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Berkeley Lab Open House recap on Today at Berkeley Lab

At DOE JGI’s metagenomics of restored wetlands exhibit Most notable among the crowd of thousands was the number of youngsters who were in attendance. Families were enthralled by the terrific science, engineering, and operations efforts presented at the various booths. Read more at Today at Berkeley Lab [Read More]

Director Rubin on corngrass1 for biofuel

Up to now, the fast-growing switchgrass, because of its tough lignin, an organic polymer, has required heavy chemical treatment before it can be turned to ethanol as biofuel. Chuck’s gene transfer experiments have shown that because the improved switchgrass keeps the plants young, the lignin content of their cells is minimal and would need no… [Read More]

Of Soil Carbon and Climate Change

Thanks to genome sequencing techniques such as those at the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, we now have a much better idea of what microbes are in soil, what they’re doing, and what proteins they’re producing. That’s important, because a handful of soil can teem with millions of microbes, some… [Read More]

Thermophilic fungi in Scientific American

Heat-loving fungi could provide a key enzyme for making low cost biofuel, and a team of “mushroom detectives” from the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute think they’ve just nailed their man – er, fungus. Read more at Scientific American  [Read More]

Thermophilic fungi in energyNOW!

Next-generation biofuel refining is based on tweaking enzymes to break down plant walls and convert biomass to fermentable sugars. The research has two main goals. One is to find ways to cut down the energy input needed for biofuel processing.  Read more on energyNOW! [Read More]

Thermophilic fungi in Walnut Creek Patch

Research on fungi at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek is heating up the nation’s efforts to develop biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels. Read more on the Walnut Creek Patch  [Read More]

Genomic analysis of self-fertilizing fungi

Filamentous fungi help decay plant material, a process which has applications for producing biofuels and other products. The model organism for filamentous fungi is Neurospora tetrasperma. Neurospora tetrasperma rosette (Image by Namboori B. Raju, Stanford University) Selected for the DOE JGI’s 2007 Community Sequencing Program, the fungi is of interest to researchers such as studying… [Read More]

DOE JGI’s Tringe in PopSci’s Brilliant 10

Susannah Green Tringe of the DOE Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) has been named one of 2011’s “Brilliant 10,” the annual list compiled by Popular Science magazine of top young researchers. In adding her name to the list, which appears in the October issue, the magazine recognized her $2.5 million grant from the DOE Early… [Read More]

Soil biocrust microbial genome

One of the DOE JGI’s 2011 Community Sequencing Program projects involves studying biological soil crusts to understand their role in the global carbon cycle. Found in arid lands which make up nearly half of the planet’s total land mass, communities of lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria use soil particles to form biocrusts less than half an… [Read More]

Dry rot (Serpula) genome project in BasqueResearch.com

Science journal has published research work on the sequence of the genome of the Serpula lacrymans fungus and in which the Public University of Navarre (UPNA) lecturers Gerardo Pisabarro de Lucas and José Antonio Oguiza Tomé, professor and senior lecturer in Microbiology respectively, participated. The research, largely funded by the US Department of Energy through… [Read More]