BackgroundAedes aegypti is associated with dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika viruses. This vector is widespread in tropical and subtropical areas, and can also occur in temperate areas at higher latitudes. The geographical distribution of Ae. aegypti continues to spread due to human activities. This is the first study to examine the popula...
Microbial community structure and function rely on complex interactions whose underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. To investigate these interactions in a simple microbiome, we introduced E. coli into an experimental community based on a cheese rind and identified the differences in E. coli's genetic requirements for growth in inte...
Understanding how biodiversity changes in time and space is vital to assess the effects of environmental change on benthic ecosystems. Due to the limitations of morphological methods, there has been a rapid expansion in the application of high-throughput sequencing methods to study benthic eukaryotic communities. However, the effect of sample size ...
Published in Memory & Cognition
Current models and theories of semantic knowledge primarily capture taxonomic relationships (DOG and WOLF) and largely do not address the role of thematic relationships in semantic knowledge (DOG and LEASH). Recent evidence suggests that processing or representation of thematic relationships may be distinct from taxonomic relationships. If taxonomi...
Ocean-derived, airborne microbes play important roles in Earth's climate system and human health, yet little is known about factors controlling their transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. Here, we study microbiomes of isolated sea spray aerosol (SSA) collected in a unique ocean-atmosphere facility and demonstrate taxon-specific aerosolization ...
PCR amplification bias is a well-known problem in metagenomic analysis of arthropod communities. In contrast, variation of DNA degradation rates is a largely neglected source of bias. Differential degradation of DNA molecules could cause underrepresentation of taxa in a community sequencing sample. Arthropods are often collected by passive sampling...
Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is becoming a core tool in ecology and conservation biology, and is being used in a growing number of education, biodiversity monitoring, and public outreach programs in which professional research scientists engage community partners in primary research. Results from eDNA analyses can engage and educate natur...
BackgroundOne of the main challenges in metagenomics is the identification of microorganisms in clinical and environmental samples. While an extensive and heterogeneous set of computational tools is available to classify microorganisms using whole-genome shotgun sequencing data, comprehensive comparisons of these methods are limited.ResultsIn this ...
Diverse soil-resident bacteria can contribute to plant growth and health, but the molecular mechanisms enabling them to effectively colonize their plant hosts remain poorly understood. We used randomly barcoded transposon mutagenesis sequencing (RB-TnSeq) in Pseudomonas simiae, a model root-colonizing bacterium, to establish a genome-wide map of ba...
Published in Virus Research
A new insect nidovirus (named Yichang virus) from the family Mesoniviridae was isolated, identified, and characterized from Culex mosquitoes in Hubei, China. Results showed a high number of viral RNA copies (up to 1011 copies/ml) within 48 h in C6/36 cells. In addition, the titers of the Yichang virus reached maximal levels of 107 PFU/mL at 6 d pos...
