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Fungi and plants working hand-in-hand

Genomic analysis of an ancient companion of plants shows expanded genes for phosphorus fixation and cell-to-cell communication The Science: More than two thirds of the world’s plants depend on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF, also called glomeromycota) because of their ability to fix phosphorus. By analyzing the genome of one AMF, Rhizophagus irregularis (formerly Glomus intraradices),… [Read More]

An insider’s view of bacterial assembly line

A combination of time-lapse fluorescence and transmission electron microscopy reveals how cyanobacteria put together an essential component The Science Cyanobacteria use carboxysomes to make their own energy by “fixing” carbon from carbon dioxide from ocean waters and other aquatic and terrestrial habitats. After deleting the genes cyanobacteria need to build carboxysomes, researchers introduced fluorescent-tagged components… [Read More]

How Scavenging Fungi Became a Plant’s Best Friend

Glomeromycota is an ancient lineage of fungi that has a symbiotic relationship with roots that goes back nearly 420 million years to the earliest plants. More than two thirds of the world’s plants depend on this soil-dwelling symbiotic fungus to survive, including critical agricultural crops such as wheat, cassava, and rice. The analysis of the… [Read More]

Monkeying around with gene shuffling

The iconic monkey flower’s genome harbors “hot spots” of genetic exchange The Science By analyzing the genomes of a wild population of Mimulus guttatus, also known as the monkey flower, researchers were able to pinpoint “hot spots” in the plant’s DNA code (http://www.jgi.doe.gov/News/news_13_11_18.html with high rates of gene-shuffling recombination. They also provided a reference genome… [Read More]

The Inner Workings of a Bacterial Black Box Caught on Time-lapse Video

Cyanobacteria, found in just about every ecosystem on Earth, are one of the few bacteria that can create their own energy through photosynthesis and “fix” carbon – from carbon dioxide molecules – and convert it into fuel inside of miniscule compartments called carboxysomes. Using a pioneering visualization method, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley,… [Read More]

On the hunt for industrial enzymes

Researchers mined DOE JGI’s database of fungal genomes for candidate enzymes for use in a variety of industrial processes. The Science By screening genomes of fungi made publicly available by the DOE Joint Genome Institute researchers identified new versions of enzymes called lipases and sterol esterases. To further study the most promising enzymes, they created… [Read More]

New tool helps find gene markers in microorganisms

Researchers have devised a novel method to exploit relationships between bacteria and archaea for a new set of gene markers The Science The researchers developed a new way to identify gene markers in bacteria and the primitive microorganisms classified in the kingdom known as Archaea. Dubbed, PhyEco (for phylogenetic and phylogenetic ecology) this strategy can… [Read More]

Lost in symbiosis: genes dropped in piggy-backing bacterial strain

A genome comparison of two strains of a bacterium reveals gene loss as a result of a symbiotic relationship with a protist host. The Science The researchers sequenced the complete genome for a symbiotic strain of the bacterium, Polynucleobacter necessarius. They then compared the symbiont’s genome with the free-living strain in order to understand how… [Read More]

Expanding Research Communities and Collaborations: 2014 CSP Portfolio Announced

From the depths of ocean dead zones, to wide swaths of forests, and rising up to the troposphere, where most weather changes occur, the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) 2014 Community Science Program portfolio seeks to parse functional information extracted from complex ecosystems to address urgent energy and environmental challenges.  These… [Read More]