Jianghua Yang

Marked hypotension induced by adrenaline contained in local anesthetic.

Objectives: Local anesthetics containing adrenaline, which often cause cardiovascular side effects, are routinely used in functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) for the main purpose of hemostasis. The controversies concerning hemodynamic effects of adrenaline in local infiltration are widely discussed, but there is no definite conclusion. A prospective, randomized, double‐blinded study was carried out to discover the hemodynamic effects after local infiltration of 1:200,000 adrenaline contained in 2% lidocaine under general anesthesia.

Ecogenomics of Zooplankton Community Reveals Ecological Threshold of Ammonia Nitrogen

Communities of zooplankton can be adversely affected by contamination resulting from human activities. Yet understanding the influence of water quality on zooplankton under field-conditions is hindered by traditional labor-intensive approaches that are prone to incomplete or uncertain taxonomic determinations. Here, for the first time, an eco-genomic approach, based on genetic diversity in the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) region of DNA of zooplankton was used to develop a site-specific, water quality criterion (WQC) for ammonia (NH3). Ammonia has been recognized as a primary stressor in the catchment of the large, eutrophic Tai Lake, China. Nutrients, especially NH3 and nitrite (NO3-) had more significant effects on structure of the zooplankton community than did other environmental factors. Abundances of rotifers increased along a gradient of increasing concentrations of total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), while abundances of copepods and cladocera decreased. A novel, rapid, species sensitivity distribution (SSD) approach based on operational taxonomic units (OTUs) was established to develop a WQC for NH3. The WQC based on OTUs was consistent with the WQC based on the traditional morphology taxonomy approach. This genetics-based SSD approach could be a useful tool for monitoring for status and trends in species composition and deriving ecological criteria and an efficient biomonitoring tool to protect local aquatic ecosystems in virtually any aquatic ecosystem.

Zooplankton Community Profiling in a Eutrophic Freshwater Ecosystem-Lake Tai Basin by DNA Metabarcoding

Communities of zooplankton, a critical portion of aquatic ecosystems, can be adversely affected by contamination resulting from human activities. Understanding the influence of environmental change on zooplankton communities under field-conditions is hindered by traditional labor-intensive approaches that are prone to taxonomic and enumeration mistakes. Here, metabarcoding of cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) region of mitochondrial DNA was used to characterize the genetic diversity of zooplankton. The species composition of zooplankton communities determined by metabarcoding was consistent with the results based on the traditional morphological approach. The spatial distribution of common species (frequency of occurrence >10 samples) by metabarcoding exhibited good agreement with morphological data. Furthermore, metabarcoding can clearly distinguish the composition of the zooplankton community between lake and river ecosystems. In general, rotifers were more abundant in riverine environments than lakes and reservoirs. Finally, the sequence read number of different taxonomic groups using metabarcoding was positively correlated with the zooplankton biomass inferred by density and body length of zooplankton. Overall, the utility of metabarcoding for taxonomic profiling of zooplankton communities was validated by the morphology-based method on a large ecological scale. Metabarcoding of COI could be a powerful and efficient biomonitoring tool to protect local aquatic ecosystems.

Ecogenomic responses of benthic communities under multiple stressors along the marine and adjacent riverine areas of northern Bohai Sea, China

Benthic communities in the aquatic ecosystem are influenced by both natural and anthropogenic stressors. To understand the ecogenomic responses of sediment communities to the multiple stressors of polluted environments, the bacteria, protistan and metazoan communities in sediments from marine and adjacent riverine areas of North Bohai Sea were characterized by environmental DNA meta-systematics, and their associations with environmental variables were assessed by multiple statistical approaches. The bacterial communities were dominated by Firmicutes (mean 22.4%), Proteobacteria (mean 21.6%) and Actinobacteria (mean 21.5%). The protistan communities were dominated by Ochrophyta (33.7%), Cercozoa (18.9%) and Ciliophora (17.9%). Arthropoda (71.1%) dominated the metazoan communities in sediments. The structures of communities in sediments were shaped by both natural variables (spatial variability and/or salinity (presented as Na and Ca)) and anthropogenic contaminants, including DDTs, PAHs or metals (Cu, Al, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Ni and Zn). Particularly, the correlation network of multiple communities was modulated by the concentrations of Na and DDTs at the family level. Overall, environmental DNA meta-systematics can provide a powerful tool for biomonitoring, sediment quality assessment, and key stressors identification.

Environmental DNA metabarcoding reveals primary chemical contaminants in freshwater sediments from different land-use types

Land-use intensification threatens freshwater biodiversity. Freshwater eukaryotic communities are affected by multiple chemical contaminants with a land-use specific manner. However, biodiversities of eukaryotes and their associations with multiple chemical contaminants are largely unknown. This study characterized in situ eukaryotic communities in sediments exposed to mixtures of chemical contaminants and assessed relationships between various environmental variables and eukaryotic communities in sediments from the Nanfei River. Eukaryotic communities in the sediment samples were dominated by Annelida, Arthropoda, Rotifera, Ochrophyta, Chlorophyta and Ciliophora. Alpha-diversities (Shannon entropy) and structures of eukaryotic communities were significantly different between land-use types. According to the results of multiple statistical tests (PCoA, distLM, Mantel and network analysis), dissimilarity of eukaryotic community structures revealed the key effects of pyrethroid insecticides, manganese, zinc, lead, chromium and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on eukaryotic communities in the sediment samples from the Nanfei River. Furthermore, taxa associated with land-use types were identified and several sensitive eukaryotic taxa to some of the primary contaminants were identified as potential indicators to monitor effects of the primary chemical contaminants. Overall, environmental DNA metabarcoding on in situ eukaryotic communities provided a powerful tool for biomonitoring and identifying primary contaminants and their complex effects on benthic eukaryotic communities in freshwater sediments.

Indigenous species barcode database improves the identification of zooplankton

Incompleteness and inaccuracy of DNA barcode databases is considered an important hindrance to the use of metabarcoding in biodiversity analysis of zooplankton at the species-level. Species barcoding by Sanger sequencing is inefficient for organisms with small body sizes, such as zooplankton. Here mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) fragment barcodes from 910 freshwater zooplankton specimens (87 morphospecies) were recovered by a high-throughput sequencing platform, Ion Torrent PGM. Intraspecific divergence of most zooplanktons was < 5%, except Branchionus leydign (Rotifer, 14.3%), Trichocerca elongate (Rotifer, 11.5%), Lecane bulla (Rotifer, 15.9%), Synchaeta oblonga (Rotifer, 5.95%) and Schmackeria forbesi (Copepod, 6.5%). Metabarcoding data of 28 environmental samples from Lake Tai were annotated by both an indigenous database and NCBI Genbank database. The indigenous database improved the taxonomic assignment of metabarcoding of zooplankton. Most zooplankton (81%) with barcode sequences in the indigenous database were identified by metabarcoding monitoring. Furthermore, the frequency and distribution of zooplankton were also consistent between metabarcoding and morphology identification. Overall, the indigenous database improved the taxonomic assignment of zooplankton.

In situ microbiota distinguished primary anthropogenic stressor in freshwater sediments

Conventional assessment and evaluation of sediment quality are based on laboratory-based ecotoxicological and chemical measurements with lack of concern for ecological relevance. Microbiotas in sediment are responsive to pollutants and can be used as alternative ecological indicators of sediment pollutants; however, the linkage between the microbial ecology and ecotoxicological endpoints in response to sediment contamination has been poorly evaluated. Here, in situ microbiotas from the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) area of the Yangtze River were characterized by DNA metabarcoding approaches, and then, changes of in situ microbiotas were compared with the ecotoxicological endpoint, aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) mediated activity, and level of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in sediments. PAHs and organic pollutant mixtures mediating AhR activity had different effects on the structures of microbiotas. Specifically, Shannon indices of protistan communities were negatively correlated with the levels of AhR mediated activity and PAHs. The sediment AhR activity was positively correlated with the relative abundance of prokaryotic Acetobacteraceae, but had a negative correlation with protistan Oxytrichidae. Furthermore, a quantitative classification model was built to predict the level of AhR activity based on the relative abundances of Acetobacteraceae and Oxytrichidae. These results suggested that in situ Protista communities could provide a useful tool for monitoring and assessing ecological stressors. The observed responses of microbial community provided supplementary evidence to support that the AhR-active pollutants, such as PAHs, were the primary stressors of the aquatic community in TGR area.

eDNA-based bioassessment of coastal sediments impacted by an oil spill

Oil spills offshore can cause long-term ecological effects on coastal marine ecosystems. Despite their important ecological roles in the cycling of energy and nutrients in food webs, effects on bacteria, protists or arthropods are often neglected. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding was applied to characterize changes in the structure of micro- and macro-biota communities of surface sediments over a 7-year period since the occurrence of Hebei Spirit oil spill on December 7, 2007. Alterations in diversities and structures of micro- and macro-biota were observed in the contaminated area where concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were greater. Successions of bacterial, protists and metazoan communities revealed long-term ecological effects of residual oil. Residual oil dominated the largest cluster of the community-environment association network. Presence of bacterial families (Aerococcaceae and Carnobacteriaceae) and the protozoan family (Platyophryidae) might have conferred sensitivity of communities to oil pollution. Hydrocarbon-degrading bacterial families (Anaerolinaceae, Desulfobacteraceae, Helicobacteraceae and Piscirickettsiaceae) and algal family (Araphid pennate) were resistant to adverse effects of spilt oil. The protistan family (Subulatomonas) and arthropod families (Folsomia, Sarcophagidae Opomyzoidea, and Anomura) appeared to be positively associated with residual oil pollution. eDNA metabarcoding can provide a powerful tool for assessing effects of anthropogenic pollution, such as oil spills on sediment communities and its long-term trends in coastal marine environments.