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Waiting to Respire

Genomes from uncultivated bacteria offers clues to ancestral bacteria’s energy sources. More than two billion years ago, cyanobacteria acquired the ability to produce their own food and generate oxygen as a byproduct. The abundance of oxygen shaped the evolution of life on Earth, and led to the development of multicellular organisms. Not all bacterial lineages… [Read More]

JGI & KBase at PAG XXVII

The Plant and Animal Genome XXVII Conference (PAG) takes place January 12-16, 2019, in San Diego, Calif. Representatives from the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) will be at Booth 509. Stop by and chat with representatives from KBase and the JGI about collaborative science opportunities. Learn how to… [Read More]

Defining Quality Virus Data(sets)

International consortium offers guidelines, best practices for characterizing uncultivated viruses. Microbes in, on and around the planet are said to outnumber the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. The total number of viruses is expected to vastly exceed even that calculation. While many viruses remain unknown and uncultivated, advances in genome sequencing and analyses have… [Read More]

JGI at AGU 2018

The Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) is December 10-14, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Representatives from the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) will be at Booth 847 in the Exhibit Hall (near the Career Center) – stop by and chat with… [Read More]

A Model System for Perennial Grasses

Panicum hallii genomes offer insights to drought tolerance. The Science Researchers have developed a genomic model to study drought tolerance in perennial grasses using Panicum hallii (Hall’s panicgrass), by generating two complete genomes from varieties that diverged over a million years ago. The hallii variety thrives in desert environments, while the filipes variety is less… [Read More]

JGIers on the 2018 Highly Cited Researchers List

Eleven of the JGI’s researchers are among the most highly cited in the world. That’s according to the annual list compiled by Clarivate Analytics, formerly the IP & Science arm of Thomson Reuters. (Click here to see the full list.) The 2018 list focused on Highly Cited Papers, defined in the Methodology section as “those… [Read More]

JGI’s Kjiersten Fagnan Part of Winning SC18 Team

On November 15, 2018, at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC18) Conference, teams led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), respectively, shared the 2018 ACM Gordon Bell Prize. Congratulations to JGI’s Chief Informatics Officer Kjiersten Fagnan, who was part of the ORNL-led,… [Read More]

Hidden Giants in Forest Soils

A surprising wealth of novel giant viruses has been found in a soil ecosystem. Characterizing the diversity of microbial cells in a handful of soil is so complex it was considered impossible. To date, only a small fraction of the microbes residing in, on and around soils have been identified as part of efforts to… [Read More]

Small but Sophisticated

Nanoreactor is a key enzyme in CO2-fixation cycle. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a potent greenhouse gas, and an accessible carbon source that could be converted into high-value products such as biofuels and renewable chemicals. Tobi Erb, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany and his team focus on identifying novel… [Read More]

Symbiosis a Driver of Truffle Diversity

Insights from a comparative analysis of five truffle-forming fungal species. While the sight of black or white truffles being shaved over on pasta is generally considered a sign of dining extravagance, they play an important role in soil ecosystem services. Truffles are the fruiting bodies of the ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungal symbionts residing on host plant… [Read More]