Water is life! However, due to a number of reasons such as changing climatic regimes leading to low rainfall, arid regions such as South Africa, are likely to experience extreme water supply pressures. The situation is likely to be exacerbated by increased demand, and high levels of pollution on limited already limited resources. In South Africa, extremely high levels of pollution pose severe risks to human health, although very little is known regarding the composition of microbial communiies and their genes (“the microbiome”), which form part of these ‘blooms’.
Cyanobacterial bloom leads to reductions in the available oxygen and sunlight for marine life, creating an anoxic environment, which kills most (if not all) of the endemic fish species and compromises bird life and animals that rely on those sources for drinking water and food. Despite these consequences, cyanobacteria also release cyanotoxins which are incredibly harmful to all animals, including humans, which come into contact with them. The most dangerous cyanotoxin is microcystin, which is produced primarily by Microcystis aeruginosa, but also by other cyanobacterial classes. Microcystins are hepatoxic, causing serious damage to the liver, and once ingested can cause illness, and even death. The levels of microcystins in South African water bodies are unmonitored and as outbreaks of cyanobacterial bloom are on the rise, we predict that the levels of this toxin may exceed safe limits in the near future.
In this project, we aim to compare the genetic diversity and evolutionary history of cyanobacterial populations in the Vaal Dam and make comparisons to contemporary databases.
Aims of the project
- To collect and filter water samples from the Vaal Dam
- To extract metagenomic DNA from water samples
- To amplify microcystis genes from DNA isolated from Vaal Dam samples
- To clone the amplicons into TA cloning vectors
- To subject clones to restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis
- To identify microcystis genes through sequencing
- To assess the evolutionary relationship of microcystis genes from the Vaal Dam to genes from other locations
- To write a report on recommendations to authorities on possible bioremediation methods
Provisional Project Structure
- Collect and filter water samples from the Vaal Dam
- DNA extraction from water samples
- Polymerase chain reaction based PCR amplification of cyanotoxin genes
- Cloning of amplicons
- Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis and selection of samples for Sequencing
- Sequence analysis and data interpretation
- Project write-up
|
