Project description:Microarrays offer a powerful tool for diverse applications plant biology and crop improvement. Recently, a global assembly of cotton ESTs was constructed based on three Gossypium. Using that assembly as a template, we now describe the design and creation and of a publicly available oligonucleotide array for cotton, useful for all four of the cultivated species. Synthetic oligonucleotide probes were generated from exemplar sequences of a global assembly of more than 150,000 cotton ESTs derived from 30 different cDNA libraries representing many different tissue types and tissue treatments. A total of 13,158 oligonucleotide probes are included on the arrays, optimized to target the diversity of the transcriptome but also including previously studied cotton genes, duplicated gene pairs derived from a paleoduplication event, transcription factors, and homology to protein coding genes in Arabidopsis. About 10% of the oligonucleotides target unidentified protein coding sequences, thereby providing an element of gene discovery. Because many oligonucleotides were based on ESTs from fiber-specific cDNA libraries, the array has direct application for analysis of the fiber transcriptome. To illustrate the utility of the array, we hybridized labeled bud and leaf cDNAs from G. hirsutum and demonstrate technical consistency of results. The cotton microarray provides a reproducible platform for transcription profiling in cotton, and is made publicly available through http://cottonevolution.info. Keywords: self vs. self; platform testing
Project description:Background: The soil environment is responsible for sustaining most terrestrial plant life on earth, yet we know surprisingly little about the important functions carried out by diverse microbial communities in soil. Soil microbes that inhabit the channels of decaying root systems, the detritusphere, are likely to be essential for plant growth and health, as these channels are the preferred locations of new root growth. Understanding the microbial metagenome of the detritusphere and how it responds to agricultural management such as crop rotations and soil tillage will be vital for improving global food production. Methods: The rhizosphere soils of wheat and chickpea growing under + and - decaying root were collected for metagenomics sequencing. A gene catalogue was established by de novo assembling metagenomic sequencing. Genes abundance was compared between bulk soil and rhizosphere soils under different treatments. Conclusions: The study describes the diversity and functional capacity of a high-quality soil microbial metagenome. The results demonstrate the contribution of the microbiome from decaying root in determining the metagenome of developing root systems, which is fundamental to plant growth, since roots preferentially inhabit previous root channels. Modifications in root microbial function through soil management, can ultimately govern plant health, productivity and food security.
Project description:Rhizosphere is a complex system of interactions between plant roots, bacteria, fungi and animals, where the release of plant root exudates stimulates bacterial density and diversity. However, the majority of the bacteria in soil results to be unculturable but active. The aim of the present work was to characterize the microbial community associated to the root of V. vinifera cv. Pinot Noir not only under a taxonomic perspective, but also under a functional point of view, using a metaproteome approach. Our results underlined the difference between the metagenomic and metaproteomic approach and the large potentiality of proteomics in describing the environmental bacterial community and its activity. In fact, by this approach, that allows to investigate the mechanisms occurring in the rhizosphere, we showed that bacteria belonging to Streptomyces, Bacillus and Pseudomonas genera are the most active in protein expression. In the rhizosphere, the identified genera were involved mainly in phosphorus and nitrogen soil metabolism.
Project description:Microbial communities in the rhizosphere make significant contributions to crop health and nutrient cycling. However, their ability to perform important biogeochemical processes remains uncharacterized. Important functional genes, which characterize the rhizosphere microbial community, were identified to understand metabolic capabilities in the maize rhizosphere using GeoChip 3.0-based functional gene array method.