A horizon scan of priorities for coastal marine microbiome research

Research into the microbiomes of natural environments is changing the way ecologists and evolutionary biologists view the importance of microbes in ecosystem function. This is particularly relevant in ocean environments, where microbes constitute the majority of biomass and control most of the major biogeochemical cycles, including those that regulate the Earth's climate. Coastal marine environments provide goods and services that are imperative to human survival and well-being (e.g. fisheries, water purification), and emerging evidence indicates that these ecosystem services often depend on complex relationships between communities of microorganisms (the ‘microbiome’) and their hosts or environment – termed the ‘holobiont’. Understanding of coastal ecosystem function must therefore be framed under the holobiont concept, whereby macroorganisms and their associated microbiomes are considered as a synergistic ecological unit. Here we evaluated the current state of knowledge on coastal marine microbiome research and identified key questions within this growing research area. Although the list of questions is broad and ambitious, progress in the field is increasing exponentially, and the emergence of large, international collaborative networks and well-executed manipulative experiments are rapidly advancing the field of coastal marine microbiome research

Simple methodology for the quantitative analysis of fatty acids in human red blood cells

In the last years, there has been an increasing interest in evaluating possible relations between fatty acid (FA) patterns and the risk for chronic diseases. Due to the long life span (120 days) of red blood cells (RBCs), their FA profile reflects a longer term dietary intake and was recently suggested to be used as an appropriate biomarker to investigate correlations between FA metabolism and diseases. Therefore, the aim of this work was to develop and validate a simple and fast methodology for the quantification of a broad range of FAs in RBCs using gas chromatography with flame ionization detector, as a more common and affordable equipment suitable for biomedical and nutritional studies including a large number of samples. For this purpose, different sample preparation protocols were tested and compared, including a classic two-step method (Folch method) with modifications and different one-step methods, in which lipid extraction and derivatization were performed simultaneously. For the one-step methods, different methylation periods and the inclusion of a saponification reaction were evaluated. Differences in absolute FA concentrations were observed among the tested methods, in particular for some metabolically relevant FAs such as trans elaidic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid. The one-step method with saponification and 60 min of methylation time was selected since it allowed the identification of a higher number of FAs, and was further submitted to in-house validation. The proposed methodology provides a simple, fast and accurate tool to quantitatively analyse FAs in human RBCs, useful for clinical and nutritional studies.This work received financial support from the European Union (FEDER funds through COMPETE) and National Funds (FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) through project PTDC/SAU-ENB/116929/2010 and EXPL/EMS-SIS/2215/2013. ROR acknowledges PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/97658/2013 attributed by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A horizon scan of priorities for coastal marine microbiome research

Research into the microbiomes of natural environments is changing the way ecologists and evolutionary biologists view the importance of microbes in ecosystem function. This is particularly relevant in ocean environments, where microbes constitute the majority of biomass and control most of the major biogeochemical cycles, including those that regulate the Earth's climate. Coastal marine environments provide goods and services that are imperative to human survival and well-being (e.g. fisheries, water purification), and emerging evidence indicates that these ecosystem services often depend on complex relationships between communities of microorganisms (the ‘microbiome’) and their hosts or environment – termed the ‘holobiont’. Understanding of coastal ecosystem function must therefore be framed under the holobiont concept, whereby macroorganisms and their associated microbiomes are considered as a synergistic ecological unit. Here we evaluated the current state of knowledge on coastal marine microbiome research and identified key questions within this growing research area. Although the list of questions is broad and ambitious, progress in the field is increasing exponentially, and the emergence of large, international collaborative networks and well-executed manipulative experiments are rapidly advancing the field of coastal marine microbiome research

Regioisomeric and substituent effects upon the outcome of the reaction of 1-borodienes with nitrosoarene compounds

A study of the reactivity of 1-borodienes with nitrosoarene compounds has been carried out showing an outcome that differs according to the hybridization state of the boron moiety. Using an sp2 boron substituent, a one-pot hetero-Diels–Alder/ring contraction cascade occurred to afford N-arylpyrroles with low to good yields depending on the electronic properties of the substituents on the borodiene, whereas an sp3 boron substituent led to the formation of stable boro-oxazines with high regioselectivity in most of the cases, in moderate to good yields. 1H and 11B NMR studies on two boro-oxazine regioisomers showed that selective deprotection can be performed. Formation of either the pyrrole or the furan derivative is pH- and regioisomer-structure-dependent. The results obtained, together with previous B3LYP calculations, support mechanistic proposals which suggest that pyrrole, or furan, formation proceeds via oxazine formation, followed by a boryl rearrangement and an intramolecular addition–elimination sequence