“We used to think there were just plants and animals,” said Edward Rubin, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute. “Then we got microscopes, and got microbes. Then we got small levels of DNA sequencing.”
Quanta magazine focused on a recent project led by Jill Banfield in Colorado, one that significantly increased the known phyla of bacteria with the help of DNA sequencing done at the DOE JGI. For details on the sequence assembly techniques used, review a release we put out in April regarding another collaboration with Banfield’s team, also using samples from the Rifle, Colo. site. To learn more about Director Rubin’s comments about a possible fourth domain, check out the perspective piece he and Tanja Woyke published in Science last year.