Comparison of cyanobacterial microcystin synthetase (<i>mcy</i>) <i>E</i> gene transcript levels, <i>mcy E</i> gene copies, and biomass as indicators of microcystin risk under laboratory and field conditions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Increased incidences of mixed assemblages of microcystin-producing and nonproducing cyanobacterial strains in freshwater bodies necessitate development of reliable proxies for cyanotoxin risk assessment. Detection of microcystin biosynthetic genes in water blooms of cyanobacteria is generally indicative of the presence of potentially toxic cyanobacterial strains. Although much effort has been devoted toward elucidating the microcystin biosynthesis mechanisms in many cyanobacteria genera, little is known about the impacts of co-occurring cyanobacteria on cellular growth, mcy gene expression, or mcy gene copy distribution. The present study utilized conventional microscopy, qPCR assays, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to study how competition between microcystin-producing Microcystis aeruginosa CPCC 299 and Planktothrix agardhii NIVA-CYA 126 impacts mcyE gene expression, mcyE gene copies, and microcystin concentration under controlled laboratory conditions. Furthermore, analyses of environmental water samples from the Missisquoi Bay, Quebec, enabled us to determine how the various potential toxigenic cyanobacterial biomass proxies correlated with cellular microcystin concentrations in a freshwater lake. Results from our laboratory study indicated significant downregulation of mcyE gene expression in mixed cultures of M. aeruginosa plus P. agardhii on most sampling days in agreement with depressed growth recorded in the mixed cultures, suggesting that interaction between the two species probably resulted in suppressed growth and mcyE gene expression in the mixed cultures. Furthermore, although mcyE gene copies and McyE transcripts were detected in all laboratory and field samples with measureable microcystin levels, only mcyE gene copies showed significant positive correlations (R(2) > 0.7) with microcystin concentrations, while McyE transcript levels did not. These results suggest that mcyE gene copies are better indicators of potential risks from microcystins than McyE transcript levels or conventional biomass proxies, especially in water bodies comprising mixed assemblages of toxic and nontoxic cyanobacteria.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".