The Amazon rainforest plays an essential role in global ecological processes. It is the largest terrestrial carbonsequestering ecosystem in the world, controlling global temperature and precipitation, and balancing the flux of atmospheric gases. It is also the largest repository of plant and animal species on Earth. Despite its importance, it is one of the least… [Read More]

Populus is considered the model organism for the study of woody perennials, and represents the first tree genome to be fully sequenced. Populus is also one of only a few species that are capable of establishing associations with both arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi, as well as various specific endophytic and rhizosphere associated… [Read More]

Serpentinization is the aqueous alteration of ultramafic rocks, characteristic of the Earth’s mantle, and results in the generation of highly-reducing, hydrogen- and methane- rich fluids with extremely high pH’s (commonly greater than 11). Microbial communities hosted within serpentinites may be important mediators of carbon and energy exchange between the deep Earth and the surface biosphere…. [Read More]

More than any other group of eukaryotic microbes, fungi are essential biological components of the global carbon cycle. Collectively, fungi are capable of degrading almost any naturally occurring biopolymer and numerous human-made ones. The use of fungi for the continued benefit of humankind, however, requires an accurate understanding of how they interact in naturally and… [Read More]

Considered one of the largest biomes on Earth, the dark ocean is comprised of the water column below the epipelagic, including meso-, bathy- and abyssopelagic and the hadal zones. It contains an active and metabolically diverse microbial assemblage that is responsible for about half of marine organic carbon mineralization. A large-scale single cell genomics study… [Read More]

The microbial community inhabiting Antarctica’s Lake Vida resides in a block of ice several meters thick that has a large reservoir of liquid brine entrained in the ice below 14 meters and a mixture of ice/icy sediment layers below 21 meters. The ice-entrained, anoxic brine is among the coldest, stable liquid cryoecosystems known on Earth… [Read More]

The project aims to sequence the genomes of 100 strains of the genus Thioalkalivibrio. Members of this genus have an enormous metabolic and genetic diversity. Isolated from various soda lakes around the world, the strains were selected for their industrial relevance in the sustainable removal of sulfur from waste streams and energy carriers, such as… [Read More]

Serpentinization is a common process that is extremely important for transporting water towards the mantle and for fixing large amounts of carbon as carbonate rocks. The Cedars Peridotite is a site in Northern California where active serpentinization occurs, resulting in spring waters that are so extreme that no current paradigms of microbial metabolism are compatible… [Read More]

The study of wood breakdown into simple sugars is an important field of research due to its possible application in biofuel production. Developing S. commune as a model system to study the processes of wood degradation would allow researchers to study roles of enzymes in a fungus for which exist many protocols for studying genes… [Read More]

The Laurentian Great Lakes are the largest group of lakes on Earth, containing a fifth of near-surface and liquid freshwater globally. Lake Erie has a human-dominated watershed and has witnessed recurrent summertime oxygen depletion for a century or more. Conditions favor the formation of an expansive summer “dead zone,” comparable in surface area to the low… [Read More]