Efficient DNA isolation from moroccan arar tree [Tetraclinis articulata (Vahl) Masters] leaves and optimization of the rapd-pcr molecular technique

Efficient DNA isolation from Moroccan Arar tree [Tetraclinis articulata (Vahl) Masters] leaves and optimization of the RAPD-PCR molecular technique. Molecular genetic analysis of Arar tree [Tetraclinis articulata (Vahl) Masters] is often limited by the availability of fresh tissue and an efficient and reliable protocol for high quality genomic DNA extraction. In this study, two DNA extraction protocols were specifically developed for extracting high quality genomic DNA from Arar tree leaves: modified QIAgen DNA Kit and protocol developed by Ouenzar et al. (1998). DNA yield and purity were monitored by gel electrophoresis and by determining absorbance at UV (A260/A280 and A260/A230). Both ratios were between 1.7 and 2.0, indicating that the presence of contaminating metabolites was minimal. The DNA yield obtained ranged between 20 to 40 μg/g of plant materiel. The Ouenzar and collaborators protocol gave higher yield but was more time consuming compared to QIAgen Kit. However, both techniques gave DNA of good quality that is amenable to RAPD-PCR reactions. Additionally, restriction digestion and PCR analyses of the obtained DNA showed its compatibility with downstream applications. Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA profiling from the isolated DNA was optimized to produce scorable and clear amplicons. The presented protocols allow easy and high quality DNA isolation for genetic diversity studies within Arar tree

Functional characterization of SlscADH1, a fruit-ripening associated short-chain alcohol dehydrogenase of tomato

A tomato short-chain dehydrogenase-reductase (SlscADH1) is preferentially expressed in fruit with a maximum expression at the breaker stage while expression in roots, stems, leaves and flowers is very weak. It represents a potential candidate for the formation of aroma volatiles by interconverting alcohols and aldehydes. The SlscADH1 recombinant protein produced in Escherichia coli exhibited dehydrogenase-reductase activity towards several volatile compounds present in tomato flavour with a strong preference for the NAD/NADH co-factors. The strongest activity was observed for the reduction of hexanal (Km = 0.175 mM) and phenylacetaldehyde (Km = 0.375 mM) in the presence of NADH. The oxidation process of hexanol and 1-phenylethanol was much less efficient (Kms of 2.9 and 23.0 mM, respectively), indicating that the enzyme preferentially acts as a reductase. However activity was observed only for hexanal, phenylacetaldehyde, (E)-2-hexenal and acetaldehyde and the corresponding alcohols. No activity could be detected for other aroma volatiles important for tomato flavour, such as methyl-butanol/methyl-butanal, 5-methyl-6-hepten-2-one/5-methyl-6-hepten-2-ol, citronellal/citronellol, neral/nerol, geraniol. In order to assess the function of the SlscADH1 gene, transgenic plants have been generated using the technique of RNA interference (RNAi). Constitutive down-regulation using the 35S promoter resulted in the generation of dwarf plants, indicating that the SlscADH1 gene, although weakly expressed in vegetative tissues, had a function in regulating plant development. Fruitspecific down-regulation using the 2A11 promoter had no morphogenetic effect and did not alter the aldehyde/alcohol balance of the volatiles compounds produced by the fruit. Nevertheless, SlscADH1-inhibited fruit unexpectedly accumulated higher concentrations of C5 and C6 volatile compounds of the lipoxygenase pathway, possibly as an indirect effect of the suppression of SlscADH1 on the catabolism of phospholipids and/or integrity of membranes

On the use of clustering and the MeSH controlled vocabulary to improve MEDLINE abstract search

Databases of genomic documents contain substantial amounts of structured information in addition to the texts of titles and abstracts. Unstructured information retrieval techniques fail to take advantage of the structured information available. This paper describes a technique to improve upon traditional retrieval methods by clustering the retrieval result set into two distinct clusters using additional structural information. Our hypothesis is that the relevant documents are to be found in the tightest cluster of the two, as suggested by van Rijsbergen's cluster hypothesis. We present an experimental evaluation of these ideas based on the relevance judgments of the 2004 TREC workshop Genomics track, and the CLUTO software clustering package

Back to the future of soil metagenomics

JN was funded by a fellowship from the French MENESR.Peer reviewedPeer Reviewe