Project description:Monitoring microbial communities can aid in understanding the state of these habitats. Environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques provide efficient and comprehensive monitoring by capturing broader diversity. Besides structural profiling, eDNA methods allow the study of functional profiles, encompassing the genes within the microbial community. In this study, three methodologies were compared for functional profiling of microbial communities in estuarine and coastal sites in the Bay of Biscay. The methodologies included inference from 16S metabarcoding data using Tax4Fun, GeoChip microarrays, and shotgun metagenomics.
Project description:Eucalyptus urophylla is a commercially important wood crop plantation species due to its rapid growth, biomass yield, and use as bioenergy feedstock. We characterized the genetic diversity and population structure of 332 E. urophylla individuals from 19 geographically defined E. urophylla populations with a reliability of 14,468 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We compared the patterns of genetic variation among these 19 populations. High levels of genetic diversity were observed throughout the 19 E. urophylla populations based on genome-wide SNP data (HE=0.2677 to 0.3487). Analysis with STRUCTURE software, Principal component analysis (PCA) and a neighbor-joining (NJ) tree indicated that E. urophylla populations could be divided into three groups, and moderate and weak population structure was observed with pairwise genetic differentiation (FST) values ranging from −0.09 to 0.074. The low genetic diversity and shallow genetic differentiation found within the 19 populations may be a consequence of their pollination system and seed dispersal mechanism. In addition, 55 core germplasms of E. urophylla were constructed according to the genetic marker data. The genome-wide SNPs we identified will provide a valuable resource for further genetic improvement and effective use of the germplasm resources.
Project description:Recent improvements in the analysis ancient biomolecules from human remains and associated dental calculus have provided new insights into the prehistoric diet and past genetic diversity of our species. Here we present a “multi-omics” study, integrating genomic and proteomic analyses of two post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) individuals from San Teodoro cave (Italy), to reconstruct their lifestyle and the post-LGM resettlement of Europe. Our analyses show genetic homogeneity in Sicily during the Palaeolithic, representing a hitherto unknown Italian genetic lineage within the previously identified “Villabruna cluster”. We argue that this lineage took refuge in Italy during the LGM, followed by a subsequent spread to central-western Europe. Analyses of dental calculus using genomics and proteomics showed a similar oral microbiome composition as Neandertals, but distinct from later foragers and farmers, revealing also a diet based on mammals, fish and plants. Our results demonstrate the power of using a multi-omics approach in the study of prehistoric human populations.