Project description:The goal of this study was to identify the key functions of the six main symbionts that are hosted in gills of the marine bivalve, Idas modiolaeformis, which lives at deep-sea hydrocarbon seeps and wood falls in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. These symbionts include the main autotrophic methane- and sulfur-oxidizing lineages (Methyloprofundus, Thioglobus, Thiodubillierella), as well as a Methylophagaceae methylotrophic autotroph, a flavobacterial degrader of complex polysaccharides Urechidicola and a Nitrincolaceae heterotroph that specializes in degradation of nitrogen-rich compounds such as peptides and nucleosides. Four I. modiolaeformis individuals were preserved in RNAlater following retrieval from a brine pool habitat in the Eastern Mediterranean at 1,150 m water depth (32° 13.4' N 34° 10.7' E), using a remotely-operated vehicle. RNAlater was discarded after 24 hours, and the specimens were kept at -80°C until DNA/RNA/protein co-extraction using the AllPrep DNA/RNA/Protein Mini Kit (Cat. No. 80004, Qiagen).
Project description:Although the key role of long-distance trade in the transformation of cuisines worldwide has been well-documented since at least the Roman era, the prehistory of the Eurasian food trade is less visible. In order to shed light on the transformation of Eastern Mediterranean cuisines during the Bronze and Early Iron Age, we analyzed microremains and proteins preserved in the dental calculus of individuals who lived during the 2nd millennium BCE in the Southern Levant. Our results provide clear evidence for the consumption of expected staple foods, such as cereals (Triticeae), sesame (Sesamum) and dates (Phoenix). We additionally report evidence for the consumption of soybean (Glycine), probable banana (Musa), and turmeric (Curcuma), which pushes back the earliest known availability of these foods in the Mediterranean by centuries (turmeric) or even millennia (soybean). We find that, from the early 2nd millennium onwards, at least some people in the Eastern Mediterranean had access to food from distant locations, including South Asia, and such trade goods likely reached the Eastern Mediterranean in the form of oils, dried fruits, and spices. These novel insights force us to rethink the complexity and intensity of Indo-Mediterranean trade during the Bronze Age and also the degree of globalization in early Eastern Mediterranean cuisine.
Project description:Sulfur metabolism in the deep-sea cold seep has been mentioned to have an important contribution to the biogeochemical cycle of sulfur in previous studies. And sulfate reducing bacteria have also been considered to be a dominant microbial population in the deep-sea cold seep and play a crucial role in this process. However, most of sulfate reducing bacteria from cold seep still cannot be purely cultured under laboratory conditions, therefore the actual sulfur metabolism pathways in sulfate reducing bacteria from the deep-sea cold seep have remained unclear. Here, we isolate and pure culture a typical sulfate reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio marinus CS1 from the sediment sample of the deep-sea cold seep in the South China Sea, which provides a probability to understand the sulfur metabolism in the cold seep.
