The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

  
       
         
    STUDIA BIOLOGIA - Issue no. 1 / 2019  
         
  Article:   CHARACTERIZATION OF EXTRACELLULAR DNA, THE FORGOTTEN FRACTION OF HYPERSALINE ENVIRONMENTS.

Authors:  BORJA ALDEGUER, MARÍA DOLORES RAMOS-BARBERO, CRISTINA LÓPEZ, FERNANDO SANTOS, ANA BELÉN MARTÍN-CUADRADO, JOSEFA ANTÓN. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  Extracellular DNA (eDNA) is the fraction of environmental DNA outside the cells which contains viral and dissolved DNA. eDNA can play an important function in horizontal gene transfer and as source of nutrients, two of the most relevant ecological processes that influence environmental evolution and dynamic population. While some studies in hypersaline sediment showed that eDNA reached a high concentration, studies in hypersaline water have not yet been performed. Thus, this is the first work that provides information about characteristics and possible functions of eDNA in hypersaline water. In our study we determined the concentration, size and origin of eDNA, focusing our efforts mainly on dissolved DNA that is the most unknown fraction of the eDNA. For this purpose, hypersaline water samples were collected from the crystalizer CR30, in the solar salterns of Santa Pola (Spain), one of the hypersaline environments studied in more detail. We purified and analyzed eDNA and we sequenced it using Illumina with the aim of determining its origin, GC content and metabolic genes. We were interested in determining the environmental role of dissolved DNA, so we hypothesized that it could act as a UV protector and we performed an experiment in which the microbial community of the cristalizer was exposed to UV radiation in the presence of different DNA concentrations.

Keywords: dissolved DNA, extracellular DNA, hypersaline water, viral DNA. 		 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page