Photoreceptors: unconventional ways of seeing.

Animals perceive light typically by photoreceptor neurons assembled in eyes, but some also use non-eye photosensory neurons. Multidendritic neurons in the body wall of Drosophila larvae have now been shown to use an unconventional phototransduction mechanism to sense light.

Phylogenetic characterization of a biogas plant microbial community integrating clone library 16S-rDNA sequences and metagenome sequence data obtained by 454-pyrosequencing.

The phylogenetic structure of the microbial community residing in a fermentation sample from a production-scale biogas plant fed with maize silage, green rye and liquid manure was analysed by an integrated approach using clone library sequences and metagenome sequence data obtained by 454-pyrosequencing. Sequencing of 109 clones from a bacterial and an archaeal 16S-rDNA amplicon library revealed that the obtained nucleotide sequences are similar but not identical to 16S-rDNA database sequences derived from different anaerobic environments including digestors and bioreactors. Most of the bacterial 16S-rDNA sequences could be assigned to the phylum Firmicutes with the most abundant class Clostridia and to the class Bacteroidetes, whereas most archaeal 16S-rDNA sequences cluster close to the methanogen Methanoculleus bourgensis.

TACOA: taxonomic classification of environmental genomic fragments using a kernelized nearest neighbor approach.

Background: Metagenomics, or the sequencing and analysis of collective genomes (metagenomes) of microorganisms isolated from an environment, promises direct access to the "unculturable majority". This emerging field offers the potential to lay solid basis on our understanding of the entire living world. However, the taxonomic classification is an essential task in the analysis of metagenomics data sets that it is still far from being solved.

Taxonomic composition and gene content of a methane-producing microbial community isolated from a biogas reactor.

A total community DNA sample from an agricultural biogas reactor continuously fed with maize silage, green rye, and small proportions of chicken manure has recently been sequenced using massively parallel pyrosequencing. In this study, the sample was computationally characterized without a prior assembly step, providing quantitative insights into the taxonomic composition and gene content of the underlying microbial community. Clostridiales from the phylum Firmicutes is the most prevalent phylogenetic order, Methanomicrobiales are dominant among methanogenic archaea.

The metagenome of a biogas-producing microbial community of a production-scale biogas plant fermenter analysed by the 454-pyrosequencing technology.

Composition and gene content of a biogas-producing microbial community from a production-scale biogas plant fed with renewable primary products was analysed by means of a metagenomic approach applying the ultrafast 454-pyrosequencing technology. Sequencing of isolated total community DNA on a Genome Sequencer FLX System resulted in 616,072 reads with an average read length of 230 bases accounting for 141,664,289 bases sequence information. Assignment of obtained single reads to COG (Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins) categories revealed a genetic profile characteristic for an anaerobic microbial consortium conducting fermentative metabolic pathways.

Hyperbolic SOM-based clustering of DNA fragment features for taxonomic visualization and classification.

Motivation: Modern high-throughput sequencing technologies enable the simultaneous analysis of organisms in an environment. The analysis of species diversity and the binning of DNA fragments of non-sequenced species for assembly are two major challenges in sequence analysis. To achieve reasonable binnings and classifications, DNA fragment structure has to be represented appropriately, so it can be processed by machine learning algorithms.

Phylogenetic classification of short environmental DNA fragments.

Metagenomics is providing striking insights into the ecology of microbial communities. The recently developed massively parallel 454 pyrosequencing technique gives the opportunity to rapidly obtain metagenomic sequences at a low cost and without cloning bias. However, the phylogenetic analysis of the short reads produced represents a significant computational challenge.

Finding novel genes in bacterial communities isolated from the environment.

Motivation: Novel sequencing techniques can give access to organisms that are difficult to cultivate using conventional methods. When applied to environmental samples, the data generated has some drawbacks, e.g.

The subsystems approach to genome annotation and its use in the project to annotate 1000 genomes.

The release of the 1000th complete microbial genome will occur in the next two to three years. In anticipation of this milestone, the Fellowship for Interpretation of Genomes (FIG) launched the Project to Annotate 1000 Genomes. The project is built around the principle that the key to improved accuracy in high-throughput annotation technology is to have experts annotate single subsystems over the complete collection of genomes, rather than having an annotation expert attempt to annotate all of the genes in a single genome.