Project description:These findings establish minion as a novel microprotein required for muscle development, and define a two-component program for the induction of mammalian cell fusion.
Project description:To evaluate targeted MinION next generation sequencing as a diagnostic method for detection of pathogens in human blood and plasma, human blood or plasma samples were spiked with measured amounts of viruses, bacteria, protozoan parasites or tested pathogen-free as negative controls. Nucleic acid was extracted from samples and PCR amplification performed in multiplex primer pools with a procedure described in ArrayExpress experiment submission ID 18379. The PCR products were used for library preparation. The libraries sequenced on an Oxford Nanopore MinION. The passed reads aligned with a custom reference file to determine the identity of the pathogen in the sample.
Project description:Healthy plants are vital for successful, long-duration missions in space, as they provide the crew with life support, food production, and psychological benefits. The microorganisms that associate with plant tissues play a critical role in improving plant growth, health, and production. To that end, it is necessary to develop methodologies that investigate the metabolic activities of the plant’s microbiome in orbit to enable rapid responses regarding the care of plants in space. In this study, we developed a protocol to characterize the endophytic and epiphytic microbial metatranscriptome of red romaine lettuce, a key salad crop that was grown under International Space Station (ISS)-like conditions. Microbial transcripts enriched from host-microbe total RNA were sequenced using the Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing platform. Results showed that this enrichment approach was highly reproducible and effective for rapid on-site detection of microbial transcriptional activity. Taxonomic analysis based on 16S and 18S rRNA transcripts identified that the top five most abundant phyla in the lettuce microbiome were Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Ascomycota. The metatranscriptomic analysis identified the expression of genes involved in many metabolic pathways, including carbohydrate metabolism, energy metabolism, and signal transduction. Network analyses of the expression data show that, within the signal transduction pathway of the fungal community, the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase signaling pathway was tightly regulated across all samples and could be a potential driver for fungal proliferation. Our results demonstrated the feasibility of using MinION-based metatranscriptomics of enriched microbial RNA as a method for rapid, on-site monitoring of the transcriptional activity of crop microbiomes, thereby helping to facilitate and maintain plant health for on-orbit space food production.
Project description:Purpose : The goal of this study was to use RNA-seq to compare transcriptional profiles under biofilm conditions with planktonic growth and explore the correlation of gene expression of a collection of clinical P. aeruginosa isolates to various phenotypes, such as biofilm structure or virulence. Methods : mRNA profiles were generated for Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical samples derived from various geographical locations by deep sequencing. The removal of ribosomal RNA was performed using the Ribo-Zero Bacteria Kit (Illumina) and cDNA libraries were generated with the ScriptSeq v2 Kit (Illumina). The samples were sequenced in single end mode on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 device or paired end mode on an Illumina Novaseq 6000. mRNA reads were trimmed and mapped to the NC_008463.1 (PA14) reference genome from NCBI using bowtie2 with default settings.
Project description:We performed ChIP-seq analyses of RhlR to map the C4-homoserine lactone-dependent and PqsE-dependent RhlR binding sites in the P. aeruginosa genome.