Biology subjects

Valikangas, T.

Publications and source records attributed to Valikangas, T..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Soil microbiome structure and function reflect environmental variation rather than reindeer presence in a northern peatland

Northern peatlands store large carbon stocks but are sensitive to disturbance. Hydrology, vegetation, herbivory and snow conditions may affect the soil microorganisms driving methane (CH) and nitrous oxide (N2O) cycling. We investigated how reindeer exclusion and snow depth (increased and reduced relative to ambient) manipulations (ongoing for three seasons) influenced archaeal and bacterial communities in a boreal rich fen. Metagenomic (MG) and metatranscriptomic (MT) sequencing were combined with pore-water chemistry and CH flux measurements to link the microbiome to ecosystem processes. Microbial communities differed between outside and inside the exclosure. However, these patterns primarily reflected underlying hydrological variation. Slightly wetter inside plots showed higher expression of denitrification genes (norB, nosZ) and lower (nirS+nirK)/nosZ ratios, indicating greater potential for complete denitrification to N2 instead of N2O. Methane dynamics were mainly associated with vegetation: plots associated with Carex rostrata exhibited lower pmoA/mcrA ratios and elevated CH fluxes. Snow manipulations had subtle effects: reduced snow depth decreased the expression of taxa dependent on microbial interactions, while the effect to the investigated metabolic marker genes was small. Overall hydrology, leading to variations in redox conditions and nutrient availability, together with vegetation appeared as the primary drivers on microbial greenhouse gas processes in this peatland.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2021

Enhanced longitudinal differential expression detection in proteomics with robust reproducibility optimization regression

Quantitative proteomics has matured into an established tool and longitudinal proteomic experiments have begun to emerge. However, no effective, simple-to-use differential expression method for longitudinal proteomics data has been released. Typically, such data is noisy, contains missing values, has only few time points and biological replicates. To address this need, we provide a comprehensive evaluation of several existing differential expression methods for high-throughput longitudinal omics data and introduce a new method, Robust longitudinal Differential Expression (RolDE). The methods were evaluated using nearly 2000 semi-simulated spike-in proteomic datasets and a large experimental dataset. The RolDE method performed overall best; it was most tolerant to missing values, displayed good reproducibility and was the top method in ranking the results in a biologically meaningful way. Furthermore, contrary to many approaches, the open source RolDE does not require prior knowledge concerning the types of differences searched, but can easily be applied even by non-experienced users.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2019

Protein Interactome of the Cancerous Inhibitor of Protein Phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) in Th17 Cells

Cancerous inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) is involved in immune response, cancer progression, and in Alzheimers disease. However, an understanding of the mechanistic basis of its function in this wide spectrum of physiological and pathological processes is limited due to its poorly characterized interaction networks. Here we present the first systematic characterization of the CIP2A interactome by affinity-purification mass spectrometry combined with validation by selected reaction monitoring targeted mass spectrometry (SRM-MS) analysis in Th17 cells. In addition to the known regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase PP2A, the catalytic subunit of protein PP2A was found to be interacting with CIP2A. Furthermore, the regulatory (PPP1R18, and PPP1R12A) and catalytic (PPP1CA) subunits of phosphatase PP1 were identified among the top novel CIP2A interactors. Evaluation of the ontologies associated with the proteins in this interactome revealed that they were linked with RNA metabolic processing and splicing, protein traffic, cytoskeleton regulation and ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation processes. Taken together, this network of protein-protein interactions will be important for understanding and further exploring the biological processes and mechanisms regulated by CIP2A both in physiological and pathological conditions.\n\nHighlights{blacksquare} The first characterisation of the CIP2A interactome in Th17 cells.\n{blacksquare}Key interactions were validated by targeted SRM-MS proteomics, western blot and confocal microscopy.\n{blacksquare}Pathway analysis of the interactome revealed interrelationships with proteins across a broad range of processes, in particular associated with mRNA processing.

systems biology↗