Kasey Markel and Patrick Shih (UC Berkeley and the Joint BioEnergy Institute) are looking for new ways to engineer plants. So they’ve looked into wasps that program oak trees to raise their young in structures called galls. In this episode, hear from Kasey and Patrick about how this project unfolded, and how they worked with the JGI’s metabolomics program to find out more about these weird little pods. [Read More]

To engineer yeast to do more, and understand genomes in general, Jef Boeke, Weimin Zhang (NYU Langone Health) and Leslie Mitchell (Neochromosome) have worked to replace yeast’s native chromosomes with synthetic versions. This project has turned out to be an international collaboration, with some artistic endeavors along the way. Eventually, the goal is to create an entirely human-generated yeast genome. [Read More]

Three stories of JGI-supported research, connected to nutrient cycles. Francis Martin and Lucas Auer discuss their work on the community of forest floor fungi. Allison Joy looks into seagrass meadows’ carbon sequestration with insights from Adam Healey and Xiao Ma. And Karen Serrano and Benjamin Cole explain their research on the symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plant roots. [Read More]