Project description:Despite the global importance of forests, it is virtually unknown how their soil microbial communities adapt at the phylogenetic and functional level to long term metal pollution. Studying twelve sites located along two distinct gradients of metal pollution in Southern Poland revealed that both community composition (via MiSeq Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA genes) and functional gene potential (using GeoChip 4.2) were highly similar across the gradients despite drastically diverging metal contamination levels. Metal pollution level significantly impacted microbial community structure (p = 0.037), but not bacterial taxon richness. Metal pollution altered the relative abundance of specific bacterial taxa, including Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes and Proteobacteria. Also, a group of metal resistance genes showed significant correlations with metal concentrations in soil, although no clear impact of metal pollution levels on overall functional diversity and structure of microbial communities was observed. While screens of phylogenetic marker genes, such as 16S rRNA, provided only limited insight into resilience mechanisms, analysis of specific functional genes, e.g. involved in metal resistance, appeared to be a more promising strategy. This study showed that the effect of metal pollution on soil microbial communities was not straightforward, but could be filtered out from natural variation and habitat factors by multivariate statistical analysis and spatial sampling involving separate pollution gradients.
Project description:The mechanisms of heavy metal accumulation in primary producers and the damage and stress response induced by heavy metals is not well understood. We used UHTS to analyze the transcriptomic response of Elodea nuttallii to heavy metal pollution. We exposed shoots of E. nuttallii for 24 h to increasing concentrations of Hg and Cd. Using Illumina RNA-Seq, we have generated over 50 million 54 nt paired end reads and 14 million single end reads, which we used for de novo assembly of the E. nuttallii transcriptome.
Project description:Environmental contamination from heavy metals poses a global concern for the marine environment, as heavy metals are passed up the food chain and persist in the environment long after the pollution source is contained. Cnidarians, dating back to 700 million years ago, play an important role in shaping marine ecosystems, but environmental pollution profoundly affects their vitality. Among the cnidarians, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis is an advantageous model for addressing questions in molecular ecology and toxicology as it tolerates extreme environments and its genome has been published. Here we employed a transcriptome-wide RNA-Seq approach to analyze N.vectensis molecular defense mechanisms against four heavy metals: Hg, Cu, Cd and Zn. Altogether, more than 5000 transcripts showed significant changes in gene expression, with Hg having the greatest impact on up-regulating transcripts, followed by Cu, Cd and Zn. We identified, for the first time, co-up-regulation of immediate-early transcription factors such as Egr1, AP1 and NF-κB. Time-course analysis of these genes revealed their early expression as rapidly as one hour after exposure to heavy metals, suggesting that they may complement or substitute for the roles of the metal mediating Mtf1 transcripton factor. We further characterized regulation of a large array of stress-response gene families including Hsp, ABC, CYP members and phytochelatin synthase that may regulate synthesis of the metal-binding phytochelatins instead of the methallothioneins that are absent from Cnidaria genome. This study provides mechanistic insight into heavy-metal toxicity in N.vectensis and sheds light on ancestral stress adaptations. 4 metals were tested in triplicates in comparison to control (4 replicates)
Project description:Environmental contamination from heavy metals poses a global concern for the marine environment, as heavy metals are passed up the food chain and persist in the environment long after the pollution source is contained. Cnidarians, dating back to 700 million years ago, play an important role in shaping marine ecosystems, but environmental pollution profoundly affects their vitality. Among the cnidarians, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis is an advantageous model for addressing questions in molecular ecology and toxicology as it tolerates extreme environments and its genome has been published. Here we employed a transcriptome-wide RNA-Seq approach to analyze N.vectensis molecular defense mechanisms against four heavy metals: Hg, Cu, Cd and Zn. Altogether, more than 5000 transcripts showed significant changes in gene expression, with Hg having the greatest impact on up-regulating transcripts, followed by Cu, Cd and Zn. We identified, for the first time, co-up-regulation of immediate-early transcription factors such as Egr1, AP1 and NF-κB. Time-course analysis of these genes revealed their early expression as rapidly as one hour after exposure to heavy metals, suggesting that they may complement or substitute for the roles of the metal mediating Mtf1 transcripton factor. We further characterized regulation of a large array of stress-response gene families including Hsp, ABC, CYP members and phytochelatin synthase that may regulate synthesis of the metal-binding phytochelatins instead of the methallothioneins that are absent from Cnidaria genome. This study provides mechanistic insight into heavy-metal toxicity in N.vectensis and sheds light on ancestral stress adaptations.
Project description:Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 is a metal resistant beta-proteobacterium. The genome of this bacterium contain many genes involved in heavy metal resistance. Gene expression of C. metallidurans was studied after the addition of of Zn(II), Cd(II), Cu(II), Ni(II), Pb(II), Hg(II) or Co(II). Keywords: Heavy metal stress response
Project description:Despite the global importance of forests, it is virtually unknown how their soil microbial communities adapt at the phylogenetic and functional level to long term metal pollution. Studying twelve sites located along two distinct gradients of metal pollution in Southern Poland revealed that both community composition (via MiSeq Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA genes) and functional gene potential (using GeoChip 4.2) were highly similar across the gradients despite drastically diverging metal contamination levels. Metal pollution level significantly impacted microbial community structure (p = 0.037), but not bacterial taxon richness. Metal pollution altered the relative abundance of specific bacterial taxa, including Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes and Proteobacteria. Also, a group of metal resistance genes showed significant correlations with metal concentrations in soil, although no clear impact of metal pollution levels on overall functional diversity and structure of microbial communities was observed. While screens of phylogenetic marker genes, such as 16S rRNA, provided only limited insight into resilience mechanisms, analysis of specific functional genes, e.g. involved in metal resistance, appeared to be a more promising strategy. This study showed that the effect of metal pollution on soil microbial communities was not straightforward, but could be filtered out from natural variation and habitat factors by multivariate statistical analysis and spatial sampling involving separate pollution gradients. 12 samples were collected from two long-term polluted areas (Olkusz and Miasteczko M-EM-^ZlM-DM-^Eskie) in Southern Poland. In the study presented here, a consecutively operated, well-defined cohort of 50 NSCLC cases, followed up more than five years, was used to acquire expression profiles of a total of 8,644 unique genes, leading to the successful construction of supervised
Project description:Verbena bonariensis is a species with excellent garden plant, good environmental adaptability and great potential for future development.Cadmium has caused serious heavy metal pollution in the soil, which has posed a great threat to plant growth. In this study, Illumina sequencing technology was used to sequence the transcriptome of Verbena bonariensis leaf under normal and Cd stress, respectively. In total, 95,013 transcripts and 63021 genes with an average length of 923 bp and 1,246 bp were constructed from the clean sequence reads, respectively. And 1037 DEGs were found in response to cadmium treatment, of which 10 were selected for qRT-PCR. In conclusion, this study first identified the Verbena bonariensis as a heavy metal tolerant plant and provided the first large-scale transcriptional data set in response to cadmium stress. Our research will help to understand the mechanism of resistance to Cd in the Verbena bonariensis and provide clues for further studies on the relationships between plants and heavy metals in other Verbenaceae plants.
Project description:Background: The high number of heavy metal resistance genes in the soil bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 makes it an interesting model organism to study microbial responses to heavy metals. Results: In this study the transcriptional response of this bacterium was measured after challenging it to a wide range of sub-lethal concentrations of various essential or toxic metals. Considering the global transcriptional responses for each challenge as well as by identifying the overlap in upregulated genes between different metal responses, the sixteen metals could be clustered in three different groups. Additionally, next to the assessment of the transcriptional response of already known metal resistance genes, new metal response gene clusters were identified. The majority of the metal response loci showed similar expression profiles when cells were exposed to different metals, suggesting complex cross-talk at transcriptional level between the different metal responses. The highly redundant nature of these metal resistant regions – illustrated by the large number of paralogous genes – combined with the phylogenetic distribution of these metal response regions within evolutionary related and other metal resistant bacteria, provides important insights on the recent evolution of this naturally soil dwelling bacterium towards a highly metal-resistant strain found in harsh and anthropogenic environments. Conclusions: The metal-resistant soil bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 displays myriads of gene expression patterns when exposed to a wide range of heavy metals at non-lethal concentrations. The interplay between the different gene expression clusters points towards a complex cross-regulated regulatory network governing heavy metal resistance in C. metallidurans CH34. Keywords: Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34, transcriptional regulation, heavy metal resistance
Project description:Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 is a metal resistant beta-proteobacterium. The genome of this bacterium contain many genes involved in heavy metal resistance. Gene expression of C. metallidurans was studied after the addition of of Zn(II), Cd(II), Cu(II), Ni(II), Pb(II), Hg(II) or Co(II). Keywords: Heavy metal stress response Cultures of C. metallidurans CH34 were grown at 30°C until OD reached 0.6 (mid- exponential phase cultures). Heavy metals (0.8 mM of Zn(II), 0.5 mM of Cd(II), 0.1 mM of Cu(II), 0.6 mM of Ni(II), 0.4 mM of Pb(II), 5 uM of Hg(II) and 0.5 mM of Co(II)) were added to the culture for 30 minutes induction time. Total RNA was extracted, reverse-transcribed and labeled with Cy3-dCTP for the control (without metal) and with Cy5-dCTP for each conditions (challenged with one metal). Labeled cDNA were (control and one condition) added to a spotted slide for overnight hybridization at 42°C. Slides were scanned with a laser at 532 and 635 nm.