@article{MrochenSchulzFischeretal.2018, author = {Mrochen, Daniel M. and Schulz, Daniel and Fischer, Stefan and Jeske, Kathrin and El Gohary, Heba and Reil, Daniela and Imholt, Christian and Truebe, Patricia and Suchomel, Josef and Tricaud, Emilie and Jacob, Jens and Heroldova, Marta and Br{\"o}ker, Barbara M. and Strommenger, Birgit and Walther, Birgit and Ulrich, Rainer G. and Holtfreter, Silva}, title = {Wild rodents and shrews are natural hosts of Staphylococcus aureus}, series = {International Journal of Medical Microbiology}, volume = {308}, journal = {International Journal of Medical Microbiology}, number = {6}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Jena}, issn = {1438-4221}, doi = {10.1016/j.ijmm.2017.09.014}, pages = {590 -- 597}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Laboratory mice are the most commonly used animal model for Staphylococcus aureus infection studies. We have previously shown that laboratory mice from global vendors are frequently colonized with S. aureus. Laboratory mice originate from wild house mice. Hence, we investigated whether wild rodents, including house mice, as well as shrews are naturally colonized with S. aureus and whether S. aureus adapts to the wild animal host. 295 animals of ten different species were caught in different locations over four years (2012-2015) in Germany, France and the Czech Republic. 45 animals were positive for S. aureus (15.3\%). Three animals were co-colonized with two different isolates, resulting in 48 S. aureus isolates in total. Positive animals were found in Germany and the Czech Republic in each studied year. The S. aureus isolates belonged to ten different spa types, which grouped into six lineages (clonal complex (CC) 49, CC88, CC130, CC1956, sequence type (ST) 890, ST3033). CC49 isolates were most abundant (17/48, 35.4\%), followed by CC1956 (14/48, 29.2\%) and ST890 (9/48, 18.8\%). The wild animal isolates lacked certain properties that are common among human isolates, e.g., a phage-encoded immune evasion cluster, superantigen genes on mobile genetic elements and antibiotic resistance genes, which suggests long-term adaptation to the wild animal host. One CC130 isolate contained the mecC gene, implying wild rodents might be both reservoir and vector for methicillin-resistant. In conclusion, we demonstrated that wild rodents and shrews are naturally colonized with S. aureus, and that those S. aureus isolates show signs of host adaptation.}, language = {en} } @article{WaltherGuanterHeimetal.2018, author = {Walther, Sophia and Guanter, Luis and Heim, Birgit and Jung, Martin and Duveiller, Gregory and Wolanin, Aleksandra and Sachs, Torsten}, title = {Assessing the dynamics of vegetation productivity in circumpolar regions with different satellite indicators of greenness and photosynthesis}, series = {Biogeosciences}, volume = {15}, journal = {Biogeosciences}, number = {20}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1726-4170}, doi = {10.5194/bg-15-6221-2018}, pages = {6221 -- 6256}, year = {2018}, abstract = {High-latitude treeless ecosystems represent spatially highly heterogeneous landscapes with small net carbon fluxes and a short growing season. Reliable observations and process understanding are critical for projections of the carbon balance of the climate-sensitive tundra. Space-borne remote sensing is the only tool to obtain spatially continuous and temporally resolved information on vegetation greenness and activity in remote circumpolar areas. However, confounding effects from persistent clouds, low sun elevation angles, numerous lakes, widespread surface inundation, and the sparseness of the vegetation render it highly challenging. Here, we conduct an extensive analysis of the timing of peak vegetation productivity as shown by satellite observations of complementary indicators of plant greenness and photosynthesis. We choose to focus on productivity during the peak of the growing season, as it importantly affects the total annual carbon uptake. The suite of indicators are as follows: (1) MODIS-based vegetation indices (VIs) as proxies for the fraction of incident photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) that is absorbed (fPAR), (2) VIs combined with estimates of PAR as a proxy of the total absorbed radiation (APAR), (3) sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) serving as a proxy for photosynthesis, (4) vegetation optical depth (VOD), indicative of total water content and (5) empirically upscaled modelled gross primary productivity (GPP). Averaged over the pan-Arctic we find a clear order of the annual peak as APAR <= GPP < SIF < VIs/VOD. SIF as an indicator of photosynthesis is maximised around the time of highest annual temperatures. The modelled GPP peaks at a similar time to APAR. The time lag of the annual peak between APAR and instantaneous SIF fluxes indicates that the SIF data do contain information on light-use efficiency of tundra vegetation, but further detailed studies are necessary to verify this. Delayed peak greenness compared to peak photosynthesis is consistently found across years and land-cover classes. A particularly late peak of the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) in regions with very small seasonality in greenness and a high amount of lakes probably originates from artefacts. Given the very short growing season in circumpolar areas, the average time difference in maximum annual photosynthetic activity and greenness or growth of 3 to 25 days (depending on the data sets chosen) is important and needs to be considered when using satellite observations as drivers in vegetation models.}, language = {en} } @article{RianoPachonKleessenNeigenfindetal.2010, author = {Ria{\~n}o-Pach{\´o}n, Diego Mauricio and Kleessen, Sabrina and Neigenfind, Jost and Durek, Pawel and Weber, Elke and Engelsberger, Wolfgang R. and Walther, Dirk and Selbig, Joachim and Schulze, Waltraud X. and Kersten, Birgit}, title = {Proteome-wide survey of phosphorylation patterns affected by nuclear DNA polymorphisms in Arabidopsis thaliana}, series = {BMC Genomics}, volume = {11}, journal = {BMC Genomics}, publisher = {Biomed Central}, address = {London}, issn = {1471-2164}, doi = {10.1186/1471-2164-11-411}, pages = {19}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Background: Protein phosphorylation is an important post-translational modification influencing many aspects of dynamic cellular behavior. Site-specific phosphorylation of amino acid residues serine, threonine, and tyrosine can have profound effects on protein structure, activity, stability, and interaction with other biomolecules. Phosphorylation sites can be affected in diverse ways in members of any species, one such way is through single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The availability of large numbers of experimentally identified phosphorylation sites, and of natural variation datasets in Arabidopsis thaliana prompted us to analyze the effect of non-synonymous SNPs (nsSNPs) onto phosphorylation sites. Results: From the analyses of 7,178 experimentally identified phosphorylation sites we found that: (i) Proteins with multiple phosphorylation sites occur more often than expected by chance. (ii) Phosphorylation hotspots show a preference to be located outside conserved domains. (iii) nsSNPs affected experimental phosphorylation sites as much as the corresponding non-phosphorylated amino acid residues. (iv) Losses of experimental phosphorylation sites by nsSNPs were identified in 86 A. thaliana proteins, among them receptor proteins were overrepresented. These results were confirmed by similar analyses of predicted phosphorylation sites in A. thaliana. In addition, predicted threonine phosphorylation sites showed a significant enrichment of nsSNPs towards asparagines and a significant depletion of the synonymous substitution. Proteins in which predicted phosphorylation sites were affected by nsSNPs (loss and gain), were determined to be mainly receptor proteins, stress response proteins and proteins involved in nucleotide and protein binding. Proteins involved in metabolism, catalytic activity and biosynthesis were less affected. Conclusions: We analyzed more than 7,100 experimentally identified phosphorylation sites in almost 4,300 protein-coding loci in silico, thus constituting the largest phosphoproteomics dataset for A. thaliana available to date. Our findings suggest a relatively high variability in the presence or absence of phosphorylation sites between different natural accessions in receptor and other proteins involved in signal transduction. Elucidating the effect of phosphorylation sites affected by nsSNPs on adaptive responses represents an exciting research goal for the future.}, language = {en} } @misc{RianoPachonKleessenNeigenfindetal.2010, author = {Ria{\~n}o-Pach{\´o}n, Diego Mauricio and Kleessen, Sabrina and Neigenfind, Jost and Durek, Pawel and Weber, Elke and Engelsberger, Wolfgang R. and Walther, Dirk and Selbig, Joachim and Schulze, Waltraud X. and Kersten, Birgit}, title = {Proteome-wide survey of phosphorylation patterns affected by nuclear DNA polymorphisms in Arabidopsis thaliana}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1328}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43118}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-431181}, pages = {19}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Background: Protein phosphorylation is an important post-translational modification influencing many aspects of dynamic cellular behavior. Site-specific phosphorylation of amino acid residues serine, threonine, and tyrosine can have profound effects on protein structure, activity, stability, and interaction with other biomolecules. Phosphorylation sites can be affected in diverse ways in members of any species, one such way is through single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The availability of large numbers of experimentally identified phosphorylation sites, and of natural variation datasets in Arabidopsis thaliana prompted us to analyze the effect of non-synonymous SNPs (nsSNPs) onto phosphorylation sites. Results: From the analyses of 7,178 experimentally identified phosphorylation sites we found that: (i) Proteins with multiple phosphorylation sites occur more often than expected by chance. (ii) Phosphorylation hotspots show a preference to be located outside conserved domains. (iii) nsSNPs affected experimental phosphorylation sites as much as the corresponding non-phosphorylated amino acid residues. (iv) Losses of experimental phosphorylation sites by nsSNPs were identified in 86 A. thaliana proteins, among them receptor proteins were overrepresented. These results were confirmed by similar analyses of predicted phosphorylation sites in A. thaliana. In addition, predicted threonine phosphorylation sites showed a significant enrichment of nsSNPs towards asparagines and a significant depletion of the synonymous substitution. Proteins in which predicted phosphorylation sites were affected by nsSNPs (loss and gain), were determined to be mainly receptor proteins, stress response proteins and proteins involved in nucleotide and protein binding. Proteins involved in metabolism, catalytic activity and biosynthesis were less affected. Conclusions: We analyzed more than 7,100 experimentally identified phosphorylation sites in almost 4,300 protein-coding loci in silico, thus constituting the largest phosphoproteomics dataset for A. thaliana available to date. Our findings suggest a relatively high variability in the presence or absence of phosphorylation sites between different natural accessions in receptor and other proteins involved in signal transduction. Elucidating the effect of phosphorylation sites affected by nsSNPs on adaptive responses represents an exciting research goal for the future.}, language = {en} } @misc{WaltherGuanterHeimetal.2018, author = {Walther, Sophia and Guanter, Luis and Heim, Birgit and Jung, Martin and Duveiller, Gregory and Wolanin, Aleksandra and Sachs, Torsten}, title = {Assessing the dynamics of vegetation productivity in circumpolar regions with different satellite indicators of greenness and photosynthesis}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1025}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-44620}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-446205}, pages = {6221 -- 6256}, year = {2018}, abstract = {High-latitude treeless ecosystems represent spatially highly heterogeneous landscapes with small net carbon fluxes and a short growing season. Reliable observations and process understanding are critical for projections of the carbon balance of the climate-sensitive tundra. Space-borne remote sensing is the only tool to obtain spatially continuous and temporally resolved information on vegetation greenness and activity in remote circumpolar areas. However, confounding effects from persistent clouds, low sun elevation angles, numerous lakes, widespread surface inundation, and the sparseness of the vegetation render it highly challenging. Here, we conduct an extensive analysis of the timing of peak vegetation productivity as shown by satellite observations of complementary indicators of plant greenness and photosynthesis. We choose to focus on productivity during the peak of the growing season, as it importantly affects the total annual carbon uptake. The suite of indicators are as follows: (1) MODIS-based vegetation indices (VIs) as proxies for the fraction of incident photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) that is absorbed (fPAR), (2) VIs combined with estimates of PAR as a proxy of the total absorbed radiation (APAR), (3) sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) serving as a proxy for photosynthesis, (4) vegetation optical depth (VOD), indicative of total water content and (5) empirically upscaled modelled gross primary productivity (GPP). Averaged over the pan-Arctic we find a clear order of the annual peak as APAR ≦ GPP