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: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 EarthM-bM-^@M-^Ys 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. Fifty four samples were collected from three soil types (Phaeozem,Cambisol,Acrisol) in three sites (Hailun, Fengqiu and Yingtan) along a latitude with reciprocal transplant; Both with and without maize cropping in each site; Three replicates in every treatments.
Project description:Rice plants cultivated on mountain areas are frequently exposed to acid fog and natural fog events. In this report, we analyzed the expression profiles of the rice plant with acid fog (SiAF) or neutral fog (SiNF) treatment for 1 and 7 days. Microarray results suggested that ROS generation was induced by not only SiAF, but also SiNF treatment, and it occurred in apoplast, not in organelles. Genes for defense- and stress-responses was also induced by both SiAF and SiNF treatments. The induction occurred in plants treated with SiAF for both 1 day and 7 days, and it was also detected in plants treated with SiAF for 7 days. These results suggest that both SiAF and SiNF treatments are abiotic stresses accompanying ROS generation in apoplast. Comparison between continuous fog treated shoots and control shoots. Biological replicates: 3 simulated acid fog (pH 3.0) treated (SiAF) for 1 day; 3 simulated acid fog (pH 3.0) treated (SiAF) for 7 days; 3 simulated neutral fog (SiNF) treated for 1 day; 3 simulated neutral fog (SiNF) treated for 7 days; 3 controls for 1 day; 3 controls for 7 days. Independently grown and harvested. Cultivar: Hinohikari 1 sample derived from 5 plants grown under the same conditons. Total: 18 samples, 12 comparisons.
Project description:Predicting how climate change affects biotic interactions and their evolution poses a challenge. Plant-insect herbivore interactions are particularly sensitive to climate change, as climate-induced changes in plant quality cascade into the performance of insect herbivores. Whereas the immediate survival of herbivore individuals depends on plastic responses to climate change induced nutritional stress, long-term population persistence via evolutionary adaptation requires genetic variation for these responses. In order to assess the prospects for population persistence under climate change, it is therefore crucial to characterise response mechanisms to climate change induced stressors, and quantify their variability in natural populations. Here, we test developmental and transcriptomic responses to water limitation induced host plant quality change in a Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia) metapopulation. We combine nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy on the plant metabolome, larval developmental assays and an RNA seq analysis of the larval transcriptome. We observed that responses to feeding on water limited plants, in which amino acids and aromatic compounds are enriched, showed marked intrapopulation variation, with individuals of some families performing better on control and others on water limited plants. The transcriptomic responses were concordant with the developmental responses: Families exhibiting opposite developmental responses also produced opposite transcriptomic responses, e.g. in growth associated intracellular signalling. The opposite developmental and transcriptomic responses are associated with between families differences in organic compound catabolism and storage protein production. The results reveal heritable intrapopulation variability in plasticity, suggesting potential for evolutionary responses to drought-induced changes in host plant quality in the Finnish M. cinxia metapopulation.
Project description:Directional selection in the domestication of fish species has resulted in rapid gains of growth, body size, and other production-relevant traits in relatively few generations. While there is clear evidence of genetic divergence contributing to selection-related phenotypic changes, emerging research suggests that intergenerational epigenetic inheritance may also be a relevant mechanism explaining rapid evolutionary change in domestic fish lines. Epigenetic changes have also been implicated in fish species’ responses to warming associated with climate change. Domestic lines of Brook Charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) are the primary source of fish used for recreational fisheries stocking in many parts of Eastern North America and there are concerns about how these fish will fare when stocked into lakes in the coming decades. We jointly investigated the effects of directional selection for performance traits (i.e., absence of early sexual maturation and increased growth) and exposure to elevated temperatures on DNA methylation in sperm cells of two experimental lines (hereafter: Selected and Control lines) of Brook Charr . We used whole-genome bisulfite sequencing to characterize DNA methylation at over 17 million methylated sites and identified 393 selection-related differentially methylated regions (DMR). The putative functions of genes in proximity to these DMRs are consistent with well-characterized phenotypic differences between the lines, including lipid metabolism and precocial maturation, and support the hypothesis that rapid evolution of traits may be partially mediated by epigenetic inheritance. We subsequently detected 85 warming-related DMRs in the Control line and 302 DMRs in the Selected line. None of these regions were shared between the two lines, indicating that the directional selection regime significantly altered the environmentally sensitive epigenetic landscape.
Project description:Grapevines cv Sauvignon Blanc were subjected to different stress regimes by simulating the most common extreme weather events occurring within the current climate change scenario. During spring, just before bud break, the vines were either flooded or kept under normal conditions. Both vines were then split in two groups and put in differnt tunnels, either undergoing a simulated heatwave or not. Berry samples were collected from the four groups of plants (control, only flooded, only heatwave, flooded + heatwave) at different timepoints before, during and after the stress. Transcriptomic analyses were carried out on these samples along with some metabolomic assessments to characterize the response to stress in the different samples and the effect of the combined stresses.