, also known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), we investigated if ZooMS is a viable method for identifying intra-genus grouper bones to species level. Due to the lack of publicly available genomic sequences and for validation of ZooMS markers, we reconstructed collagen type I amino acid sequences using LC-MS/MS for four Epinephelus spp. Adequate variation between collagen sequences enabled the production of the best supported phylogenetic tree for Mediterranean Epinephelus spp. to date. We identified 23 previously undescribed ZooMS biomarkers capable of distinguishing groupers to the species level. Our novel biomarkers were applied to a case study of 23 grouper/comber fish bones from the Middle to Late Holocene archaeological site of Kinet Höyük, located along the coast of Iskenderun Bay, Turkey. ZooMS markers enabled species level identification of 19 bones with 18 identified as Epinephelus aeneus and 1 identified as Epinephelus marginatus. Combining ZooMS identifications with catch size reconstructions has revealed that E. aeneus is capable of growing ca. 30 cm larger than previously reported. This abundance and dominance of E. aeneus locally at Kinet Höyük is consistent with E. aeneus being the most prevalent grouper species in Iskenderun Bay today, testifying to several millennia of this species local population persistence despite fishing pressure, habitat degradation, and climatic changes.
Project description:Leaf beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), with more than 37,000 species worldwide and about 2,300 in the Euro-Mediterranean region, are an ecological and economical relevant family, making their molecular identification of interest also in agriculture. This study, part of the Mediterranean Chrysomelidae Barcoding project (www.c-bar.org), aims to: (i) develop a reference Cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) library for the molecular identification of the Euro-Mediterranean Chrysomelidae; (ii) test the efficiency of DNA barcoding for leaf beetles identification; (iii) develop and compare optimal thresholds for distance-based identifications estimated at family and subfamily level, minimizing false positives and false negatives. Within this study, 889 COI nucleotide sequences of 261 species were provided; after the inclusion of information from other sources, a dataset of 7,237 sequences (542 species) was analysed. The average intra-interspecific distances were in the range of those recorded for Coleoptera: 1.6-24%. The estimated barcoding efficiency (~94%) confirmed the usefulness of this tool for Chrysomelidae identification. The few cases of failure were recorded for closely related species (e.g., Cryptocephalus marginellus superspecies, Cryptocephalus violaceus - Cryptocephalus duplicatus and some Altica species), even with morphologically different species sharing the same COI haplotype. Different optimal thresholds were achieved for the tested taxonomic levels, confirming that group-specific thresholds significantly improve molecular identifications.
Project description:Here, we validate a novel protocol, Bulk RNA Barcoding and sequencing (BRB-seq), that combines the multiplexing-driven cost-effectiveness of a single-cell RNA-seq protocol with the efficiency of a bulk RNA-seq procedure. For this we use BRB-seq protocol on 60 human LCL data from the 1000G project samples, in order to show its multiplexing capacity and compare its effectiveness to already published TruSeq results on same samples.
Project description:The study will examine the validity and reliability of the Mediterranean Colorectal Cancer Registry. Aspects of the analysis will cover parallel forms reliability, test-retest reliability, split half internal consistency and face validity of the Mediterranean Colorectal Cancer Registry.
Project description:Here, we validate a novel protocol, Bulk RNA Barcoding and sequencing (BRB-seq), that combines the multiplexing-driven cost-effectiveness of a single-cell RNA-seq protocol with the efficiency of a bulk RNA-seq procedure. For this we use BRB-seq protocol on human pre-adipocytes and differentiated adipocytes, and compare its effectiveness as compared to TruSeq. Indeed, one of the principal limitations of bulk RNA-seq is the time and costs of library preparation, which makes it difficult to profile many samples simultaneously. Here, BRB-seq produces 3’ libraries that exhibit similar gene expression quantification to TruSeq and maintain this quality even with low quality RNA samples.