Environmental pollution is a worldwide problem, and metals are the largest group of contaminants in soil. Microarray toxicogenomic studies with ecologically relevant organisms, such as springtails, supplement traditional ecotoxicological research but are presently rather descriptive. Classifier analysis, a more analytical application of the microarray technique, is able to predict biological cl...

Understanding bioavailability and toxicity is essential for effective ecological assessment of contaminated soils. Total, water and 0.01 M CaCl2 extractable and porewater Pb concentrations and soil properties in different shooting field soils were investigated. Three artificial soils containing different pH and organic matter contents and two natural soils were included as controls. Survival, r...

We investigated the toxicity of soil samples derived from a former municipal landfill site in the South of the Netherlands, where a bioremediation project is running aiming at reusing the site for recreation. Both an organic soil extract and the original soil sample was investigated using the ISO standardized Folsomia soil ecotoxicological testing and gene expression analysis. The 28 day surviv...

The eukaryotic bZIP transcription factors are critical players in organismal response to environmental challenges. In fungi, the production of secondary metabolites (SMs) is hypothesized as one of the responses to environmental insults, e.g. attack by fungivorous insects, yet little data to support this hypothesis exists. Here we establish a mechanism of bZIP regulation of SMs through RsmA, a r...

To assess the problems posed by ecological testing of the toxicity of polluted soils, we applied the Collembola reproduction test to the soil from a mining site polluted by metals. Our aim was to quantify the chronic toxicity of contaminated soil using the Folsomia candida reproduction test. Briefly, the polluted soil, which contains in particular large quantities of arsenic, is mixed in variou...

Aiming to evaluate a possible loss of soil habitat function after amendment with organic wastes, a digested sewage sludge and derived composts produced with green residues, where biologically tested in the laboratory using soil animals (Eisenia andrei and Folsomia candida) and plants (Brassica rapa and Avena sativa). Each waste was tested mimicking a field application of 6ton/ha or 12ton/ha. Av...

Heterogeneous oily waste from an old dumping site was composted in three windrows constructed from different proportions of waste, sewage sludge, and bark. The objectives of this pilot study were to examine the usefulness of composting as a treatment method for this particular waste and to study decontamination in the composting process by using a battery of toxicity tests. Five samples from th...

1. Because of recent technological improvements in the way computer and digital camera perform, the potential use of imaging for contributing to the study of communities, populations or individuals in laboratory microcosms has risen enormously. However its limited use is due to difficulties in the automation of image analysis. 2. We present an accurate and flexible method of image analysis for ...

BACKGROUND Collembola (springtails) represent a soil-living lineage of hexapods in between insects and crustaceans. Consequently, their genomes may hold key information on the early processes leading to evolution of Hexapoda from a crustacean ancestor. METHOD We assembled and annotated transcriptomes of the Collembola Folsomia candida and Orchesella cincta, and performed comparative analysis ...