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    Maize can produce a cocktail of antibiotics with a handful of enzymes. (Sam Fentress, CC BY-SA 2.0)
    How Maize Makes An Antibiotic Cocktail
    Zealexins are produced in every corn variety and protect maize by fending off fungal and microbial infections using surprisingly few enzymes.

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    The genome of the common fiber vase or Thelephora terrestris was among those used in the study. (Francis Martin)
    From Competition to Cooperation
    By comparing 135 fungal sequenced genomes, researchers were able to carry out a broader analysis than had ever been done before to look at how saprotrophs have transitioned to the symbiotic lifestyle.

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    Miscanthus grasses. (Roy Kaltschmidt/Berkeley Lab)
    A Grass Model to Help Improve Giant Miscanthus
    The reference genome for M. sinensis, and the associated genomic tools, allows Miscanthus to both inform and benefit from breeding programs of related candidate bioenergy feedstock crops such as sugarcane and sorghum.

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    Poplar (Populus trichocarpa and P. deltoides) grow in the Advanced Plant Phenotyping Laboratory (APPL) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Poplar is an important biofuel feedstock, and Populus trichocarpa is the first tree species to have its genome sequenced — a feat accomplished by JGI. (Image courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy)
    Podcast: Xiaohan Yang on A Plantiful Future
    Building off plant genomics collaborations between the JGI and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Xiaohan Yang envisions customizing plants for the benefit of human society.

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    Expansin complex with cell wall in background. (Courtesy of Daniel Cosgrove)
    Synthesizing Microbial Expansins with Unusual Activities
    Expansin proteins from diverse microbes have potential uses in deconstructing lignocellulosic biomass for conversion to renewable biofuels, nanocellulosic fibers, and commodity biochemicals.

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    High oleic pennycress. (Courtesy of Ratan Chopra)
    Pennycress – A Solution for Global Food Security, Renewable Energy and Ecosystem Benefits
    Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) is under development as a winter annual oilseed bioenergy crop. It could produce up to 3 billion gallons of seed oil annually while reducing soil erosion and fertilizer runoff.

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    Artistic interpretation of CheckV assessing virus genome sequences from environmental samples. (Rendered by Zosia Rostomian​, Berkeley Lab)
    An Automated Tool for Assessing Virus Data Quality
    CheckV can be broadly utilized by the research community to gauge virus data quality and will help researchers to follow best practices and guidelines for providing the minimum amount of information for an uncultivated virus genome.

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    Unicellular algae in the Chlorella genus, magnified 1300x. (Andrei Savitsky)
    A One-Stop Shop for Analyzing Algal Genomes
    The PhycoCosm data portal is an interactive browser that allows algal scientists and enthusiasts to look deep into more than 100 algal genomes, compare them, and visualize supporting experimental data.

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    Artistic interpretation of how microbial genome sequences from the GEM catalog can help fill in gaps of knowledge about the microbes that play key roles in the Earth's microbiomes. (Rendered by Zosia Rostomian​, Berkeley Lab)
    Podcast: A Primer on Genome Mining
    In Natural Prodcast: the basics of genome mining, and how JGI researchers conducted it in IMG/ABC on thousands of metagenome-derived genomes for a Nature Biotechnology paper.

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    Scanning electron micrographs of diverse diatoms. (Credits: Diana Sarno, Marina Montresor, Nicole Poulsen, Gerhard Dieckmann)
    Learn About the Approved 2021 Large-Scale CSP Proposals
    A total of 27 proposals have been approved through JGI's annual Community Science Program (CSP) call. For the first time, 63 percent of the accepted proposals come from researchers who have not previously been a principal investigator on an approved JGI proposal.

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    MiddleGaylor Michael Beman UC Merced
    How to Successfully Apply for a CSP Proposal
    Reach out to JGI staff for feedback before submitting a proposal. Be sure to describe in detail what you will do with the data.

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    Click on the image or go here to watch the video "Enriching target populations for genomic analyses using HCR-FISH" from the journal Microbiome describing the research.
    How to Target a Microbial Needle within a Community Haystack
    Enabled by the JGI’s Emerging Technologies Opportunity Program, researchers have developed, tested and deployed a pipeline to first target cells from communities of uncultivated microbes, and then efficiently retrieve and characterize their genomes.

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    Artistic interpretation of how microbial genome sequences from the GEM catalog can help fill in gaps of knowledge about the microbes that play key roles in the Earth's microbiomes. (Rendered by Zosia Rostomian​, Berkeley Lab)
    Uncovering Novel Genomes from Earth’s Microbiomes
    A public repository of 52,515 microbial draft genomes generated from environmental samples around the world, expanding the known diversity of bacteria and archaea by 44%, is now available .

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    Green millet (Setaria viridis) plant collected in the wild. (Courtesy of the Kellogg lab)
    Shattering Expectations: Novel Seed Dispersal Gene Found in Green Millet
    In Nature Biotechnology, a very high quality reference Setaria viridis genome was sequenced, and for the first time in wild populations, a gene related to seed dispersal was identified.

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    The Brachypodium distachyon-B. stacei-B. hybridum polyploid model complex. (Illustrations credits: Juan Luis Castillo)
    The More the Merrier: Making the Case for Plant Pan-genomes
    Crop breeders have harnessed polyploidy to increase fruit and flower size, and confer stress tolerance traits. Using a Brachypodium model system, researchers have sought to learn the origins, evolution and development of plant polyploids. The work recently appeared in Nature Communications.

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October 7, 2020

From Life at the Extremes to Editing Genomes

Jennifer DoudnaJennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were recognized for their work on CRISPR-Cas9, technology described by the Nobel Foundation as having “a revolutionary impact on the life sciences.” For the past few years, Doudna’s lab has partnered with JGI’s Microbiome Data Science group led by Nikos Kyrpides, mining the IMG/M system for novel Cas genes and CRISPR systems. [Read More]

September 8, 2020

Engagement Webinar: How to Successfully Apply for a CSP Proposal

Sept 1 engagement webinar screencapDuring the JGI Engagement: Pro Tips for Webinar, researchers were invited to submit white papers to the Community Science Program (CSP)’s New Investigator call for proposals. The proposal call is open year-round, but proposals submitted by September 21, 2020, will be included in the next review. [Read More]

August 3, 2020

Toasting to the 2020 JGI-UC Merced Summer Internship Program

Toasting to JGI-UCMOn July 30, UC Merced students and their JGI mentors marked the end of their annual nine-week virtual internships. The celebration was preceded by short final presentations attended by more than 75 JGI staff. According to Axel Visel and Zhong Wang, founders of the JGI-UC Merced genomics internship program, this was the largest turnout for the final presentations to date.  [Read More]

July 28, 2020

Accelerating Metagenomics Discoveries with Deep Learning

An example protein structure: the orange carotenoid protein. Proteins would be easier to align if they could be vectorized, acccording to Sevim. (Kerfeld lab group)JGI scientist Volkan Sevim is applying deep learning to genome science in order to make protein alignments more efficient. [Read More]

July 16, 2020

Engagement Webinar: What Can You Do With An Approved CSP Functional Genomics Call Proposal?

Group shot at the IGB, Dec 2019During the JGI Engagement: Accessing Functional Genomics Capabilities Webinar, researchers described how they had availed of JGI’s resources and capabilities through the Community Science Program’s Functional Genomics call for proposals. [Read More]

June 30, 2020

Ray Turner Completes Last Tour of Lab Duty at JGI

For the last 15 years, Ray Turner has been one constant for the Joint Genome Institute. His vigilant stewardship as JGI’s Operations Deputy has come to a close. [Read More]

April 29, 2020

JGI Earth Month: The Unusual Metabolism That Helps Plants Withstand Drought

Karolina Heyduk conducting research in growth chamber in both night and daylight conditions. The following info. is provided by Heyduk 1) I cut leaf samples and use them for RNA analysis. This gives us an idea of what genes are expressed in that tissue at the time I harvested them. 2) I take gas measurements because it tells us when the plant is conducting gas exchange – CO2 into the leaf, water vapour out. For C3 plants, this happens during the day. For CAM plants, gas exchange happens at night. Gas exchange patterns are a way for us to assess whether a plant is C3 or CAM. 3) Green light is needed at night because plant stomata (pores on the leaves that allow for gases to enter and exit) respond to blue and red light. Plants are green to us because they reflect green light back while absorbing red and blue! To avoid stomatal opening, we keep to green lights. A key trait of CAM photosynthesis is that plants take up carbon at night and fix it then, as opposed to doing it during the daytime, like C3 plants. Because CAM is active at night, we have to check for gas exchange and gene expression throughout the day/night cycle to capture both C3 and CAM traits.For JGI Earth Month, Karolina Heyduk, an evolutionary plant biologist at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa shares how crassulacean acid metabolism, or CAM, helps plants take the heat. [Read More]

April 28, 2020

JGI Earth Month: Wetlands Work in #TenHundredWords

JGI Earth Month graphic orange 1000For JGI Earth Month, graduate student Mo Kaze took on the challenge of explaining her research using the ten hundred most commonly used words in the English language. Her work focuses anthropogenic impacts on wetland microbiome composition and metabolism. The #TenHundredWords Challenge was inspired by Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic “Up Goer Five” and his subsequent book Thing Explainer. [Read More]

April 22, 2020

JGI Earth Month: Lessons in Nature’s Resilience

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as seen on April 29, 2010. (NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center MODIS Direct Broadcast system)As part of JGI Earth Month, revisiting lessons in Nature’s resilience resulting from studies by Berkeley Lab researchers, including JGI scientists, to understand how the microbial communities in the waters responded to the influx of oil. [Read More]

April 21, 2020

JGI Earth Month: Healthy Streams, Nutritious Microbes?

Grad student Brian Wolff spearheaded samples the Arkansas River.As part of JGI Earth Month, hear from Ed Hall, an ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He’s investigating how microbes in the Arkansas River might be influencing the river’s health. [Read More]
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