Cleaning up contaminated sediment usually involves either capping the area, dredging the waterway to remove the pollution, or waiting for natural processes to do the clean-up work without human intervention. The last option involves microbes such as Cyclasticus pugetii, a bacterium found in marine sediments around the world. C. pugetti breaks down aromatic hydrocarbons, most… [Read More]

The SAR11 clade or group of species is the smallest and most abundant of marine organisms. Each bacterium is so small, some 500,000 of them can be found in a single millimeter of seawater. Unsurprisingly, SAR11 have the smallest genomes of any free-living microorganism. SAR11 makes up a quarter of the marine microorganisms in the… [Read More]

Metabolism of organic C1 compounds (compounds containing no carbon-carbon bonds) is an important part of the global carbon cycle. Methane has been recognized as one of the major C1 compounds in the environment and a major contributor to the greenhouse effect. While global emissions of other C1 compounds (methanol, methylated amines) have historically attracted less… [Read More]

Nitrogen is a crucial element for plant growth and makes up nearly 80 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere. Unfortunately plants can’t use atmospheric nitrogen unless it is converted into another form. Fertilizers can supply the needed nitrogen, but they are made using processes that contribute to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On… [Read More]

When researchers want to understand how microbes interact with toxic materials, they often sequence the organisms collected at waste sites. The problem is that this technique can be time-consuming as researchers search for the key genes involved in the particular function being studied. One way to speed up the process is to manipulate the microbe’s… [Read More]

Heterotrophic nanoflagellates are a group of marine microbes that prey on other microbes, such as bacteria and phytoplankton. Bacteria and phytoplankton constitute a dominant fraction of the living biomass in marine ecosystems. Their fates are dictated largely by two major forces: predation by protists like the nanoflagellates, and cell death induced by viruses. These two… [Read More]

Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) is a grass with a small genome found in a variety of regions ranging from northern Europe to the Indian subcontinent. Brachypodium is a model plant for studying temperate grasses that form the base of our food supply such as wheat and barley. It also serves as a model for studying ways… [Read More]