post-wash metatranscriptomics project. post-wash metatranscriptomics project

Microbially contaminated washing machines and mild laundering conditions facilitate the survival and growth of microorganisms on laundry, promoting undesired side effects, such as malodor formation. Clearly, a deeper understanding of the functionality and hygienic relevance of the laundry microbiota necessitates the analysis of microbial gene expression on textiles after washing, which – to the best of our knowledge – has not been done before. In this pilot study, we used single-end RNA sequencing to generate de novo transcriptomes of the microbial community remaining on polyester and cotton fabrics washed in a domestic washing machine under mild conditions and subsequently incubated under moist conditions for 72h. Two common de novo transcriptome assemblers were used. When comparing the assemblies generated with the two assemblers, the annotation results were relatively similar. However, there were clear dif-ferences between the de novo assemblies regarding differential gene expression.