The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill presented researchers with an opportunity to employ a variety of approaches to quantify and model the microbial community composition and activity through successive metabolic petroleum hydrocarbon degradation. The Macondo wellhead oil leak, in the Gulf of Mexico, released a complex mixture of hydrocarbons into the water column that stimulated… [Read More]

Found worldwide, microbial mat communities are often the pioneering species in perturbed environments and can represent the only biota in extreme habitats. These associations are well-adapted to a range of harsh conditions that include extremes of temperature, salinity, high or low oxygen levels, and nutrient deprivation. In many cases, microbial mats are highly productive biochemical… [Read More]

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are receiving elevated inputs of nitrogen and recent studies suggest that the additional nitrogen is impacting soil carbon sequestration rates. It has been speculated that nitrogen additions alter the microbial processing of organic carbon pools, inhibiting decomposition of certain pools and accelerating soil carbon sequestration. This project focuses on shotgun metagenomic sequencing… [Read More]

Iron is the fourth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and is potentially one of the most abundant energy sources on Earth. Deep sea hydrothermal vents deposit iron oxides into the oceans annually. Several decades ago, the first hints of unusual microbial communities associated with iron oxides at seamounts came from samples collected by… [Read More]

More than 100 species of gutless worms have been found in marine sediments around the world, and they have formed symbiotic relationships with bacteria that provide them with nutrition and have enabled them to colonize nutrient-poor environments. The symbionts are so efficient at feeding their hosts and recycling their waste compounds that the worms have… [Read More]

Microbes are able to store carbon under suboptimal growth conditions in culture, but the extent to which they store carbon in bulk or rhizosphere soil are not well understood. One stress response observed in microbes is the production of carbon storage granules as a means of trapping the needed carbon in the soil. Understanding the… [Read More]

The fungal genus Colletotrichum is one of the most common and destructive groups of plant pathogenic fungi, causing disease on plants from nearly every crop and natural ecosystem worldwide. Fourteen species are known pathogens of grasses and cereals, including several candidate bioenergy feedstocks. The impact of Colletotrichum on next-generation bioenergy feedstock production and yield could… [Read More]

Switchgrass and prairie cordgrass are candidate bioenergy feedstocks while Brachypodium distachyon is a model grass being used to study related candidate bioenergy feedstocks that was sequenced at the DOE JGI. All three plants have relationships with fungi that lead to benefits such as increased biomass and stress resistance. By studying the transcriptome –the tiny fraction… [Read More]