The contamination of soils by oily compounds has several environmental impacts, which can be reversed through bioremediation, using biosurfactants as auxiliaries in the biodegradation process. In this study, we aimed to perform ex situ bioremediation of biodiesel-contaminated soil using biosurfactants produced by Bacillus methylotrophicus. A crude biosurfactant was produced in a whey-based culture medium supplemented with nutrients and was later added to biodiesel-contaminated clayey soil. The produced lipopeptide biosurfactant could reduce the surface tension of the fermentation broth to 30.2 mN/m. An increase in the microbial population was observed in the contaminated soil; this finding can be corroborated by the finding of increased CO2 release over days of bioremediation. Compared with natural attenuation, the addition of a lower concentration of the biosurfactant (0.5% w/w in relation to the mass of diesel oil) to the soil increased biodiesel removal by about 16% after 90 days. The added biosurfactant did not affect the retention of the contaminant in the soil, which is an important factor to be considered when applying in situ bioremediation technologies.
Mobile elements are major drivers in changing genomic architecture and can cause disease. The detection of mobile elements is hindered due to the low mappability of their highly repetitive sequences. We have developed an algorithm, called Mobster, to detect non-reference mobile element insertions in next generation sequencing data from both whole genome and whole exome studies. Mobster uses discordant read pairs and clipped reads in combination with consensus sequences of known active mobile elements. Mobster has a low false discovery rate and high recall rate for both L1 and Alu elements. Mobster is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mobster.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13059-014-0488-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. 相似文献
In mature and young leaves of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L. cv. Catissol-01) plants grown in the greenhouse, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, and transpiration rate declined
during water stress independently of leaf age and recovered after 24-h rehydration. The intercellular CO2 concentration, chlorophyll (Chl) content, and photochemical activity were not affected by water stress. However, non-photochemical
quenching increased in mature stressed leaves. Rehydration recovered the levels of non-photochemical quenching and increased
the Fv/Fm in young leaves. Drought did not alter the total Chl content. However, the accumulation of proline under drought was dependent
on leaf age: higher content of proline was found in young leaves. After 24 h of rehydration the content of proline returned
to the same contents as in control plants. 相似文献
Serotonin (5-HT) and noradrenaline (NA) are involved in both pathogenesis and recovery from depression and anxiety. We examined the effects of acute and chronic treatment with milnacipran, a serotonin/noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) antidepressant, on anxiety and memory retention in rats. Male Wistar rats received acute or chronic administration of milnacipran (12.5, 25 or 50 mg/kg) or saline (control group). The animals were separately submitted to elevated plus-maze, inhibitory avoidance and open-field tasks 1 h after injection, in the acute group, or 23 h after last injection, in the chronic group. Our results showed an anxiolytic-like effect after chronic administration of milnacipran at doses of 25 and 50 mg/kg. The treatment does not interfere in memory retention and habituation to a novel environment at any doses studied. These findings support that milnacipran, an established SNRIs antidepressant, can also be useful in the treatment of anxiety disorders. 相似文献
NEP1-like proteins (NLPs) are a novel family of microbial elicitors of plant necrosis. Some NLPs induce a hypersensitive-like
response in dicot plants though the basis for this response remains unclear. In addition, the spatial structure and the role
of these highly conserved proteins are not known. 相似文献
Linking variation in quantitative traits to variation in the genome is an important, but
challenging task in the study of life-history evolution. Linkage maps provide a valuable
tool for the unravelling of such trait−gene associations. Moreover, they give
insight into recombination landscapes and between-species karyotype evolution. Here we
used genotype data, generated from a 10k single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chip, of
over 2000 individuals to produce high-density linkage maps of the great tit (Parus
major), a passerine bird that serves as a model species for ecological and
evolutionary questions. We created independent maps from two distinct populations: a
captive F2-cross from The Netherlands (NL) and a wild population from the United Kingdom
(UK). The two maps contained 6554 SNPs in 32 linkage groups, spanning 2010 cM and
1917 cM for the NL and UK populations, respectively, and were similar in size and
marker order. Subtle levels of heterochiasmy within and between chromosomes were
remarkably consistent between the populations, suggesting that the local departures from
sex-equal recombination rates have evolved. This key and surprising result would have been
impossible to detect if only one population was mapped. A comparison with zebra finch
Taeniopygia guttata, chicken Gallus gallus and the green anole lizard
Anolis carolinensis genomes provided further insight into the evolution of
avian karyotypes. 相似文献