Genes (Basel)
October 2024
Background: The giant keyhole limpet is a gastropod mollusk (Fissurella superfamily) that is endemic to the eastern Pacific coast from southern California, USA, to Baja California Sur, Mexico. is socioeconomically important as it produces a potent immune-stimulating protein, called Keyhole Limpet Hemocyanin, which is extracted in vivo and utilized for vaccine development. However, ecological studies are scarce and genetic knowledge of the species needs to be improved.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFspp. are protozoan parasites that cause severe illness in vulnerable human populations. Obtaining pure DNA from clinical and environmental samples is challenging because the oocysts shed in contaminated feces are limited in quantity, difficult to purify efficiently, may derive from multiple species, and yield limited DNA (<40 fg/oocyst).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFspp. are protozoan parasites that cause severe illness in vulnerable human populations. Obtaining pure DNA from clinical and environmental samples is challenging because the oocysts shed in contaminated feces are limited in quantity, difficult to purify efficiently, may derive from multiple species, and yield limited DNA (<40 fg/oocyst).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Biol Rep
May 2023
Background: The Brazilian cownose ray, Rhinoptera brasiliensis has undergone a global population reduction and is currently classified by IUCN as Vulnerable. This species is sometimes confused with Rhinoptera bonasus, the only external diagnostic characteristic to distinguish between both species is the number of rows of tooth plates. Both cownose rays overlap geographically from Rio de Janeiro to the western North Atlantic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Gulf Coast tick, Amblyomma maculatum, inhabits the Southeastern states of the USA bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico, and other Central and South American countries. More recently, its U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpecies with low effective population sizes are at greater risk of extinction because of reduced genetic diversity. Such species are more vulnerable to chance events that decrease population sizes (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFinding, characterizing and monitoring reservoirs for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is vital to protecting public health. Hybridization capture baits are an accurate, sensitive and cost-effective technique used to enrich and characterize DNA sequences of interest, including antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs), in complex environmental samples. We demonstrate the continued utility of a set of 19 933 hybridization capture baits designed from the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD)v1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) can be driven by direct selection from antibiotic use and indirect selection from substances such as heavy metals (HMs). While significant progress has been made to characterize the influence of HMs on the enrichment and dissemination of ARGs in the environment, there is still much we do not know. To fill this knowledge gap, we present a comprehensive analysis of gut bacteria associated with wild cotton mice (Peromyscus gossypinus) trapped from several areas affected by legacies of HM and radionuclide contamination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnvironmental microbial diversity is often investigated from a molecular perspective using 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene amplicons and shotgun metagenomics. While amplicon methods are fast, low-cost, and have curated reference databases, they can suffer from amplification bias and are limited in genomic scope. In contrast, shotgun metagenomic methods sample more genomic regions with fewer sequence acquisition biases, but are much more expensive (even with moderate sequencing depth) and computationally challenging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRhodnius pallescens is the principal vector of Chagas disease in Panama. Recently a dark chromatic morph has been discovered in the highlands of Veraguas Province. Limited genetic studies have been conducted with regards to the population structure and dispersal potential of Triatominae vectors, particularly in R.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContaminants such as heavy metals may contribute to the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by enriching resistance gene determinants via co-selection mechanisms. In the present study, a survey was performed on soils collected from four areas at the Savannah River Site (SRS), South Carolina, USA, with varying contaminant profiles: relatively pristine (Upper Three Runs), heavy metals (Ash Basins), radionuclides (Pond B) and heavy metal and radionuclides (Tim's Branch). Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we explored the structure and diversity of soil bacterial communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrocodilians are an economically, culturally, and biologically important group. To improve researchers' ability to study genome structure, evolution, and gene regulation in the clade, we generated a high-quality de novo genome assembly of the saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, from Illumina short read data from genomic libraries and in vitro proximity-ligation libraries. The assembled genome is 2,123.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNext-generation sequencing (NGS) of amplicons is used in a wide variety of contexts. In many cases, NGS amplicon sequencing remains overly expensive and inflexible, with library preparation strategies relying upon the fusion of locus-specific primers to full-length adapter sequences with a single identifying sequence or ligating adapters onto PCR products. In , we presented universal stubs and primers to produce thousands of unique index combinations and a modifiable system for incorporating them into Illumina libraries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMassively parallel DNA sequencing offers many benefits, but major inhibitory cost factors include: (1) start-up (i.e., purchasing initial reagents and equipment); (2) buy-in (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMolecular ecologists frequently use genome reduction strategies that rely upon restriction enzyme digestion of genomic DNA to sample consistent portions of the genome from many individuals (e.g., RADseq, GBS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMitochondrial DNA A DNA Mapp Seq Anal
December 2018
We assembled mitogenomes from 21 ant workers assigned to four morphospecies (E. ruidum spp. 1-4) and putative hybrids of the Ectatomma ruidum complex (E.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report for the first time, the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of the porbeagle shark, , from a specimen collected from offshore waters of New England, USA in the western North Atlantic Ocean. The genome structure of this species is similar to the other reported shark mitogenomes. The genome sequence has a total length of 16,697 bases; similar in size to the mtDNA genomes reported for other lamnid species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElasmobranchs are one of the most diverse groups in the marine realm represented by 18 orders, 55 families and about 1200 species reported, but also one of the most vulnerable to exploitation and to climate change. Phylogenetic relationships among main orders have been controversial since the emergence of the Hypnosqualean hypothesis by Shirai (1992) that considered batoids as a sister group of sharks. The use of the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) may shed light to further validate this hypothesis by increasing the number of informative characters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe structure of the mitochondrial genome for the Pacific red snapper, Lutjanus peru, and the spotted rose snapper, Lutjanus gutattus, of specimens collected in the eastern Pacific is similar to the reported for other teleosts and shares the same configuration with other members of the family Lutjanidae. It has a total length of 16 502 and 16 508 base pairs (bp) for Lutjanus peru and L. gutattus, respectively; on average the base composition was A (27.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMitochondrial DNA A DNA Mapp Seq Anal
May 2016
The hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena) is listed as a "Vulnerable" species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Here we report the complete sequence for the mitochondrial genome of the hammerhead shark of a specimen collected from the eastern Pacific Ocean. The genome structure is quite similar to other reported mtDNA shark species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe complete mitochondrial genome of the dolphinfish (GeneBank accession number KF719178) structure is similar to that of other teleosts, has a total length of 15,733 bp, the base composition was as follows: A (28.78%), T (29.25%), C (25.
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