June 2021 archive

A multi-OMIC characterisation of biodegradation and microbial community succession within the PET plastisphere

Microbiome. 2021 Jun 21;9(1):141. doi: 10.1186/s40168-021-01054-5. ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Plastics now pollute marine environments across the globe. On entering these environments, plastics are rapidly colonised by a diverse community of microorganisms termed the plastisphere. Members of the plastisphere have a myriad of diverse functions typically found in any biofilm but, additionally, a number of marine plastisphere …

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Description of the Marine Predator Sericomyxa perlucida gen. et sp. nov., a Cultivated Representative of the Deepest Branching Lineage of Vampyrellid Amoebae (Vampyrellida, Rhizaria)

J Eukaryot Microbiol. 2021 Jun 21:e12864. doi: 10.1111/jeu.12864. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT The vampyrellids (Vampyrellida, Rhizaria) are an order of naked amoebae of considerable genetic diversity. Three families have been well defined (Vampyrellidae, Leptophryidae, Placopodidae), but most vampyrellid lineages detected by environmental sequencing are poorly known or completely uncharacterised. In the brackish sediment of …

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The role of purifying selection in the origin and maintenance of complex function

Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2021 Apr 11;87:125-135. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.03.005. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Fitness contribution alone should not be the criterion of ‘function’ in molecular biology and genomics. Disagreement over the use of ‘function’ in molecular biology and genomics is still with us, almost eight years after publicity surrounding the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements …

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‘Species’ without species

Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2021 Apr 1;87:72-80. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.03.006. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Biological science uses multiple species concepts. Order can be brought to this diversity if we recognize two key features. First, any given species concept is likely to have a patchwork structure, generated by repeated application of the concept to new domains. …

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q-PCR-based assay for the toxic dinoflagellate Karenia selliformis monitoring along the Tunisian coasts

Karenia selliformis is a marine dinoflagellate responsible for fish-kill events. Its presence has been reported along the Tunisian coasts (south-eastern Mediterranean Sea) since the 1990s. In the present study, a quantitative-PCR assay, based on the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) molecular marker, was developed to detect and quantify K. selliformis in environmental bivalve mollusk samples and in seawater samples. The assay was optimized, and its specificity was confirmed using…