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Learning to Look

Machine learning approach significantly expands inovirus diversity. To answer the question, “Where’s Waldo?” readers need to look for a number of distinguishing features. Several characters may be spotted with a striped scarf, striped hat, round-rimmed glasses, or a cane, but only Waldo will have all of these features. As described July 22, 2019, in Nature… [Read More]

Improving the Cacao Genome and Phytozome

According to the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), global cocoa bean production in 2017-2018 was 4.6 million metric tons. The global chocolate brands couldn’t exist without cocoa.  But today the plant is under threat due to climate change and devastating fungal infections. That’s why Mars, Inc., a maker of chocolate for more than 100 years and… [Read More]

Better Genome Editing for Bioenergy

A team has optimized a crucial part of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to enable improvements in microbial oil production. The Science CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful, high-throughput gene-editing tool that can help scientists engineer organisms for bioenergy applications. Cas9 needs guide RNA to lead it to the correct sequence to snip — but not all guides are effective…. [Read More]

Cultivating Symbiotic Antarctic Microbes

Nanohaloarchaeota cultures reveal they are symbionts and not free-living organisms. The Science Researchers employed multiple microbiology and ‘omics techniques to experimentally determine that Nanohaloarchaeota are symbionts, rather than free-living organisms as had been originally thought. The Impact The Antarctic lakes are a “treasure trove” of unknown microbes that play critical roles in environmental processes (related… [Read More]

Developing Switchgrass for Biomass Production

Switchgrass community gardens help distinguish genetic bases of fitness traits from climactic influence. The Science To better understand the genetic basis of local adaptation, researchers established community gardens of switchgrass plants in 10 different field sites on a north-south gradient across the United States. Hundreds of the switchgrass plants in these gardens are clonally propagated… [Read More]

Tracking Permafrost Thaw

Notes from the JGI 2019 User Meeting The Arctic peatlands are among the northern ecosystems that collectively store up to half of the planet’s soil carbon. With the frozen peatlands thawing, said Virginia Rich of The Ohio State University, “if we project this out, permafrost is virtually eliminated by the end of the century.” Just… [Read More]

Engaging the Workforce through Tiny Earth

Notes from the JGI 2019 User Meeting Amanda Hurley, a postdoctoral fellow in Jo Handelsman’s lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, began her talk with a reminder that pathogens damage 16% of the global crop yield. That number is expected to rise due to climate change. “We need something that tips the scales back in… [Read More]

JGI Early Career Researchers Featured in mSystems Special Issue

In a special issue of mSystems, out May 14, 2019, JGI researchers are among the authors who offer perspectives on what the next five years of innovation could look like. In one article, Micro-Scale Applications head Rex Malmstrom and Metagenome Program head Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh outline more targeted approaches to reconstruct individual microbes in an environmental… [Read More]

Graduate Students Get Thesis Research Opportunity at the JGI

Twice a year, the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program awards graduate students the opportunity to pursue part of their thesis research at one of the DOE national laboratories or national user facilities. As a result of the latest call, a total of 70 graduate students from 52 universities were selected to… [Read More]

Notes on the Microbial Diversity of Puerto Nuevo’s Coastline

Puerto Nuevo is a small town along the Baja California coastline in Mexico. While conducting early field studies related to her thesis on cone snails, UC Merced graduate student Sabah Ul-Hasan and alumnus of the JGI-UC Merced Genomics Internship Program, first sampled the area in summer 2016.  She described the microbial diversity patterns of Puerto… [Read More]