Remote and Normally Unpolluted High Mountain Lakes Provide Habitats with No or Very Limited Anthropogenic Influences and, Therefore, Their Hydrodynamics Are Mostly Regulated by the Natural Conditions. Researches in High Mountain Lakes Deal with Measuring

Remote and normally unpolluted high mountain lakes provide habitats with no or very limited anthropogenic influences and, therefore, their hydrodynamics are mostly regulated by the natural conditions. Researches in high mountain lakes deal with measuring and modeling the response of the habitats to environmental changes especially correlated to acid deposition, pollutants influx and climatic variability. The microbial world has also become a focus in many studies of these extreme ecosystems. Despite the pressure of harsh and extreme conditions, microbial communities living in these habitats developed flexible strategies and show quick adaptation to climate oscillation. New aspects in microbiological studies in recent high mountain lake research are presented in this paper

Bacterial Community Shifts of a High Mountain Lake in Response to Variable Simulated Conditions: Availability of Nutrients, Light and Oxygen

We studied bacterial population composition shifts by exposing natural water samples to variable simulated environmental conditions. The samples were taken from Lake Jori XIII (2640 m a.s.l), an oligo-to mesotrophic cold freshwater lake, located in the eastern Swiss Alps. The Jori lakes are characterized as remote, unpolluted high mountain lakes with a long period of ice cover and typically low nutrient concentrations. Culture independent techniques (PCR-based analyses) were used for detection and molecular characterization of a large number of bacteria most of which are still uncultivable. Bacterial community shifts over three ecological conditions (nutrients, light and oxygen availability) were detected by using Temporal Temperature gradient Gel Electrophoresis (TTGE) of a PCR-amplified part of the 16S rRNA gene. The bacterial populations responded differently to the variable conditions, as revealed by TTGE pattern shifts during the experiment

Characterization, Comparative Genomics and Genome Mining for Antibiotics and Secondary Metabolite of two Actinomycetales isolates

Actinomycetes are ubiquitous Gram (+) bacteria commonly found to have high G+C content and best known for their metabolic by-products and novel enzymes [1]. Isolates CCMMD2014 & MRMD2014 were co-cultured from soil impacted by a rusty fire hydrant in Woods Hole, MA. The Streptomyces sp. and Curtobacterium sp. isolates were identified by marker genes for 16S rRNA, rpoB, xylose isomerase, tryptophan synthase beta chain and Cytochrome P450 monooxygenase. Both isolates showed lactic acid fermentation and urease activity. The co-isolates were separated by selective culturing with antibiotics. In addition, whole genome sequencing revealed distinct inherent metabolic pathways in each culture that allowed for mutually exclusive selective culture conditions. Assembly was done using HGAP3 with Celera8 assembler using SMRT portal [2,3]. Annotation was done using the RAST server [4], with 7540 and 3969 CDS for Streptomyces sp. and Curtobacterium sp. respectively being revealed by AMIGene and BASys [5,6]. Subsequently, antiSMASH [7], was used to predict 52 and 26 secondary metabolite biosynthetic clusters that included genes for lantipeptides, terpenes, siderophores, polyketide synthases type I and II, bacteriocin and nonribosomal peptide synthase genes for Streptomyces sp. and Curtobacterium sp. respectively. The isolates have genes of potentially beneficial traits that could help study, among others, the role of fimbrial adhesins and iron in biofilm formation and investigation on natural products

Orbital apex syndrome caused by aspergilloma in an immunocompromised patient with cutaneous lymphoma: A case report of a rare entity

A 57-year-old man with a history of chemotherapy because of cutaneous lymphoma presented with an orbital apex syndrome. The cranial computed tomography scan revealed a tumour in the orbital apex, extending intradurally. With a suspected diagnosis of a neoplastic lesion, the patient underwent orbital surgery with optic nerve decompression. Histology revealed an aspergilloma. No other foci were seen and treatment with antifungals was started. In immunocompromised patients with intracranial tumours, infection is always a major consideration in the differential diagnosis, even if the reason for immunosuppression (in this case chemotherapy) dates back several months. Misdiagnosing an orbital apex lesion as a cancer and treating patients primarily with corticosteroids can be life threatening. Removal or biopsy of such lesions is essential in further treatment since antifungals have to be administered as fast as possible

Complete Genome Sequence of Curtobacterium sp. Strain MR_MD2014, Isolated from Topsoil in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Here, we present the 3,443,800-bp complete genome sequence of Curtobacterium sp. strain MR_MD2014 (phylum Actinobacteria). This strain was isolated from soil in Woods Hole, MA, as part of the 2014 Microbial Diversity Summer Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA

Complete Genome Sequence of Streptomyces sp. Strain CCM_MD2014, Isolated from Topsoil in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Here, we present the complete genome sequence of Streptomyces sp. strain CCM_MD2014 (phylum Actinobacteria), isolated from surface soil in Woods Hole, MA. Its single linear chromosome of 8,274,043 bp in length has a 72.13% G+C content and contains 6,948 coding sequences

Multiple Statistical Analysis Techniques Corroborate Intratumor Heterogeneity in Imaging Mass Spectrometry Datasets of Myxofibrosarcoma

MALDI mass spectrometry can generate profiles that contain hundreds of biomolecular ions directly from tissue. Spatially-correlated analysis, MALDI imaging MS, can simultaneously reveal how each of these biomolecular ions varies in clinical tissue samples. The use of statistical data analysis tools to identify regions containing correlated mass spectrometry profiles is referred to as imaging MS-based molecular histology because of its ability to annotate tissues solely on the basis of the imaging MS data. Several reports have indicated that imaging MS-based molecular histology may be able to complement established histological and histochemical techniques by distinguishing between pathologies with overlapping/identical morphologies and revealing biomolecular intratumor heterogeneity. A data analysis pipeline that identifies regions of imaging MS datasets with correlated mass spectrometry profiles could lead to the development of novel methods for improved diagnosis (differentiating subgroups within distinct histological groups) and annotating the spatio-chemical makeup of tumors. Here it is demonstrated that highlighting the regions within imaging MS datasets whose mass spectrometry profiles were found to be correlated by five independent multivariate methods provides a consistently accurate summary of the spatio-chemical heterogeneity. The corroboration provided by using multiple multivariate methods, efficiently applied in an automated routine, provides assurance that the identified regions are indeed characterized by distinct mass spectrometry profiles, a crucial requirement for its development as a complementary histological tool. When simultaneously applied to imaging MS datasets from multiple patient samples of intermediate-grade myxofibrosarcoma, a heterogeneous soft tissue sarcoma, nodules with mass spectrometry profiles found to be distinct by five different multivariate methods were detected within morphologically identical regions of all patient tissue samples. To aid the further development of imaging MS based molecular histology as a complementary histological tool the Matlab code of the agreement analysis, instructions and a reduced dataset are included as supporting information