Pollutant profile complexity governs wastewater removal of recalcitrant pharmaceuticals.

Organic pollutants are an increasing threat for wildlife and humans. Managing their removal is however complicated by the difficulties in predicting degradation rates. In this work, we demonstrate that the complexity of the pollutant profile, the set of co-existing contaminants, is a major driver of biodegradation in wastewater.

Viral Communities in the Global Deep Ocean Conveyor Belt Assessed by Targeted Viromics.

Viruses are an abundant, diverse and dynamic component of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In the ocean, viruses play a key role in the biogeochemical cycles and controlling microbial abundance, diversity and evolution. Recent metagenomics studies assessed the structure of the viral community in the upper ocean.

Seasonal development of a coastal microbial mat.

Growth and activity of coastal microbial mats is strongly seasonal. The development of these mats starts in early spring and fully maturate during late summer, where after growth ceases and subsequently the mat deteriorates by erosion and decomposition in winter. Here, the composition of the microbial community of three different mats developing along the tidal gradient of the North Sea beach of the Dutch barrier island Schiermonnikoog was analysed.

Bioremediation of chromium contaminated water by diatoms with concomitant lipid accumulation for biofuel production.

Hexavalent chromium compounds such as chromate and dichromate, commonly designated as Cr (VI) compounds, are widely used heavy metals in different industries and are considered highly toxic to most life forms. Unfortunately, they have become a major pollutant of groundwater and rivers around dichromate using industries. Bioremediation is widely used to decrease the amount of dichromate in wastewater but requires large amounts of precious fresh water.

Microbial diversity in the hypersaline Lake Meyghan, Iran.

Lake Meyghan is one of the largest and commercially most important salt lakes in Iran. Despite its inland location and high altitude, Lake Meyghan has a thalassohaline salt composition suggesting a marine origin. Inputs of fresh water by rivers and rainfall formed various basins characterized by different salinities.

Growth Characteristics of an Estuarine Heterocystous Cyanobacterium.

A new estuarine filamentous heterocystous cyanobacterium was isolated from intertidal sediment of the Lagoa dos Patos estuary (Brazil). The isolate may represent a new genus related to . While the latter is planktonic, contains gas vesicles, and is toxic, the newly isolated strain is benthic and does not contain gas vesicles.

Comparison of the active and resident community of a coastal microbial mat.

Coastal microbial mats form a nearly closed micro-scale ecosystem harboring a complex microbial community. Previous DNA based analysis did not necessarily provide information about the active fraction of the microbial community because it includes dormant, inactive cells as well as a potential stable pool of extracellular DNA. Here we focused on the active microbial community by comparing 16S rRNA sequences obtained from the ribosomal RNA pool with gene sequences obtained from the DNA fraction.

The first acidobacterial laccase-like multicopper oxidase revealed by metagenomics shows high salt and thermo-tolerance.

Metagenomics is a powerful tool that allows identifying enzymes with novel properties from the unculturable component of microbiomes. However, thus far only a limited number of laccase or laccase -like enzymes identified through metagenomics has been subsequently biochemically characterized. This work describes the successful bio-mining of bacterial laccase-like enzymes in an acidic bog soil metagenome and the characterization of the first acidobacterial laccase-like multicopper oxidase (LMCO).

Antimicrobial Activities of Bacteria Associated with the Brown Alga Padina pavonica.

Macroalgae belonging to the genus Padina are known to produce antibacterial compounds that may inhibit growth of human- and animal pathogens. Hitherto, it was unclear whether this antibacterial activity is produced by the macroalga itself or by secondary metabolite producing epiphytic bacteria. Here we report antibacterial activities of epiphytic bacteria isolated from Padina pavonica (Peacocks tail) located on northern coast of Tunisia.

A novel salt-tolerant chitobiosidase discovered by genetic screening of a metagenomic library derived from chitin-amended agricultural soil.

Here, we report on the construction of a metagenomic library from a chitin-amended disease-suppressive agricultural soil and its screening for genes that encode novel chitinolytic enzymes. The library, constructed in fosmids in an Escherichia coli host, comprised 145,000 clones containing inserts of sizes of 21 to 40 kb, yielding a total of approximately 5.8 GB of cloned soil DNA.

Molecular ecology of microbial mats.

Phototrophic microbial mats are ideal model systems for ecological and evolutionary analysis of highly diverse microbial communities. Microbial mats are small-scale, nearly closed, and self-sustaining benthic ecosystems that comprise the major element cycles, trophic levels, and food webs. The steep and fluctuating physicochemical microgradients, that are the result of the ever changing environmental conditions and of the microorganisms' own activities, give rise to a plethora of potential niches resulting in the formation of one of the most diverse microbial ecosystems known to date.

Chitin amendment increases soil suppressiveness toward plant pathogens and modulates the actinobacterial and oxalobacteraceal communities in an experimental agricultural field.

A long-term experiment on the effect of chitin addition to soil on the suppression of soilborne pathogens was set up and monitored for 8 years in an experimental field, Vredepeel, The Netherlands. Chitinous matter obtained from shrimps was added to soil top layers on two different occasions, and the suppressiveness of soil toward Verticillium dahliae, as well as plant-pathogenic nematodes, was assessed, in addition to analyses of the abundances and community structures of members of the soil microbiota. The data revealed that chitin amendment had raised the suppressiveness of soil, in particular toward Verticillium dahliae, 9 months after the (second) treatment, extending to 2 years following treatment.

Bacterial chitinolytic communities respond to chitin and pH alteration in soil.

Chitin amendment is a promising soil management strategy that may enhance the suppressiveness of soil toward plant pathogens. However, we understand very little of the effects of added chitin, including the putative successions that take place in the degradative process. We performed an experiment in moderately acid soil in which the level of chitin, next to the pH, was altered.

Mining of unexplored habitats for novel chitinases--chiA as a helper gene proxy in metagenomics.

The main objective of this study was to assess the abundance and diversity of chitin-degrading microbial communities in ten terrestrial and aquatic habitats in order to provide guidance to the subsequent exploration of such environments for novel chitinolytic enzymes. A combined protocol which encompassed (1) classical overall enzymatic assays, (2) chiA gene abundance measurement by qPCR, (3) chiA gene pyrosequencing, and (4) chiA gene-based PCR-DGGE was used. The chiA gene pyrosequencing is unprecedented, as it is the first massive parallel sequencing of this gene.

The great screen anomaly--a new frontier in product discovery through functional metagenomics.

Functional metagenomics, the study of the collective genome of a microbial community by expressing it in a foreign host, is an emerging field in biotechnology. Over the past years, the possibility of novel product discovery through metagenomics has developed rapidly. Thus, metagenomics has been heralded as a promising mining strategy of resources for the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry.