Ozone and hydrogen peroxide as strategies to control biomass in a trickling filter to treat methanol and hydrogen sulfide under acidic conditions

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology - The operation and performance of a biotrickling filter for methanol (MeOH) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) removal at acid pH was studied. Excess biomass in the...     

A Shift from Cellular to Humoral Responses Contributes to Innate Immune Memory in the Vector Snail Biomphalaria glabrata

Discoveries made over the past ten years have provided evidence that invertebrate antiparasitic responses may be primed in a sustainable manner, leading to the failure of a secondary encounter with the same pathogen. This phenomenon called “immune priming” or "innate immune memory" was mainly phenomenological. The demonstration of this process remains to be obtained and the underlying mechanisms remain to be discovered and exhaustively tested with rigorous functional and molecular methods, to eliminate all alternative explanations. In order to achieve this ambitious aim, the present study focuses on the Lophotrochozoan snail, Biomphalaria glabrata, in which innate immune memory was recently reported. We provide herein the first evidence that a shift from a cellular immune response (encapsulation) to a humoral immune response (biomphalysin) occurs during the development of innate memory. The molecular characterisation of this process in Biomphalaria/Schistosoma system was undertaken to reconcile mechanisms with phenomena, opening the way to a better comprehension of innate immune memory in invertebrates. This prompted us to revisit the artificial dichotomy between innate and memory immunity in invertebrate systems.     

Phytodesalination of landfill leachate using Puccinellia nuttalliana and Typha latifolia

Abstract

Landfilling has been widely used for solid waste disposal; however, the generation of leachate can pose a major threat to the surrounding environment in the form of soil salinity. Two native plants of North America Puccinellia nuttalliana (alkaligrass) and Typha latifolia (cattail) were selected in this study to investigate bioaccumulation of sodium (Na⁺) and chloride (Cl^?) under controlled greenhouse conditions. The treatments include irrigation of the plants using fertilizer (F), landfill leachate (LL), and tap water (control, C). Plants cultivated after one season (12?weeks) were harvested by separating aboveground tissues and roots, and soil from each treatment was collected for analysis. The results show that alkaligrass irrigated with LL had 2.13% more biomass yield than control, but 17.63% less than that with F. However, cattail yielded 19.70% more biomass with the irrigation of LL than C and 3.04% less compared to F. Alkaligrass and cattail accumulated 6.85 and 7.00?g Na⁺/Kg biomass with the irrigation of LL, respectively. Alkaligrass and cattail irrigated with LL accumulated 120.14% and 94.47% more Cl^? than C. When alkaligrass and cattail were irrigated with LL, the electrical conductivity of soil was reduced by 71.70% and 45.36%, respectively. This study demonstrated that using North American native halophytes could be a cost-effective and promising approach for phytoremediation of landfill leachate.     

Rapid identification and interpretation of gene–environment associations using the new R.SamBada landscape genomics pipeline

sam βada is a genome–environment association software, designed to search for signatures of local adaptation. However, pre‐ and postprocessing of data can be labour‐intensive, preventing wider uptake of the method. We have now developed R.SamBada, an r ‐package providing a pipeline for landscape genomic analysis based on sam βada , spanning from the retrieval of environmental conditions at sampling locations to gene annotation using the Ensembl genome browser. As a result, R.SamBada standardizes the landscape genomics pipeline and eases the search for candidate genes of local adaptation, enhancing reproducibility of landscape genomic studies. The efficiency and power of the pipeline is illustrated using two examples: sheep populations from Morocco with no evident population structure and Lidia cattle from Spain displaying population substructuring. In both cases, R.SamBada enabled rapid identification and interpretation of candidate genes, which are further discussed in the light of local adaptation. The package is available in the r CRAN package repository and on GitHub (github.com/SolangeD/R.SamBada).     

New and general synthesis of beta-C-glycosylformaldehydes from easily available beta-C-glycosylpropanones

A highly effective method for the introduction of a formyl group at the anomeric position of pyranosides was developed via enolisation of beta-C-D-glycopyranosylpropan-2-one using thermodynamic conditions then oxidative cleavage of the more substituted double bond. This sequence affords the desired aldehydes that are conveniently protected as aminals for purification and storage and easily regenerated using Dowex resin H+. In this paper, the syntheses of nine differently protected aldehydes derived from d-glucose, d-galactose, lactose and N-acetyl-d-glucosamine are presented. Our strategy proved to be very efficient in most cases excepted in the D-mannose series.     

Specificity and genetic polymorphism in the Vfm quorum sensing system of plant pathogenic bacteria of the genus Dickeya

The Vfm quorum sensing (QS) system is preponderant for the virulence of different species of the bacterial genus Dickeya. The vfm gene cluster encodes 26 genes involved in the production, sensing or transduction of the QS signal. To date, the Vfm QS signal has escaped detection by analytical chemistry methods. However, we report here a strain-specific polymorphism in the biosynthesis genes vfmO and vfmP, which is predicted to be related to the production of different analogues of the QS signal. Consequently, the Vfm communication could be impossible between strains possessing different variants of the genes vfmO/P. We constructed three Vfm QS biosensor strains possessing different vfmO/P variants and compared these biosensors for their responses to samples prepared from 34 Dickeya strains possessing different vfmO/P variants. A pattern of specificity was demonstrated, providing evidence that the polymorphism in the genes vfmO/P determines the biosynthesis of different analogues of the QS signal. Unexpectedly, this vfmO/P-dependent pattern of specificity is linked to a polymorphism in the ABC transporter gene vfmG, suggesting an adaptation of the putative permease VfmG to specifically bind different analogues of the QS signal. Accordingly, we discuss the possible involvement of VfmG as co-sensor of the Vfm two-component regulatory system.     

Impact of demography on extinction/fixation events

In this article we consider diffusion processes modeling the dynamics of multiple allelic proportions (with fixed and varying population size). We are interested in the way alleles extinctions and fixations occur. We first prove that for the Wright–Fisher diffusion process with selection, alleles get extinct successively (and not simultaneously), until the fixation of one last allele. Then we introduce a very general model with selection, competition and Mendelian reproduction, derived from the rescaling of a discrete individual-based dynamics. This multi-dimensional diffusion process describes the dynamics of the population size as well as the proportion of each type in the population. We prove first that alleles extinctions occur successively and second that depending on population size dynamics near extinction, fixation can occur either before extinction almost surely, or not. The proofs of these different results rely on stochastic time changes, integrability of one-dimensional diffusion processes paths and multi-dimensional Girsanov’s tranform.