Project description:SNP genotyping was used to determine if the free living Highland Wild dogs of Papua, Indonesia are the ansestors of captive New Guinea Singing Dogs.
Project description:Bacterial communities are an important part of biological diversity and biogeochemical cycling in aquatic ecosystems. In this study, the relationship amongst the phytoplankton species composition and abiotic environmental factors on seasonal changes in the community composition of free-living and attached bacteria in Lake Erhai were studied. Using Illumina high-throughput sequencing, we found that the impact of environmental factors on both the free-living and attached bacterial community composition was greater than that of the phytoplankton community, amongst which total phosphorus, Secchi disk, water temperature, dissolved oxygen and conductivity strongly influenced bacterial community composition. Microcystis blooms associated with subdominant Psephonema occurred during the summer and autumn, and Fragilaria, Melosira and Mougeotia were found at high densities in the other seasons. Only small numbers of algal species-specific bacteria, including Xanthomonadaceae (Proteobacteria) and Alcaligenaceae (Betaproteobacteria), were tightly coupled to Microcystis and Psephonema during Microcystis blooms. Redundancy analysis showed that although the composition of the bacterial communities was controlled by species composition mediated by changes in phytoplankton communities and abiotic environmental factors, the impact of the abiotic environment on both free-living and attached bacterial community compositions were greater than the impact of the phytoplankton community. These results suggest that the species composition of both free-living and attached bacterial communities are affected by abiotic environmental factors, even when under strong control by biotic factors, particularly dominant genera of Microcystis and Psephonema during algal blooms.
Project description:This experiment exploits the life-cycle of Strongyloides ratti, which is a parasitic nematode of brown rats that exhibits three adult stages within its life-cycle - parasitic females, freeliving females and free-living males. We use a cDNA microarray to examine patterns of (i) gender-biased gene expression by contrasting free-living females against free-living males, and (ii) parasitic-biased expression by contrasting parasitic females against free-living females. Of the 3688 distinct transcripts represented on our array, 20% exhibited male-biased expression 19% exhibit female-biased expression, 11% exhibit parasitic-biased expression and 8% exhibit free-living-biased expression. Among the top responding genes, an orthologue of major sperm protein is upregulated in males, distinct aspartic protease orthologues are upregulated in either parasitic or in free-living females, and orthologues of hsp-17 chaperone are upregulated in parasitic females. Upon a global analysis of gene expression, we find that female-biased expression is associated with genes involved in reproductive processes and larval development, that male-biased expression is associated with genes involved in metabolism, and that free-living biased expression is associated with genes involved in regulation of body fluids and response to external stimulus. The association of gene ontology with parasite-biased expression is less clear. Our results provide an initial gene expression analysis of gender- and parasite-biased expression in S. ratti, may be more generally applicable to other parasitic nematodes, and may help to refine the search for novel drug or vaccine targets against parasitic nematodes.
2008-01-17 | E-MAXD-37 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:free-living and attached bacterial communities in a highland lake
| PRJNA488008 | ENA
Project description:free-living and attached bacterial communities in a highland lake2
Project description:Exploring the relationships between free-living (FL) and particle-attached (PA) bacterial communities can provide insight into their connectivity and the partitioning of biogeochemical processes, which is crucial to understanding the elemental cycles and metabolic pathways in aquatic ecosystems. However, there is still intense debate about that whether FL and PA fractions have the same assemblage. To address this issue, we investigated the extent of similarity between FL and PA bacterial communities along the environmental gradients in Lake Wuli, China. Our results revealed that the west Lake Wuli was slightly eutrophic and the east lake was moderately and highly eutrophic. The alpha-diversity of the FL bacterial communities was significantly lower than that of the PA fraction in the west lake, whereas the alpha-diversity of the two fractions was comparable in the east lake. The beta-diversity of both communities significantly differed in the west lake, whereas it resembled that in the east lake. Moreover, functional prediction analysis highlighted the significantly larger differences of metabolic functions between the FL and PA fractions in the west lake than in the east lake. Suspended particles and carbon resource promote the similarity between the FL and PA fractions. Collectively, our result reveals a convergent succession of aquatic communities along the eutrophic gradient, highlighting that the connectivity between FL and PA bacterial communities is nutrient related.
Project description:In previous studies we have shown that the two adult females morphs of S. ratti have very different lifespans. This experiment was designed to try to identify differentially expressed genes in these two adult morphs that may account for these differing lifespans. The genes expressed by S. ratti parasitic females at day 6 p.i. were compared to the genes expressed by S. ratti free living females at 3 days 19 degrees C. This comparison was done using a microarray chip that is spotted with PCR fragments from the libraries that were generated from parasitic females extracted at day 6 and day 15 p.i., and a microarray chip that is spotted with PCR fragments from the libraries that were generated from free-living larval stages L1, L2 and infective L3s and from free-living males and females.