Josephine Bay Paul Center in Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution

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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/60

The Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution explores the evolution and interaction of genomes of diverse organisms that play significant roles in environmental biology and human health. This dynamic research program integrates the powerful tools of genome science, molecular phylogenetics, and molecular ecology to advance our understanding of how living organisms are related to each other, to provide the tools to quantify and assess biodiversity, and to identify genes and underlying mechanisms of biomedical importance. Projects span all evolutionary time scales, ranging from deep phylogenetic divergence of ancient eukaryotic and prokaryotic lineages, to ecological analyses of how members of diverse communities contribute and respond to environmental change.

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Browsing Josephine Bay Paul Center in Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution by Subject "Bacteria"
  • Article
    Conserved synteny at the protein family level reveals genes underlying Shewanella species’ cold tolerance and predicts their novel phenotypes
    (Springer, 2009-10-03) Karpinets, Tatiana V. ; Obraztsova, Anna Y. ; Wang, Yanbing ; Schmoyer, Denise D. ; Kora, Guruprasad H. ; Park, Byung H. ; Serres, Margrethe H. ; Romine, Margaret F. ; Land, Miriam L. ; Kothe, Terence B. ; Fredrickson, James K. ; Nealson, Kenneth H. ; Uberbacher, Edward C.
    Bacteria of the genus Shewanella can thrive in different environments and demonstrate significant variability in their metabolic and ecophysiological capabilities including cold and salt tolerance. Genomic characteristics underlying this variability across species are largely unknown. In this study, we address the problem by a comparison of the physiological, metabolic, and genomic characteristics of 19 sequenced Shewanella species. We have employed two novel approaches based on association of a phenotypic trait with the number of the trait-specific protein families (Pfam domains) and on the conservation of synteny (order in the genome) of the trait-related genes. Our first approach is top-down and involves experimental evaluation and quantification of the species’ cold tolerance followed by identification of the correlated Pfam domains and genes with a conserved synteny. The second, a bottom-up approach, predicts novel phenotypes of the species by calculating profiles of each Pfam domain among their genomes and following pair-wise correlation of the profiles and their network clustering. Using the first approach, we find a link between cold and salt tolerance of the species and the presence in the genome of a Na+/H+ antiporter gene cluster. Other cold-tolerance-related genes include peptidases, chemotaxis sensory transducer proteins, a cysteine exporter, and helicases. Using the bottom-up approach, we found several novel phenotypes in the newly sequenced Shewanella species, including degradation of aromatic compounds by an aerobic hybrid pathway in Shewanella woodyi, degradation of ethanolamine by Shewanella benthica, and propanediol degradation by Shewanella putrefaciens CN32 and Shewanella sp. W3-18-1.
  • Article
    The ocean sampling day consortium
    (BioMed Central, 2015-06-19) Kopf, Anna ; Bicak, Mesude ; Kottmann, Renzo ; Schnetzer, Julia ; Kostadinov, Ivaylo ; Lehmann, Katja ; Fernandez-Guerra, Antonio ; Jeanthon, Christian ; Rahav, Eyal ; Ullrich, Matthias S. ; Wichels, Antje ; Gerdts, Gunnar ; Polymenakou, Paraskevi ; Kotoulas, Georgios ; Siam, Rania ; Abdallah, Rehab Z. ; Sonnenschein, Eva C. ; Cariou, Thierry ; O’Gara, Fergal ; Jackson, Stephen ; Orlic, Sandi ; Steinke, Michael ; Busch, Julia ; Duarte, Bernardo ; Caçador, Isabel ; Canning-Clode, Joao ; Bobrova, Oleksandra ; Marteinsson, Viggo ; Reynisson, Eyjolfur ; Loureiro, Clara Magalhaes ; Luna, Gian Marco ; Quero, Grazia Marina ; Loscher, Carolin R. ; Kremp, Anke ; DeLorenzo, Marie E. ; Øvreås, Lise ; Tolman, Jennifer ; LaRoche, Julie ; Penna, Antonella ; Frischer, Marc ; Davis, Timothy ; Katherine, Barker ; Meyer, Christopher P. ; Ramos, Sandra ; Magalhaes, Catarina ; Jude-Lemeilleur, Florence ; Aguirre-Macedo, Ma Leopoldina ; Wang, Shiao ; Poulton, Nicole ; Jones, Scott ; Collin, Rachel ; Fuhrman, Jed A. ; Conan, Pascal ; Alonso, Cecilia ; Stambler, Noga ; Goodwin, Kelly ; Yakimov, Michail M. ; Baltar, Federico ; Bodrossy, Levente ; Van De Kamp, Jodie ; Frampton, Dion M. F. ; Ostrowski, Martin ; Van Ruth, Paul ; Malthouse, Paul ; Claus, Simon ; Deneudt, Klaas ; Mortelmans, Jonas ; Pitois, Sophie ; Wallom, David ; Salter, Ian ; Costa, Rodrigo ; Schroeder, Declan C. ; Kandil, Mahrous M. ; Amaral, Valentina ; Biancalana, Florencia ; Santana, Rafael ; Pedrotti, Maria Luiza ; Yoshida, Takashi ; Ogata, Hiroyuki ; Ingleton, Timothy ; Munnik, Kate ; Rodriguez-Ezpeleta, Naiara ; Berteaux-Lecellier, Veronique ; Wecker, Patricia ; Cancio, Ibon ; Vaulot, Daniel ; Bienhold, Christina ; Ghazal, Hassan ; Chaouni, Bouchra ; Essayeh, Soumya ; Ettamimi, Sara ; Zaid, El Houcine ; Boukhatem, Noureddine ; Bouali, Abderrahim ; Chahboune, Rajaa ; Barrijal, Said ; Timinouni, Mohammed ; El Otmani, Fatima ; Bennani, Mohamed ; Mea, Marianna ; Todorova, Nadezhda ; Karamfilov, Ventzislav ; ten Hoopen, Petra ; Cochrane, Guy R. ; L’Haridon, Stephane ; Bizsel, Kemal Can ; Vezzi, Alessandro ; Lauro, Federico M. ; Martin, Patrick ; Jensen, Rachelle M. ; Hinks, Jamie ; Gebbels, Susan ; Rosselli, Riccardo ; De Pascale, Fabio ; Schiavon, Riccardo ; dos Santos, Antonina ; Villar, Emilie ; Pesant, Stephane ; Cataletto, Bruno ; Malfatti, Francesca ; Edirisinghe, Ranjith ; Herrera Silveira, Jorge A. ; Barbier, Michele ; Turk, Valentina ; Tinta, Tinkara ; Fuller, Wayne J. ; Salihoglu, Ilkay ; Serakinci, Nedime ; Ergoren, Mahmut Cerkez ; Bresnan, Eileen ; Iriberri, Juan ; Fronth Nyhus, Paul Anders ; Bente, Edvardsen ; Karlsen, Hans Erik ; Golyshin, Peter N. ; Gasol, Josep M. ; Moncheva, Snejana ; Dzhembekova, Nina ; Johnson, Zackary ; Sinigalliano, Christopher D. ; Gidley, Maribeth Louise ; Zingone, Adriana ; Danovaro, Roberto ; Tsiamis, Georgios ; Clark, Melody S. ; Costa, Ana Cristina ; El Bour, Monia ; Martins, Ana M. ; Collins, R. Eric ; Ducluzeau, Anne-Lise ; Martinez, Jonathan ; Costello, Mark J. ; Amaral-Zettler, Linda A. ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Davies, Neil ; Field, Dawn ; Glockner, Frank Oliver
    Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world’s oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits.
  • Article
    Salt marsh sediment bacterial communities maintain original population structure after transplantation across a latitudinal gradient
    (PeerJ, 2018-05-01) Angermeyer, Angus ; Crosby, Sarah C. ; Huber, Julie A.
    Dispersal and environmental selection are two of the most important factors that govern the distributions of microbial communities in nature. While dispersal rates are often inferred by measuring the degree to which community similarity diminishes with increasing geographic distance, determining the extent to which environmental selection impacts the distribution of microbes is more complex. To address this knowledge gap, we performed a large reciprocal transplant experiment to simulate the dispersal of US East Coast salt marsh Spartina alterniflora rhizome-associated microbial sediment communities across a latitudinal gradient and determined if any shifts in microbial community composition occurred as a result of the transplantation. Using bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we did not observe large-scale changes in community composition over a five-month S. alterniflora summer growing season and found that transplanted communities more closely resembled their origin sites than their destination sites. Furthermore, transplanted communities grouped predominantly by region, with two sites from the north and three sites to the south hosting distinct bacterial taxa, suggesting that sediment communities transplanted from north to south tended to retain their northern microbial distributions, and south to north maintained a southern distribution. A small number of potential indicator 16S rRNA gene sequences had distributions that were strongly correlated to both temperature and nitrogen, indicating that some organisms are more sensitive to environmental factors than others. These results provide new insight into the microbial biogeography of salt marsh sediments and suggest that established bacterial communities in frequently-inundated environments may be both highly resistant to invasion and resilient to some environmental shifts. However, the extent to which environmental selection impacts these communities is taxon specific and variable, highlighting the complex interplay between dispersal and environmental selection for microbial communities in nature.
  • Article
    A simple novel device for air sampling by electrokinetic capture
    (BioMed Central, 2015-12-27) Gordon, Julian ; Gandhi, Prasanthi ; Shekhawat, Gajendra ; Frazier, Angel ; Hampton-Marcell, Jarrad T. ; Gilbert, Jack A.
    A variety of different sampling devices are currently available to acquire air samples for the study of the microbiome of the air. All have a degree of technical complexity that limits deployment. Here, we evaluate the use of a novel device, which has no technical complexity and is easily deployable. An air-cleaning device powered by electrokinetic propulsion has been adapted to provide a universal method for collecting samples of the aerobiome. Plasma-induced charge in aerosol particles causes propulsion to and capture on a counter-electrode. The flow of ions creates net bulk airflow, with no moving parts. A device and electrode assembly have been re-designed from air-cleaning technology to provide an average air flow of 120 lpm. This compares favorably with current air sampling devices based on physical air pumping. Capture efficiency was determined by comparison with a 0.4 μm polycarbonate reference filter, using fluorescent latex particles in a controlled environment chamber. Performance was compared with the same reference filter method in field studies in three different environments. For 23 common fungal species by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), there was 100 % sensitivity and apparent specificity of 87 %, with the reference filter taken as “gold standard.” Further, bacterial analysis of 16S RNA by amplicon sequencing showed equivalent community structure captured by the electrokinetic device and the reference filter. Unlike other current air sampling methods, capture of particles is determined by charge and so is not controlled by particle mass. We analyzed particle sizes captured from air, without regard to specific analyte by atomic force microscopy: particles at least as low as 100 nM could be captured from ambient air. This work introduces a very simple plug-and-play device that can sample air at a high-volume flow rate with no moving parts and collect particles down to the sub-micron range. The performance of the device is substantially equivalent to capture by pumping through a filter for microbiome analysis by quantitative PCR and amplicon sequencing.
  • Article
    VAMPS : a website for visualization and analysis of microbial population structures
    (BioMed Central, 2014-02-05) Huse, Susan M. ; Mark Welch, David B. ; Voorhis, Andy ; Shipunova, Anna ; Morrison, Hilary G. ; Eren, A. Murat ; Sogin, Mitchell L.
    The advent of next-generation DNA sequencing platforms has revolutionized molecular microbial ecology by making the detailed analysis of complex communities over time and space a tractable research pursuit for small research groups. However, the ability to generate 105–108 reads with relative ease brings with it many downstream complications. Beyond the computational resources and skills needed to process and analyze data, it is difficult to compare datasets in an intuitive and interactive manner that leads to hypothesis generation and testing. We developed the free web service VAMPS (Visualization and Analysis of Microbial Population Structures, http://vamps.mbl.edu webcite) to address these challenges and to facilitate research by individuals or collaborating groups working on projects with large-scale sequencing data. Users can upload marker gene sequences and associated metadata; reads are quality filtered and assigned to both taxonomic structures and to taxonomy-independent clusters. A simple point-and-click interface allows users to select for analysis any combination of their own or their collaborators’ private data and data from public projects, filter these by their choice of taxonomic and/or abundance criteria, and then explore these data using a wide range of analytic methods and visualizations. Each result is extensively hyperlinked to other analysis and visualization options, promoting data exploration and leading to a greater understanding of data relationships. VAMPS allows researchers using marker gene sequence data to analyze the diversity of microbial communities and the relationships between communities, to explore these analyses in an intuitive visual context, and to download data, results, and images for publication. VAMPS obviates the need for individual research groups to make the considerable investment in computational infrastructure and bioinformatic support otherwise necessary to process, analyze, and interpret massive amounts of next-generation sequence data. Any web-capable device can be used to upload, process, explore, and extract data and results from VAMPS. VAMPS encourages researchers to share sequence and metadata, and fosters collaboration between researchers of disparate biomes who recognize common patterns in shared data.