EMSL and DOE JGI announce FY 2018 FICUS projects Two Department of Energy user facilities, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), have selected 14 proposals from a joint call for 2018 research under the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) initiative. This was the fifth FICUS call between EMSL… [Read More]

Expanding minimum information standards for single-cell genomics, metagenomics datasets. During the Industrial Revolution, factories began relying on machines rather than people for mass production. Amidst the societal changes, standardization crept in, from ensuring nuts and bolts were made identically to maintain production quality, to a standard railroad gauge used on both sides of the Atlantic…. [Read More]

Inaugural Collaborative Science Call Yields Six Proposals Melding Genomics, Supercomputing Six proposals have been selected to participate in a new partnership between two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) user facilities through the “Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science” (FICUS) initiative. The expertise and capabilities available at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the National… [Read More]

Potential biotech applications seen with release of 1,003 reference bacterial and archaeal genomes.   The number of microbes in a handful of soil exceeds the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, but researchers know less about what’s on Earth because they have only recently had the tools to deeply explore what is just… [Read More]

Collaborative science initiative enables resolution of fungal protein complexes. One of the biggest barriers in the commercial production of sustainable biofuels is to cost-effectively break down the bioenergy crops into sugars that can then be converted into fuel. To reduce this barrier, bioenergy researchers are looking to nature and the estimated 1.5 million species of… [Read More]

Researchers report prevalent DNA base modification in the earliest fungal lineages Just four letters – A, C, T, and G – make up an organism’s genetic code. Changing a single letter, or base, can lead to changes in protein structures and functions, impacting an organism’s traits. In addition, though, subtler changes can and do happen,… [Read More]

Giant viruses appear to have evolved from smaller viruses (not from cells) based on presence of nearly complete set of translation-related genes. Viruses have a ubiquitous presence in the world. Their population is estimated to be 1031, 10 times greater than the nonillion (1030) of microbes on the planet—a figure that surpasses the number of… [Read More]

Comparative analysis of Aspergillus species provides genus-wide view of fungal diversity In the world of fungi, Aspergillus is an industrial superstar. Aspergillus niger, for example, has been used for decades to produce citric acid—a compound frequently added to foods and pharmaceuticals —through fermentation at an industrial scale. Other species in this genus play critical roles… [Read More]

Metagenomics database helps fill in 10 percent of previously unknown protein structures For proteins, appearance matters. These important molecules largely form a cell’s structures and carry out its functions: proteins control growth and influence mobility, serve as catalysts, and transport or store other molecules. Comprised of long amino acid chains, the one-dimensional amino acid sequence… [Read More]

Comparative genome analysis provides clues on how climate change might impact evolutionary adaptation limits Diatoms are a common type of photosynthetic microorganism, found in many environments from marine to soil; in the oceans, they are responsible for more than a third of the global ocean carbon captured during photosynthesis. This leads to a significant amount… [Read More]