Potential role of acrylic acid in bacterioplankton communities in the sea

In order to test the role of acrylic acid in controlling bacterial metabolism we performed experiments with bacterioplankton originating from the upper mixed čayer of the northern Adriatic Sea

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Dimethylsulfoniopropionate Uptake by Marine Phytoplankton

3 pages, 4 figures, supporting online material www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5799/649/DC1Dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) accounts for most of the organic sulfur fluxes from primary to secondary producers in marine microbial food webs. Incubations of natural communities and axenic cultures with radio-labeled DMSP showed that dominant phytoplankton groups of the ocean, the unicellular cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus and diatoms, as well as heterotrophic bacteria take up and assimilate DMSP sulfur, thus diverting a proportion of plankton-produced organic sulfur from emission into the atmospherePeer reviewe

Phylogenetic identification and metabolism of marine dimethylsulfide-consuming bacteria

12 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, supplementary material http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2006.01102.x/suppinfoMicrobial consumption is one of the main processes, along with photolysis and ventilation, that remove the biogenic trace gas dimethylsulfide (DMS) from the surface ocean. Although a few isolates of marine bacteria have been studied for their ability to utilize DMS, little is known about the characteristics or phylogenetic affiliation of DMS consumers in seawater. We enriched coastal and open-ocean waters with different carbon sources to stimulate different bacterial communities (glucose-consuming bacteria, methyl group-consuming bacteria and DMS consumers) in order to test how this affected DMS consumption and to examine which organisms might be involved. Dimethylsulfide consumption was greatly stimulated in the DMS addition treatments whereas there was no stimulation in the other treatments. Analysis of microbial DNA by two different techniques (sequenced bands from DGGE gels and clone libraries) showed that bacteria grown specifically with the presence of DMS were closely related to the genus Methylophaga. We also followed the fate of consumed DMS in some of the enrichments. Dimethylsulfide was converted mostly to DMSO in glucose or methanol enrichments, whereas it was converted mostly to sulfate in DMS enrichments, the latter suggesting use of DMS as a carbon and energy source. Our results indicate that unlike the biochemical precursor of DMS, dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), which is consumed by a broad spectrum of marine microorganisms, DMS seems to be utilized as a carbon and electron source by specialists. This is consistent with the usual observation that DMSP turns over at much higher rates than DMSThis work was supported by a PhD fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education to M.V. Field work was supported by NSF through the Biocomplexity in the Environment program (OPP 0221748; P. Matrai, P.I.) and by the Spanish MEC through project CAOS (CTM2004-20022-E). The molecular work was funded by projects MICRODIFF (REN2001-2120/MAR), BASICS (EVK3-CT-2002-00078) and GENµMAR (CTM2004-02586/MAR)Peer reviewe