Project description:The fate of the carbon stocked in permafrost soils following global warming and permafrost thaw is of major concern in view of the potential for increased CH4 and CO2 emissions from these soils. Complex carbon compound degradation and greenhouse gas emissions are due to soil microbial communities, but their composition and functional potential in permafrost soils are largely unknown. Here, a 2 m deep permafrost and its overlying active layer soil were subjected to metagenome sequencing, quantitative PCR, and microarray analyses. The active layer soil and 2 m permafrost soil microbial community structures were very similar, with Actinobacteria being the dominant phylum. The two soils also possessed a highly similar spectrum of functional genes, especially when compared to other already published metagenomes. Key genes related to methane generation, methane oxidation and organic matter degradation were highly diverse for both soils in the metagenomic libraries and some (e.g. pmoA) showed relatively high abundance in qPCR assays. Genes related to nitrogen fixation and ammonia oxidation, which could have important roles following climatic change in these nitrogen-limited environments, showed low diversity but high abundance. The 2 m permafrost soil showed lower abundance and diversity for all the assessed genes and taxa. Experimental biases were also evaluated and showed that the whole community genome amplification technique used caused large representational biases in the metagenomic libraries. This study described for the first time the detailed functional potential of permafrost-affected soils and detected several genes and microorganisms that could have crucial importance following permafrost thaw. A 2m deep permafrost sample and it overlying active layer were sampled and their metagenome analysed. For microarray analyses, 8 other soil samples from the same region were used for comparison purposes.
Project description:The fate of the carbon stocked in permafrost soils following global warming and permafrost thaw is of major concern in view of the potential for increased CH4 and CO2 emissions from these soils. Complex carbon compound degradation and greenhouse gas emissions are due to soil microbial communities, but their composition and functional potential in permafrost soils are largely unknown. Here, a 2 m deep permafrost and its overlying active layer soil were subjected to metagenome sequencing, quantitative PCR, and microarray analyses. The active layer soil and 2 m permafrost soil microbial community structures were very similar, with Actinobacteria being the dominant phylum. The two soils also possessed a highly similar spectrum of functional genes, especially when compared to other already published metagenomes. Key genes related to methane generation, methane oxidation and organic matter degradation were highly diverse for both soils in the metagenomic libraries and some (e.g. pmoA) showed relatively high abundance in qPCR assays. Genes related to nitrogen fixation and ammonia oxidation, which could have important roles following climatic change in these nitrogen-limited environments, showed low diversity but high abundance. The 2 m permafrost soil showed lower abundance and diversity for all the assessed genes and taxa. Experimental biases were also evaluated and showed that the whole community genome amplification technique used caused large representational biases in the metagenomic libraries. This study described for the first time the detailed functional potential of permafrost-affected soils and detected several genes and microorganisms that could have crucial importance following permafrost thaw.
Project description:Background: Insufficient quantities of human genomic DNA are a limiting factor for many clinical applications. Whole genome amplification (WGA) is an approach designed to overcome small amount of DNA for genome-wide genetic tests as it allows amplification of the entire genome from picogram or nanogram quantities of DNA. Various strategies of WGA have been developed; however, none of them can guarantee the absence of amplification bias. High-quality genome-representative amplified DNA is crucial for WGA use in basic research and clinical genetics. Thus, systematic evaluation of WGA effect on downstream methods is necessary. Results: In this paper, 4 multiple displacement amplification (MDA) -based and 2 PCR-based WGA kits were compared in their effect on segmental copy-number changes as well as copy-number neutral loss of heterozygosity detection by high-density oligonucleotide DNA arrays. We described outcomes and limits for each individual WGA; however, the main goal of this study was chiefly to show a general compatibility and features specific for particular WGA strategy. The main outcomes are as follows: 1) MDA-based WGAs showed higher tendency to generate false positive imbalances in contrast to PCR-based WGAs with higher risk of false negativity; 2) the specific risk of false positivity and/or negativity increased with decreasing copy-number segments size; 3) single-cell WGAs showed significantly worse effect on results in comparison to WGAs with nanogram level of DNA as input; 4) PCR-based WGAs were not compatible with copy-number neutral loss of heterozygosity analysis based on single nucleotide polymorphisms in restriction digestion sites and also showed higher risk of copy-number neutral loss of heterozygosity false negativity if combined with analysis based on simple hybridization. Conclusions: This study gives a comprehensive insight into the WGA effect on DNA array analysis. The results of this study help to choose WGA according to individual user requirements and options. Moreover, we show a strategy to verify and validate segmental copy-number changes detection by DNA array protocol including any WGA for any purpose to attain the highest efficiency without an unnecessary WGA bias.
Project description:Soil transplant serves as a proxy to simulate climate change in realistic climate regimes. Here, we assessed the effects of climate warming and cooling on soil microbial communities, which are key drivers in Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, four years after soil transplant over large transects from northern (N site) to central (NC site) and southern China (NS site) and vice versa. Four years after soil transplant, soil nitrogen components, microbial biomass, community phylogenetic and functional structures were altered. Microbial functional diversity, measured by a metagenomic tool named GeoChip, and phylogenetic diversity are increased with temperature, while microbial biomass were similar or decreased. Nevertheless, the effects of climate change was overridden by maize cropping, underscoring the need to disentangle them in research. Mantel tests and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) demonstrated that vegetation, climatic factors (e.g., temperature and precipitation), soil nitrogen components and CO2 efflux were significantly correlated to the microbial community composition. Further investigation unveiled strong correlations between carbon cycling genes and CO2 efflux in bare soil but not cropped soil, and between nitrogen cycling genes and nitrification, which provides mechanistic understanding of these microbe-mediated processes and empowers an interesting possibility of incorporating bacterial gene abundance in greenhouse gas emission modeling.
Project description:Dehalococcoides mccartyi are functionally important bacteria that catalyze the reductive dechlorination of chlorinated ethenes. However, these anaerobic bacteria are fastidious to isolate, making downstream genomic characterization challenging. In order to facilitate genomic analysis, a fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) method was developed in this study to separate D. mccartyi cells from a microbial community, and the DNA of the isolated cells was processed by whole genome amplification (WGA) and hybridized onto a D. mccartyi microarray for comparative genomics against four sequenced strains. First, FACS was successfully applied to a D. mccartyi isolate as positive control, and then microarray results verified that WGA from 10(6) cells or ~1 ng of genomic DNA yielded high-quality coverage detecting nearly all genes across the genome. As expected, some inter- and intrasample variability in WGA was observed, but these biases were minimized by performing multiple parallel amplifications. Subsequent application of the FACS and WGA protocols to two enrichment cultures containing ~10% and ~1% D. mccartyi cells successfully enabled genomic analysis. As proof of concept, this study demonstrates that coupling FACS with WGA and microarrays is a promising tool to expedite genomic characterization of target strains in environmental communities where the relative concentrations are low.
Project description:In the study of tumor genetics, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumors are the most readily available tissue samples. While DNA derived from FFPE tissue has been validated for array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) application, the suitability of such fragmented DNA for single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array analysis has not been well examined. Furthermore, whole-genome amplification (WGA) has been used in the study of small precursor lesions to produce sufficient amount of DNA for aCGH analysis. It is unclear whether the same approach can be extended to SNP analysis. In this study, we examined the utility and limitations of genotyping platform performed on whole-genome amplified DNA from FFPE tumor samples for both copy number and SNP analyses. We analyzed the results obtained using DNA derived from matched FFPE and frozen tissue samples on Affymetrix 250K Nsp SNP array. Two widely used WGA methods, Qiagen (isothermal protocol) and Sigma (thermocycling protocol), were used to determine how WGA methods affect the results. We found that the use of DNA derived from FFPE tumors (without or with WGA) for high-resolution SNP array application can produce a significant amount of false positive and false negative findings. While some of these misinterpretations appear to cluster in genomic regions with high or low GC contents, the majority appears to occur randomly. Only large-scale chromosome LOH (>10Mb) can be reliably detected from FFPE tumor DNA samples (without or with WGA) but not smaller LOH or copy number alterations. Our findings here indicate a need for caution in SNP array data interpretation when using FFPE tumor-derived DNA, particularly with WGA.
Project description:Methods of comprehensive microarray based analyses of single cell DNA are rapidly emerging. Whole genome amplification (WGA) remains a critical component for these methods to be successful. A number of commercially available WGA kits have been independently utilized in previous single cell microarray studies. However, direct comparison of their performance on single cells has not been conducted. The present study demonstrates that among previously published methods, a single cell GenomePlex WGA protocol provides the best combination of speed and accuracy for SNP microarray based copy number analysis when compared to a REPLI-g or GenomiPhi based protocol. Alternatively, for applications that do not have constraints on turn-around time and that are directed at accurate genotyping rather than copy number assignments, a REPLI-g based protocol may provide the best solution.