Microorganisms were examined for their potential to hydroxylate the oxygenated monoterpene 1,4-cineole. Using gas chromatography and thin-layer chromatography, screening experiments revealed that hydroxylation at position 2 was the most commonly observed microbial transformation reaction. In most microorganisms, the predominant alcohol metabolite was the 2-endo-alcohol isomer. Preparative-scale...

Despite the growing interest to explore untapped microbial gene and protein diversity, no single platform has been able to acquire both gene and protein information from just a few cells. We present a microfluidic system that simultaneously performs on-chip capillary electrophoresis for protein analysis and whole genome amplification (WGA), and we demonstrate this by doing both for the same coh...

The development of bioinformatic solutions for microbial ecology in Perl is limited by the lack of modules to represent and manipulate microbial community profiles from amplicon and meta-omics studies. Here we introduce Bio-Community, an open-source, collaborative toolkit that extends BioPerl. Bio-Community interfaces with commonly used programs using various file formats, including BIOM, and p...

Cultivation-independent genomic approaches have greatly advanced our understanding of the ecology and diversity of microbial communities involved in biodegradation processes. However, much still needs to be resolved in terms of the structure, composition and dynamics of the microbial community in impacted ecosystems. Here we report on the RNA activity of the microbial community during the biore...

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are ancient microbial pattern recognition receptors highly conserved from Drosophila to humans. To investigate if subsets of human dendritic cell precursors (pre-DC), including monocytes (pre-DC1), plasmacytoid DC precursors (pre-DC2), and CD11c(+) immature DCs (imDCs) are developed to recognize different microbes or microbial antigens, we studied their TLR expression...

Soil microbial communities play an important role in nutrient cycling and nutrient availability, especially in unimproved soils. In grazed pastures, sheep urine causes local changes in nutrient concentration which may be a source of heterogeneity in microbial community structure. In the present study, we investigated the effects of synthetic urine on soil microbial community structure, using ph...

BACKGROUND Natural microbial communities are extremely complex and dynamic systems in terms of their population structure and functions. However, little is known about the in situ functions of the microbial communities. RESULTS This study describes the application of proteomic approaches (metaproteomics) to observe expressed protein profiles of natural microbial communities (metaproteomes). T...

Rainfall in Mediterranean climates may affect soil microbial processes and communities differently in agricultural vs. grassland soils. We explored the hypothesis that land use intensification decreases the resistance of microbial community composition and activity to perturbation. Soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics and microbial responses to a simulated Spring rainfall were measured in ...