Data_Sheet_1_Enhanced biodegradation of phenanthrene and anthracene using a microalgal-bacterial consortium.docx

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are chemicals that are released into the environment during activities of the petroleum industry. The bioaccumulation, carcinogenic and mutagenic potential of PAHs necessitates the bioremediation of these contaminants. However, bioremediation of PAHs has a number of limitations including the inability of a single microbe to degrade all of the PAH fraction’s environmental constituents. Therefore, a different paradigm, employing microalgal-bacterial consortium (MBC), may be used to effectively remove PAHs contaminants. In this type of interaction, the microalgae and bacteria species in the consortium work together in a way that enhances the overall performance of the MBC. Bacterial species in the consortium provide essential nutrients or growth factors by degrading toxic substances and provide these to microalgae, while the microalgae species provide organic carbon for the bacterial species to grow. For the first time, the ability of Gonium pectorale (G. pectorale) microalgae to break down phenanthrene (PHE) and anthracene (ANT) was investigated. Phenanthrene was shown to be more effectively degraded by G. pectorale (98%) as compared to Bacillus licheniformis (B. licheniformis) 19%. Similarly, G. pectorale has effectively degrade anthracene (98%) as compared with B. licheniformis (45%). The consortia of G. pectorale and B. licheniformis has shown a slight increase in the degradation of PHE (96%) and ANT (99%). Our findings show that B. licheniformis did not inhibit the growth of G. pectorale and in the consortia has effectively eliminated the PAHs from the media. Therefore G. pectorale has a tremendous potential to remove PAHs from the polluted environment. Future research will be conducted to assess Gonium’s capacity to eliminate PAHs that exhibit high molar masses than that of PHE and ANT.</p

Adaptation and performance of rice genotypes in tropical and subtropical environments

Standardized field experiments were carried out to study the performance of five rice genotypes derived from different germplasm in terms of yield, harvest index (HI) and grain quality at eight agro-ecological sites of the tropics and subtropics across Asia during 2001 and 2002. Considering that indica and javanica genotypes adapt to warm climatic conditions, and japonica genotypes to cool agro-climatic conditions, it is hypothesized that indica × japonica hybrids may combine high yields and good quality traits under a wide range of agro-climatic conditions. Grain yield, HI, protein content and amylose content varied considerably among genotypes and environments. Mean rice yields of genotypes ranged from 1.5 to 11 t ha-1 across the eight sites; on average yields were 7.2 t ha-1 under subtropical and 2.7 t ha-1 under tropical conditions. The much lower yields in tropical environments resulted from a low biomass as well as a low HI. Among the genotypes, the indica × japonica hybrid showed the highest yield under subtropical conditions, and a higher yield than the japonica genotypes and the indica × javanica hybrid but lower than the indica genotype under tropical conditions. Phenology of genotypes varied strongly across environments. Low yields at tropical locations were associated with a low light capture due to short growth duration. Post-anthesis light-use efficiencies and the photothermal quotient explained much of the variation in yield. Protein content varied among genotypes depending on location and year. Variation in amylose content of rice grains was mainly associated with genotypic differences and much less with environmental conditions, but contents decreased with higher post-anthesis ambient temperatures. The indica × japonica hybrid combined high yields with a favourable amylose content and showed a better ability to adapt to cool and to warm agro-climatic conditions than the indica or japonica genotypes. Our study showed the magnitude of yield penalties associated with growing rice genotypes in environments to which they are not adapted. The consequences of these findings for improved adaptation of rice are discusse

Lumefantrine drug selection regimen.

<p>Number of cycles during which V1S was cultured with varying Lumefantrine (LM) concentrations. In total, parasites were exposed to LM for 166 <i>P. falciparum</i> cycles, finally resulting in LM resistant V1S_LM.</p

Correlation coefficients of log2 fold changes (FC) by RT-qPCR and microarray analysis.

<p>The linear regression is indicated on the plot, with an r² = 0.7389.</p

Chromosomes 2 (A) and 10 (B) show over-expression of contiguous probes covering 21 and 22 CDS, respectively.

<p>Amplification of the signals for the left arms of chromosomes 2 (<b>A</b>) and 10 (<b>B</b>) are enlarged for each time point as indicated. Every single coloured dot corresponds to a 25-mer probe: red is for 0 h, blue for 12 h, green for 24 h and yellow for 36 h. Underneath every enlarged chromosomal arm are pink bars indicating 100% robustness of signal amplification at <i>p</i><0.01 (using SnoopCGH program with Smith–Waterman algorithm implementation). A normal distribution of the log ratios (y-axis) around the zero horizontal line is expected if the expression levels are the same along the chromosome (indicated as kilo base pair [kbp]). The CDS (represented under each chromosome by blue rectangles) contained within each amplified region are indicated on the right with their appropriate annotation (<a href="http://www.genedb.org" target="_blank">www.genedb.org</a>). The genes marked with an * have been found significant at B>0 in the pairwise comparisons of the microarray data in at least one time point, while the underlined genes have been double checked by qRT-PCR.</p

Gene Ontology (GO) analysis at main time points of the <i>P. falciparum</i> asexual life cycle.

<p>The time points color legend is indicated at the top left corner of the barplot. GO enrichment is indicated as stacked percentages.</p

Changes in gene expression profiles between LM resistant V1S_LM and LM sensitive V1S <i>P. falciparum</i>.

<p><b>A.</b> Heatmap of 589 expressed genes showing Differential Expression (DE) in at least one time point (F adjusted <i>p</i><0.05). The 2 clusters highlighted with blue and red bars on the right hand side of the heatmap correspond to subtelomeric genes gradually switched off in the presence of LM, and transporters and cell cycle regulators gradually turned on in the presence of LM, respectively. Log2 ratio of V1S_LM vs. V1S expression is indicated by the color key ranging from −6 (blue, under-expression) to 6 (red, over-expression) <b>B.</b> Venn diagram showing the asexual life cycle distribution of DE genes. Analysis was based on linear modeling using Limma package of R/Bioconductor.</p

Carta de Feng-Nee Lim, Editora de l'International Journal of Modern Physica A (Singapur) a F. Gómez (Departament d'ECM, UB) acceptant la publicació d'un article seu; adjuntant documentació relacionada

Relacionat amb 07/128

Manhattan plot of genome-wide associations with CQ activities from 35 parasite isolates.

<p>Horizontal axis is genome position, and vertical axis is –log₁₀(p-value). Chromosomes alternate yellow and red, starting from chromosome 1 on the left. Yellow spire on chromosome 7 is in the region of <i>pfcrt</i>.</p

Cluster plot of drug correlations.

<p>Red to blue indicates the degree of positive to negative correlation. Significance levels of spearman rank tests are indicated with stars in each box (see legend).</p