William J. Sutherland , Robert P. Freckleton , H. Charles J. Godfray , Steven R. Beissinger , Tim Benton , Duncan D. Cameron , Yohay Carmel , David A. Coomes , Tim Coulson , Mark C. Emmerson , Rosemary S. Hails , Graeme C. Hays , Dave J. Hodgson , Michael J. Hutchings , David Johnson , Julia P. G. Jones , Matt J. Keeling , Hanna Kokko , William E. Kunin , Xavier Lambin , Owen T. Lewis , Yadvinder Malhi , Nova Mieszkowska , E. J. Milner-Gulland , Ken Norris , Albert B. Phillimore , Drew W. Purves , Jane M. Reid , Daniel C. Reuman , Ken Thompson , Justin M. J. Travis , Lindsay A. Turnbull , David A. Wardle , Thorsten Wiegand <<<

Fundamental ecological research is both intrinsically interesting and provides the basic knowledge required to answer applied questions of importance to the management of the natural world. The 100th anniversary of the British Ecological Society in 2013 is an opportune moment to reflect on the current status of ecology as a science and look forward to high-light priorities for future work. To do this, we identified 100 important questions of fundamental importance in pure ecology. We elicited questions from ecologists working across a wide range of systems and disciplines. The 754 questions submitted (listed in the online appendix) from 388 participants were narrowed down to the final 100 through a process of discussion, rewording and repeated rounds of voting. This was done during a two-day workshop and thereafter. The questions reflect many of the important current conceptual and technical pre-occupations of ecology. For example, many questions concerned the dynamics of environmental change and complex ecosystem interactions, as well as the interaction between ecology and evolution. The questions reveal a dynamic science with novel subfields emerging. For example, a group of questions was dedicated to disease and micro-organisms and another on human impacts and global change reflecting the emergence of new subdisciplines that would not have been foreseen a few decades ago. The list also contained a number of questions that have perplexed ecologists for decades and are still seen as crucial to answer, such as the link between population dynamics and life-history evolution. Synthesis. These 100 questions identified reflect the state of ecology today. Using them as an agenda for further research would lead to a substantial enhancement in understanding of the discipline, with practical relevance for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem function. <<<

Bioactivities, such as freshness maintenance, whitening, and prebiotics, of marine neoagaro-oligosaccharides (NAOS) with 4-12 degrees of polymerization (DPs) have been proven. However, NAOS produced by most marine β-agarases always possess low DPs (≤6) and limited categories; thus, a strategy that can efficiently produce NAOS especially with various DPs ≥8 must be developed. In this study, 60 amino acid residues with no functional annotation result were removed from the C-terminal of agarase AgaM1, and truncated recombinant AgaM1 (trAgaM1) was found to have the ability to produce NAOS with various DPs (4-12) under certain conditions. The catalytic efficiency and stability of trAgaM1 were obviously lower than the wild type (rAgaM1), which probably endowed trAgaM1 with the ability to produce NAOS with various DPs. The optimum conditions for various NAOS production included mixing 1% agarose (w/v) with 10.26 U/ml trAgaM1 and incubating the mixture at 50°C in deionized water for 100 min. This strategy produced neoagarotetraose (NA4), neoagarohexaose (NA6), neoagarooctaose (NA8), neoagarodecaose (NA10), and neoagarododecaose (NA12) at final concentrations of 0.15, 1.53, 1.53, 3.02, and 3.02 g/L, respectively. The NAOS served as end-products of the reaction. The conditions for trAgaM1 expression in a shake flask and 5 L fermentation tank were optimized, and the yields of trAgaM1 increased by 56- and 842-fold compared with those before optimization, respectively. This study provides numerous substrate sources for production and activity tests of NAOS with high DPs and offers a foundation for large-scale production of NAOS with various DPs at a low cost. <<<

Wu Xiong, Alexandre Jousset, Rong Li, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Mohammad Bahram, Ramiro Logares, Benjamin Wilden, Gerard Arjen de Groot, Nathalie Amacker, George A Kowalchuk, Qirong Shen, Stefan Geisen <<<

The colossal project of mapping the microbiome on Earth is rapidly advancing, with a focus on individual microbial groups. However, a global assessment of the associations between predatory protists and their bacterial prey is still missing at a cross-ecosystem level. This knowledge is critical to better understand the importance of top-down links in structuring microbiomes. Here, we examined 38 sequence-based datasets of paired bacterial and protistan taxa, covering 3,178 samples from diverse habitats including freshwater, marine and soils. We show that community profiles of protists and bacteria strongly correlated across and within habitats, with trophic microbiome structures fundamentally differing across habitats. Soils hosted the most heterogenous and diverse microbiomes. Protist communities were dominated by predators in soils and phototrophs in aquatic environments. This led to changes in the ratio of total protists to bacteria richness, which was highest in marine, while that of predatory protists to bacteria was highest in soils. Taxon richness and relative abundance of predatory protists positively correlated with bacterial richness in marine habitats. These links differed between soils, predatory protist richness and the relative abundance of predatory protists positively correlated with bacterial richness in forest and grassland soils, but not in agricultural soils. Our results suggested that anthropogenic pressure affects higher trophic levels more than lower ones leading to a decoupled trophic structure in microbiomes. Together, our cumulative overview of microbiome patterns of bacteria and protists at the global scale revealed major patterns and differences of the trophic structure of microbiomes across Earth's habitats, and show that anthropogenic factors might have negative effects on the trophic structure within microbiomes. Furthermore, the increased impact of anthropogenic factors on especially higher trophic levels suggests that often-observed reduced ecosystem functions in anthropogenic systems might be partly attributed to a reduction of trophic complexity. <<<

Senjie Lin, Shifeng Cheng, Bo Song, Xiao Zhong, Xin Lin, Wujiao Li, Ling Li, Yaqun Zhang, Huan Zhang, Zhiliang Ji, Meichun Cai, Yunyun Zhuang, Xinguo Shi, Lingxiao Lin, Lu Wang, Zhaobao Wang, Xin Liu, Sheng Yu, Peng Zeng, Han Hao, Quan Zou, Chengxuan Chen, Yanjun Li, Ying Wang, Chunyan Xu, Shanshan Meng, Xun Xu, Jun Wang, Huanming Yang, David A Campbell, Nancy R Sturm, Steve Dagenais-Bellefeuille, David Morse <<<

Dinoflagellates are important components of marine ecosystems and essential coral symbionts, yet little is known about their genomes. We report here on the analysis of a high-quality assembly from the 1180-megabase genome of Symbiodinium kawagutii. We annotated protein-coding genes and identified Symbiodinium-specific gene families. No whole-genome duplication was observed, but instead we found active (retro)transposition and gene family expansion, especially in processes important for successful symbiosis with corals. We also documented genes potentially governing sexual reproduction and cyst formation, novel promoter elements, and a microRNA system potentially regulating gene expression in both symbiont and coral. We found biochemical complementarity between genomes of S. kawagutii and the anthozoan Acropora, indicative of host-symbiont coevolution, providing a resource for studying the molecular basis and evolution of coral symbiosis. <<<

Bruce A Curtis, Goro Tanifuji, Fabien Burki, Ansgar Gruber, Manuel Irimia, Shinichiro Maruyama, Maria C Arias, Steven G Ball, Gillian H Gile, Yoshihisa Hirakawa, Julia F Hopkins, Alan Kuo, Stefan A Rensing, Jeremy Schmutz, Aikaterini Symeonidi, Marek Elias, Robert J M Eveleigh, Emily K Herman, Mary J Klute, Takuro Nakayama, Miroslav Oborník, Adrian Reyes-Prieto, E Virginia Armbrust, Stephen J Aves, Robert G Beiko, Pedro Coutinho, Joel B Dacks, Dion G Durnford, Naomi M Fast, Beverley R Green, Cameron J Grisdale, Franziska Hempel, Bernard Henrissat, Marc P Höppner, Ken-Ichiro Ishida, Eunsoo Kim, Luděk Kořený, Peter G Kroth, Yuan Liu, Shehre-Banoo Malik, Uwe G Maier, Darcy McRose, Thomas Mock, Jonathan A D Neilson, Naoko T Onodera, Anthony M Poole, Ellen J Pritham, Thomas A Richards, Gabrielle Rocap, Scott W Roy, Chihiro Sarai, Sarah Schaack, Shu Shirato, Claudio H Slamovits, David F Spencer, Shigekatsu Suzuki, Alexandra Z Worden, Stefan Zauner, Kerrie Barry, Callum Bell, Arvind K Bharti, John A Crow, Jane Grimwood, Robin Kramer, Erika Lindquist, Susan Lucas, Asaf Salamov, Geoffrey I McFadden, Christopher E Lane, Patrick J Keeling, Michael W Gray, Igor V Grigoriev, John M Archibald <<<

Cryptophyte and chlorarachniophyte algae are transitional forms in the widespread secondary endosymbiotic acquisition of photosynthesis by engulfment of eukaryotic algae. Unlike most secondary plastid-bearing algae, miniaturized versions of the endosymbiont nuclei (nucleomorphs) persist in cryptophytes and chlorarachniophytes. To determine why, and to address other fundamental questions about eukaryote-eukaryote endosymbiosis, we sequenced the nuclear genomes of the cryptophyte Guillardia theta and the chlorarachniophyte Bigelowiella natans. Both genomes have >21,000 protein genes and are intron rich, and B. natans exhibits unprecedented alternative splicing for a single-celled organism. Phylogenomic analyses and subcellular targeting predictions reveal extensive genetic and biochemical mosaicism, with both host- and endosymbiont-derived genes servicing the mitochondrion, the host cell cytosol, the plastid and the remnant endosymbiont cytosol of both algae. Mitochondrion-to-nucleus gene transfer still occurs in both organisms but plastid-to-nucleus and nucleomorph-to-nucleus transfers do not, which explains why a small residue of essential genes remains locked in each nucleomorph. <<<