Project description:Hypnale hypnale (hump-nosed pit viper) is considered to be one among the medically important venomous snake species of India and Sri Lanka. In the present study, venom proteome profiling of a single Hypnale hypnale from Western Ghats of India was achieved using SDS-PAGE based protein separation followed by LC-MS/MS analysis
2020-03-19 | PXD017592 | Pride
Project description:Soil Bacterial diversity in Western Ghats Microbiome
| PRJNA860045 | ENA
Project description:Bacterial diversity analysis in rhizosphere of Ficus spp. in Western Ghats, India
Project description:The socioeconomic burden of snakebite in India is largely attributed to the ‘big four’ snakes, completely neglecting the considerable impact of envenoming by many other snake species. Bites from the so-called ‘neglected many’ are often treated with a polyvalent antivenom that is manufactured against the ‘big four’ snakes - a strategy that has been widely documented to fail. Yet, specific antivenoms are not commercially manufactured against these snakes. While the medical importance of various species of cobras, saw-scaled vipers, and kraits is very well-known, the clinical impact of pit vipers from the rainforests of the Western Ghats, northeastern India, and Andaman and Nicobar islands has remained elusive. Amongst the 90+ species of snakes found in the Western Ghats, the hump-nosed (Hypnale hypnale), Malabar (Craspedocephalus malabaricus) and bamboo (Craspedocephalus gramineus) pit vipers can potentially inflict clinically severe envenoming in humans. To evaluate the severity of toxicity inflicted by these snakes, we characterised their venom composition, biochemical and pharmacological activities, and toxicity- and morbidity-inducing potentials. Our findings highlight the therapeutic inadequacies of the generic Indian and Hypnale-specific Sri Lankan polyvalent antivenoms in neutralising morbidity and mortality resulting from pit viper envenomings and underscore the need for a regional antivenom therapy in India.
Project description:Soil transplant serves as a proxy to simulate climate change in realistic climate regimes. Here, we assessed the effects of climate warming and cooling on soil microbial communities, which are key drivers in Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, four years after soil transplant over large transects from northern (N site) to central (NC site) and southern China (NS site) and vice versa. Four years after soil transplant, soil nitrogen components, microbial biomass, community phylogenetic and functional structures were altered. Microbial functional diversity, measured by a metagenomic tool named GeoChip, and phylogenetic diversity are increased with temperature, while microbial biomass were similar or decreased. Nevertheless, the effects of climate change was overridden by maize cropping, underscoring the need to disentangle them in research. Mantel tests and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) demonstrated that vegetation, climatic factors (e.g., temperature and precipitation), soil nitrogen components and CO2 efflux were significantly correlated to the microbial community composition. Further investigation unveiled strong correlations between carbon cycling genes and CO2 efflux in bare soil but not cropped soil, and between nitrogen cycling genes and nitrification, which provides mechanistic understanding of these microbe-mediated processes and empowers an interesting possibility of incorporating bacterial gene abundance in greenhouse gas emission modeling.
Project description:Permafrost soil in high latitude tundra is one of the largest terrestrial carbon (C) stocks and is highly sensitive to climate warming. Understanding microbial responses to warming induced environmental changes is critical to evaluating their influence on soil biogeochemical cycles. In this study, a functional gene array (i.e. GeoChip 4.2) was used to analyze the functional capacities of soil microbial communities collected from a naturally degrading permafrost region in Central Alaska. Varied thaw history was reported to be the main driver of soil and plant differences across a gradient of minimally, moderately and extensively thawed sites. Compared with the minimally thawed site, the number of detected functional gene probes across the 15-65 cm depth profile at the moderately and extensively thawed sites decreased by 25 % and 5 %, while the community functional gene beta-diversity increased by 34% and 45%, respectively, revealing decreased functional gene richness but increased community heterogeneity along the thaw progression. Particularly, the moderately thawed site contained microbial communities with the highest abundances of many genes involved in prokaryotic C degradation, ammonification, and nitrification processes, but lower abundances of fungal C decomposition and anaerobic-related genes. Significant correlations were observed between functional gene abundance and vascular plant primary productivity, suggesting that plant growth and species composition could be co-evolving traits together with microbial community composition. Altogether, this study reveals the complex responses of microbial functional potentials to thaw related soil and plant changes, and provides information on potential microbially mediated biogeochemical cycles in tundra ecosystems.
Project description:Soil transplant serves as a proxy to simulate climate change in realistic climate regimes. Here, we assessed the effects of climate warming and cooling on soil microbial communities, which are key drivers in EarthM-bM-^@M-^Ys biogeochemical cycles, four years after soil transplant over large transects from northern (N site) to central (NC site) and southern China (NS site) and vice versa. Four years after soil transplant, soil nitrogen components, microbial biomass, community phylogenetic and functional structures were altered. Microbial functional diversity, measured by a metagenomic tool named GeoChip, and phylogenetic diversity are increased with temperature, while microbial biomass were similar or decreased. Nevertheless, the effects of climate change was overridden by maize cropping, underscoring the need to disentangle them in research. Mantel tests and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) demonstrated that vegetation, climatic factors (e.g., temperature and precipitation), soil nitrogen components and CO2 efflux were significantly correlated to the microbial community composition. Further investigation unveiled strong correlations between carbon cycling genes and CO2 efflux in bare soil but not cropped soil, and between nitrogen cycling genes and nitrification, which provides mechanistic understanding of these microbe-mediated processes and empowers an interesting possibility of incorporating bacterial gene abundance in greenhouse gas emission modeling. Fifty four samples were collected from three soil types (Phaeozem,Cambisol,Acrisol) in three sites (Hailun, Fengqiu and Yingtan) along a latitude with reciprocal transplant; Both with and without maize cropping in each site; Three replicates in every treatments.
Project description:Tibet is one of the most threatened regions by climate warming, thus understanding how its microbial communities function may be of high importance for predicting microbial responses to climate changes. Here, we report a study to profile soil microbial structural genes, which infers functional roles of microbial communities, along four sites/elevations of a Tibetan mountainous grassland, aiming to explore potential microbial responses to climate changes via a strategy of space-for-time substitution. Using a microarray-based metagenomics tool named GeoChip 4.0, we showed that microbial communities were distinct for most but not all of the sites. Substantial variations were apparent in stress, N and C cycling genes, but they were in line with the functional roles of these genes. Cold shock genes were more abundant at higher elevations. Also, gdh converting ammonium into urea was more abundant at higher elevations while ureC converting urea into ammonium was less abundant, which was consistent with soil ammonium contents. Significant correlations were observed between N-cycling genes (ureC, gdh and amoA) and nitrous oxide flux, suggesting that they contributed to community metabolism. Lastly, we found by CCA, Mantel tests and the similarity tests that soil pH, temperature, NH4+–N and vegetation diversity accounted for the majority (81.4%) of microbial community variations, suggesting that these four attributes were major factors affecting soil microbial communities. Based on these observations, we predict that climate changes in the Tibetan grasslands are very likely to change soil microbial community functional structure, with particular impacts on microbial N cycling genes and consequently microbe-mediated soil N dynamics.