Project description:Analysis of microbial gene expression in response to physical and chemical gradients forming in the Columbia River, estuary, plume and coastal ocean was done in the context of the environmental data base. Gene expression was analyzed for 2,234 individual genes that were selected from fully sequenced genomes of 246 prokaryotic species (bacteria and archaea) as related to the nitrogen metabolism and carbon fixation. Seasonal molecular portraits of differential gene expression in prokaryotic communities during river-to-ocean transition were created using freshwater baseline samples (268, 270, 347, 002, 006, 207, 212). Total RNA was isolated from 64 filtered environmental water samples collected in the Columbia River coastal margin during 4 research cruises (14 from August, 2007; 17 from November, 2007; 18 from April, 2008; and 16 from June, 2008), and analyzed using microarray hybridization with the CombiMatrix 4X2K format. Microarray targets were prepared by reverse transcription of total RNA into fluorescently labeled cDNA. All samples were hybridized in duplicate, except samples 212 and 310 (hybridized in triplicate) and samples 336, 339, 50, 152, 157, and 199 (hybridized once). Sample location codes: number shows distance from the coast in km; CR, Columbia River transect in the plume and coastal ocean; NH, Newport Hydroline transect in the coastal ocean at Newport, Oregon; AST and HAM, Columbia River estuary locations near Astoria (river mile 7-9) and Hammond (river mile 5), respectively; TID, Columbia River estuary locations in the tidal basin (river mile 22-23); BA, river location at Beaver Army Dock (river mile 53) near Quincy, Oregon; UP, river location at mile 74.
Project description:We characterized the bacterial diversity of chlorinated drinking water from three surface water treatment plants supplying the city of Paris, France. For this purpose, we used serial analysis of V6 ribosomal sequence tag (SARST-V6) to produce concatemers of PCR-amplified ribosomal sequence tags (RSTs) from the V6 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene for sequence analysis. Using SARST-V6, we obtained bacterial profiles for each drinking water sample, demonstrating a strikingly high degree of biodiversity dominated by a large collection of low-abundance phylotypes. In all water samples, between 57.2-77.4% of the sequences obtained indicated bacteria belonging to the Proteobacteria phylum. Full-length 16S rDNA sequences were also generated for each sample, and comparison of the RSTs with these sequences confirmed the accurate assignment for several abundant bacterial phyla identified by SARST-V6 analysis, including members of unclassified bacteria, which account for 6.3-36.5% of all V6 sequences. These results suggest that these bacteria may correspond to a common group adapted to drinking water systems. The V6 primers used were subsequently evaluated with a computer algorithm to assess their hybridization efficiency. Potential errors associated with primer-template mismatches and their impacts on taxonomic group detection were investigated. The biodiversity present in all three drinking water samples suggests that the bacterial load of the drinking water leaving treatment plants may play an important role in determining the downstream community dynamics of water distribution networks.