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Bik and senior author W. Kelley Thomas, director of the HCGS, aswell as collaborators from Auburn University and the University ofTexas, San Antonio, found that the communities of microbialeukaryotes (organisms not visible to the naked eye whose cellscontain nuclei) in the sediments shifted dramatically from highlydiverse communities dominated by nematodes what you wouldexpect on a beach, says Bik -- to an almost exclusively fungalcommunity. What s more, those post-spill fungi seem to have an appetite foroil. The fungal taxa that were there were previously associatedwith hydrocarbons, Bik says, noting that the group of fungisampled post-spill from the Grand Isle sites are suspected toutilize hydrocarbons and thrive in hostile, polluted conditionsthat appear to be intolerable for other marine fungi. The researchers used two parallel methodologies high-throughputgene sequencing to sort the organisms into piles by their DNA,and an under-the-microscope taxonomic approach -- to evaluate thecommunities pre- and post-spill. In the taxonomic data examiningnematodes, researchers found that the post-spill samples weredominated by more predatory and scavenger nematodes as well asjuveniles, suggesting. While nematodes and fungi are hardly charismatic and are unlikelyto turn up on the dinner table, these little-understood yetabundant organisms are nonetheless important. They underpin theentire ecosystem, Bik says. If you knock out the base of thefood pyramid, you re not going to have food higher up in the foodchain. Further, they are also important for nutrient cycling andsediment stability. The researchers findings also point to the possibility oflingering but hidden effects of the spill, which is the largestaccidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleumindustry. If you turned up at the beach in September and looked around, youwould have had no idea there was an oil spill, Bik says. Yetour data suggest considerable hidden initial impacts across shallowGulf sediments that may be ongoing. Ongoing research and samplingwill aim to determine whether fungi are thriving and persistinglong-term and whether the shift in communities is an ephemeral,seasonal or a more permanent phenomenon. The use of high-throughput sequencing approaches to characterizechanges in microscopic eukaryote communities is a cutting-edgetechnique for tracking environmental disturbance. The developmentof these genomic tools provides a detailed understanding of thebiological consequences of such environmental disasters and is thefirst step toward mindful approaches for mitigation and remediationof this oil spill and those we will face in the future, saysThomas, who is the Hubbard Professor of Genomics at UNH. The paper, Dramatic shifts in benthic microbial eukaryotecommunities following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, isavailable to download from PLoS ONE here: dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0038550. In addition to Bik and Thomas, co-authors were Kenneth Halanychfrom Auburn University and Jyotsna Sharma of University of Texas,San Antonio. I am an expert from puartificialleather.com, while we provides the quality product, such as PU Artificial Leather , Artificial Leather Sofa, PU Bag Material,and more.
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