Project description:Comparative genome hybridization of transconjugants of E. faecalis OG1RF mated with V583. The total DNA of transconjugants was compared with wildtype strains to ascertain the amount of DNA that was transferred from E. faecalis V583 to E. faecalis OG1RF.
Project description:Purpose: Deconstructing the soil microbiome into reduced-complexity functional modules represents a novel method of microbiome analysis. The goals of this study are to confirm differences in transcriptomic patterns among five functional module consortia. Methods: mRNA profiles of 3 replicates each of functional module enrichments of soil inoculum in M9 media with either 1) xylose, 2) n-acetylglucosamine, 3) glucose and gentamycin, 4) xylan, or 5) pectin were generated by sequencing using an Illumina platform (GENEWIZ performed sequencing). Sequence reads that passed quality filters were aligned to a soil metagenome using Burrows Wheeler Aligner. Resulting SAM files were converted to raw reads using HTSeq, and annotated using Uniref90 or EGGNOG databases. Results: To reduce the size of the RNA-Seq counts table and increase its computational tractability, transcripts containing a minimum of 75 total counts, but no more than 3 zero counts, across the 15 samples were removed. The subsequent dataset was normalized using DESeq2, resulting in a dataset consisting of 6947 unique transcripts across the 15 samples, and 185,920,068 reads. We identified gene categories that were enriched in a sample type relative to the overall dataset using Fisher’s exact test. Conclusions: our dataset confirms that the functional module consortia generated from targeted enrichments of a starting soil inoculum had distinct functional trends by enrichment type.
Project description:Purpose: We investigate the evolutionary footprints of a bacteria-plasmid association consisting of Escherichia coli K-12 MG1655 and plasmid RP4 undergoing a long-term sub-MIC antibiotic stress. Methods: Bacterial mRNA profiles of evolved RP4-carrying strains (E:H:p) and ancestral RP4-carrying strains (A:H:p) were generated by deep sequencing on an Illumina Hiseq platform. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were analyzed by Burrows–Wheeler Aligner (BWA), followed by ANOVA (ANOVA) and TopHat followed by Cufflinks. qRT–PCR validation was performed using TaqMan and SYBR Green assays Results: Using an optimized data analysis workflow, we mapped about 15 million sequence reads of E:H:p and 12 million sequence reads of A:H:p to the E. coli MG1655 genome (GCF_000801205.1) and differential expressed genes were identified with TopHat workflow. RNA-seq data showed that approximately 15% of the transcripts showed differential expression between the E:H:p and A:H:p strains, with a fold change ≥1 and p value <0.005. Altered expression of 26 genes was confirmed with qRT–PCR, demonstrating the high degree of sensitivity of the RNA-seq method. Data analysis with bowtie and TopHat workflows provided complementary insights in transcriptome profiling. Conclusions: Our study showed the coevolved bacteria-plasmid pairs has colonization traits superior to the wild-type parent strain. Antibiotic stress was necessary for bacterial evolution and evolved strains mostly employed transcriptional modifications to reduce plasmid-related cost in evolutionary adaptations. Several genes related to chromosome-encoded efflux pumps were transcriptionally upregulated, while most plasmid-harboring genes were downregulated based on RNA gene sequencing. These transcriptional modifications endowed evolved strains with resistant phenotype modifications, including the enhanced bacterial growth and biofilm formation.