Yeasts are some of the most important microbes used in biotechnology. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the type of yeast used for making bread and beer, is just one representative of more than 1,500 yeast species found around the world. Currently, only a fraction of these yeasts has been harnessed for biotechnological applications. However, researchers studying various “non-conventional”… [Read More]

More than 20 UC Merced students have contributed to the research of 13 JGI scientists since the program’s inception. In 2014, JGI’s Zhong Wang and Science Programs Deputy Axel Visel teamed with University of California (UC), Merced assistant professor Suzanne Sindi from the School of Natural Sciences and started a program that offered a handful… [Read More]

Berkeley Lab User Facilities Prominent in SSURF Annual Meeting & Capitol Hill Office Visits. Like roads, water and energy systems, ports, and other critical infrastructure, scientific user facilities enable the innovation at the heart of U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. The Society for Science at User Research Facilities (SSURF) is a not-for-profit organization working… [Read More]

Beam-Signing Ceremony Collects Signatures for Posterity. On Friday, June 22, JGI Director Nigel Mouncey and Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) CEO/CSO Adam Arkin gathered JGI and KBase staff for a historic ceremony. “The last time we convened together was 18 months ago to break ground,” Mouncey reminded the audience, referring to the January 2017 groundbreaking ceremony… [Read More]

The Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is hosting its 12th Annual Safety and Wellness (SWELL) Fair on Wednesday, May 30, and welcomes attendees from both staff and neighbors in the Shadelands. Click here to download a map.  WHEN: Wednesday, May 30, 2018, from 12pm-2pm WHERE: Joint Genome Institute Courtyard (2800 Mitchell Drive, Walnut Creek) The free SWELL Fair (click… [Read More]

As the global population grows toward 10 billion people, we need to find ways to better manage the farmland that we have, while also removing CO2 from the atmosphere, said Evan DeLucia at JGI’s 13th Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. As director of the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts… [Read More]

In a wide ranging talk that took the audience from the island of Manhattan to Southeast Asia, Krista McGuire, an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Oregon, presented work on microbial responses to two key types of land use change: urbanization and agriculture. Most of the world’s population now resides… [Read More]

Citrus is a major worldwide crop. In 2017, the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service estimated production would exceed 50 million metric tons, with 10 percent of that contributed by the United States. To defend this crop against Huanglongbing (a.k.a., citrus greening), an infectious disease destroying whole orchards, researchers have begun employing genomics to… [Read More]

Got 12 Gb of free storage to download it all? To better understand how Earth’s vast and diverse microbial population helps regulate global nutrient cycles, it helps to understand how viruses infect microbes, and affect their functions and metabolic processes. Two years ago, even though the number of viruses is estimated to be at least… [Read More]

Freezer Preventive Monitoring Program A Model of Berkeley Lab Energy Efficiency Efforts It’s a common scene in popular culture, and it likely plays out in your own home: someone looking for a snack holds the refrigerator door open so long that eventually someone else complains that its cold enough for penguins to migrate from the… [Read More]