Project description:The Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish water bodies in the world. Redoxclines that form between oxic and anoxic layers in the deepest sub-basins are a semi-permanent character of the pelagic Baltic Sea. The microbially mediated nitrogen removal processes in these redoxclines have been recognized as important ecosystem service that removes large proportion of the nitrogen load originating from the drainage basin. However, nitrification, which links mineralization of organic nitrogen and nitrogen removal processes, has remained poorly understood. To gain better understanding of the nitrogen cycling in the Baltic Sea, we analyzed the assemblage of ammonia oxidizing bacteria and archaea in the central Baltic Sea using functional gene microarrays and measured the biogeochemical properties along with potential nitrification rates. Overall, the ammonia oxidizer communities in the Baltic Sea redoxcline were very evenly distributed. However, the communities were clearly different between the eastern and western Gotland Basin and the correlations between different components of the ammonia oxidizer assemblages and environmental variables suggest ecological basis for the community composition. The more even community ammonia oxidizer composition in the eastern Gotland Basin may be related to the constantly oscillating redoxcline that does not allow domination of single archetype. The oscillating redoxcline also creates long depth range of optimal nitrification conditions. The rate measurements suggest that nitrification in the central Baltic Sea is able to produce all nitrate required by denitrification occurring below the nitrification zone.
Project description:In this study, transcriptomics was used to investigate Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) sampled from three different field locations within Baltic Sea (Baltic Main Basin (CBS), Gulf of Finland (GoF) and Bothnian Sea (BS)) during marine migration. RNA labeling, hybridizations, and scanning were performed by the Finnish Microarray and Sequencing Centre in Turku Centre for Biotechnology.
Project description:The Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish water bodies in the world. Redoxclines that form between oxic and anoxic layers in the deepest sub-basins are a semi-permanent character of the pelagic Baltic Sea. The microbially mediated nitrogen removal processes in these redoxclines have been recognized as important ecosystem service that removes large proportion of the nitrogen load originating from the drainage basin. However, nitrification, which links mineralization of organic nitrogen and nitrogen removal processes, has remained poorly understood. To gain better understanding of the nitrogen cycling in the Baltic Sea, we analyzed the assemblage of ammonia oxidizing bacteria and archaea in the central Baltic Sea using functional gene microarrays and measured the biogeochemical properties along with potential nitrification rates. Overall, the ammonia oxidizer communities in the Baltic Sea redoxcline were very evenly distributed. However, the communities were clearly different between the eastern and western Gotland Basin and the correlations between different components of the ammonia oxidizer assemblages and environmental variables suggest ecological basis for the community composition. The more even community ammonia oxidizer composition in the eastern Gotland Basin may be related to the constantly oscillating redoxcline that does not allow domination of single archetype. The oscillating redoxcline also creates long depth range of optimal nitrification conditions. The rate measurements suggest that nitrification in the central Baltic Sea is able to produce all nitrate required by denitrification occurring below the nitrification zone. Two color array (Cy3 and Cy5): the universal standard 20-mer oligo is printed to the slide with a 70-mer oligo (an archetype). Environmental DNA sequences (fluoresced with Cy3) within 15% of the 70-mer conjugated to a 20-mer oligo (fluoresced with Cy5) complementary to the universal standard will bind to the oligo probes on the array. Signal is the ratio of Cy3 to Cy5. Three replicate probes were printed for each archetype. Two replicate arrays were run on duplicate targets.
Project description:The genetic structure of the indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples of Southern Africa, the oldest known lineage of modern man, holds an important key to understanding humanity's early history. Previously sequenced human genomes have been limited to recently diverged populations. Here we present the first complete genome sequences of an indigenous hunter-gatherer from the Kalahari Desert and of a Bantu from Southern Africa, as well as protein-coding regions from an additional three hunter-gatherers from disparate regions of the Kalahari. We characterize the extent of whole-genome and exome diversity among the five men, reporting 1.3 million novel DNA differences genome-wide, and 13,146 novel amino-acid variants. These data allow genetic relationships among Southern African foragers and neighboring agriculturalists to be traced more accurately than was previously possible. Adding the described variants to current databases will facilitate inclusion of Southern Africans in medical research efforts. Copy number differences between NA18507 and KB1 were predicted from the depth of whole-genome shotgun sequence reads. These predictions were then validated using array-CGH using a a genome-wide design as well as a custom design targeted at specific regions of copy number difference