Project description:Some species in the Kalanchoë genus form plantlets on their leaf margins as an asexual reproduction strategy. The limited molecular studies on plantlet formation showed an organogenesis ortholog, SHOOTMERISTEMLESS (STM) and embryogenesis genes such as LEAFY COTYLEDON1 (LEC1) and FUSCA3 are recruited during plantlet formation. To understand the mechanisms of two Kalanchoë plantlet-forming species with a slightly different mode of plantlet formation, RNA-sequencing analysis was performed in K. daigremontiana and K. pinnata respectively.
Project description:The Xenopus genus is well known for the high degree of polyploidy observed in its constituent species, but there is minimal information about transcriptional changes observed in these highly polyploid vertebrates. Xenopus andrei, an octoploid species within the Xenopus genus, presents a novel system for assessing a polyploid transcriptome during vertebrate development. RNA-Seq data was generated at nine different developmental stages ranging from unfertilized eggs through late tailbud stages. Additionally, using Trinity, RNA-seq data from all nine stages was pooled to create a draft de novo assembly of the transcriptome. This represents the first published assembly of an octoploid vertebrate transcriptome. This RNA-Seq and transcriptome data will be useful in comparing polyploid transcriptomes across Xenopus species, as well as understanding evolutionary implications of whole-genome duplication in vertebrates.
Project description:Salvia is an important genus from the Lamiaceae with approximately 1000 species distributed globally. Several Salvia species are commercially important because of their medicinal and culinary properties. We report the construction of the first fingerprinting array for Salvia species enriched with polymorphic and divergent DNA sequences and demonstrate the potential of this array for fingerprinting several economically important members of this genus.
Project description:Hyperthermophilic bacteria of the genus Thermotoga are known to utilize a wide range of simple and complex polysaccharides. T. maritima's transcriptional response to a variety of mono- and poly-saccharides was previously studied to assign functions to genes involved in carbohydrate uptake and utilization. To compare and contrast closely-related members of the Thermotoga genus, a four-species microarray was developed by expanding a whole genome T. maritima array to include unique genes from three other species (T. neapolitana, T. petrophila, and T. sp. RQ2). This multi-species array was used to investigate the diversity of the genus, specifically the response of each of the four species to a mixture of polysaccharides (galactomannan, glucomannan, xylan, pectin, lichenan, and carboxymethyl cellulose).
Project description:As a good niche for bacterial growth, appendix plays a very important role in maintaining and protecting intestinal symbiotic flora. Appendectomy will lead to intestinal microecological disorders. Therefore, we put forward the hypothesis that "appendectomy leads to intestinal microecological disorders and then increases the risk of colorectal cancer". In this study, the feces of normal controls, appendectomy and patients with colorectal cancer were collected, and the specific changes of intestinal flora after appendectomy were explored in detail from the level of family, genus and species by macrogenomic sequencing. Then through functional gene analysis, metabolic pathway analysis and other methods to explore the molecular mechanism of colorectal cancer risk changes and the changes of microflora involved, and verified by mouse fecal bacteria transplantation animal experiment.
Project description:We created a multi-species microarray platform, containing probes to the whole genomes of seven different Saccharomyces species, with very dense coverage (one probe every ~500 bp) of the S. cerevisiae genome, including non-S288c regions, mitochondrial and 2 micron circle genomes, plus probes at fairly dense coverage (one probe every ~2,100 bp) for each of the genomes of six other Saccharomyces species: S. paradoxus, S. mikatae, S. kudriavzevii, S. bayanus, S. kluyveri and S. castellii. We performed array-Comparative Genomic Hybridization (aCGH) using this platform, examining 83 different Saccharomyces strains collected across a wide range of habitats; of these, 69 were widely used commercial S. cerevisiae wine strains, while the remaining 14 were from a wide range of other industrial and natural habitats. Thus, we were able to sample much of the pan-genome space of the Saccharomyces genus. We observed interspecific hybridization events, introgression events, and pervasive copy number variation (CNV) in all but a few of the strains. These CNVs were distributed throughout the strains such that they did not produce any clear phylogeny, suggesting extensive mating in both industrial and wild strains. To validate our results and to determine whether apparently similar introgressions and CNVs were identical by descent or recurrent, we also performed whole genome sequencing on nine of these strains. These data may help pinpoint genomic regions involved in adaptation to different industrial milieus, as well as shed light on the course of domestication of S. cerevisiae.