Summary
Understanding the complex nature of underground ecology can offer the novel strategies for forest health. The robustness and reproducibility of metatranscriptomics approach hold great promise for the identification of key genes involved in interactions of plant hosts and a large number of microorganisms. However, application of genome-wide expression study for the field samples presents challenges due to the difficulty of obtaining good quality RNA from a small amount of root and soil tissues, and the challenge of assembly of whole-metatranscriptomic data. This web provide the bioinformatics tools and strategies we used for metatranscriptomics to study interactions between plants and their symbiotic ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) in the natural forest systems. We developed a new methodology to extract DNA/RNA from the same mycorrhizal root tips and soils, to assemble metatranscriptomic data, and to separate transcripts of specific EMF lineages and plant tissues for profiling lineage-specific transcriptomics in situ. Through these approaches, we are able to uncover the unique features of transcriptomes from specific genus of EMF and their hosts in the natural environment.
Understanding the complex nature of underground ecology can offer the novel strategies for forest health. The robustness and reproducibility of metatranscriptomics approach hold great promise for the identification of key genes involved in interactions of plant hosts and a large number of microorganisms. However, application of genome-wide expression study for the field samples presents challenges due to the difficulty of obtaining good quality RNA from a small amount of root and soil tissues, and the challenge of assembly of whole-metatranscriptomic data. This web provide the bioinformatics tools and strategies we used for metatranscriptomics to study interactions between plants and their symbiotic ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) in the natural forest systems. We developed a new methodology to extract DNA/RNA from the same mycorrhizal root tips and soils, to assemble metatranscriptomic data, and to separate transcripts of specific EMF lineages and plant tissues for profiling lineage-specific transcriptomics in situ. Through these approaches, we are able to uncover the unique features of transcriptomes from specific genus of EMF and their hosts in the natural environment.