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SAR11 bacteria linked to ocean anoxia and nitrogen loss

Bacteria of the SAR11 clade constitute up to one half of all microbial cells in the oxygen-rich surface ocean. SAR11 bacteria are also abundant in oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), where oxygen falls below detection and anaerobic microbes have vital roles in converting bioavailable nitrogen to N2 gas. Anaerobic metabolism has not yet been observed in… [Read More]

Evidence-based green algal genomics reveals marine diversity and ancestral characteristics of land plants

BACKGROUND: Prasinophytes are widespread marine green algae that are related to plants. Cellular abundance of the prasinophyte Micromonas has reportedly increased in the Arctic due to climate-induced changes. Thus, studies of these unicellular eukaryotes are important for marine ecology and for understanding Viridiplantae evolution and diversification. RESULTS: We generated evidence-based Micromonas gene models using proteomics… [Read More]

Early-branching gut fungi possess a large, comprehensive array of biomass-degrading enzymes

The fungal kingdom is the source of almost all industrial enzymes in use for lignocellulose bioprocessing. We developed a systems-level approach that integrates transcriptomic sequencing (RNA-Seq), proteomics, phenotype and biochemical studies of relatively unexplored basal fungi. Anaerobic gut fungi isolated from herbivores produce a large array of biomass-degrading enzymes that synergistically degrade crude, untreated plant… [Read More]

Genetic analysis of Physcomitrella patens identifies ABSCISIC ACID NON-RESPONSIVE (ANR), a regulator of ABA responses unique to basal land plants and required for desiccation tolerance

The anatomically simple plants that first colonised land must have acquired molecular and biochemical adaptations to drought stress. Abscisic acid (ABA) coordinates responses leading to desiccation tolerance in all land plants. We identified ABA non-responsive mutants in the model bryophyte Physcomitrella patens and genotyped a segregating population to map and identify the ABA NON-RESPONSIVE (ANR)… [Read More]

Genome analysis of ‘Candidatus Ancillula trichonymphae’, first representative of a deep-branching clade of Bifidobacteriales, strengthens evidence for convergent evolution in flagellate endosymbionts

The flagellate protists in the hindgut of lower termites play an essential role in the digestion of lignocellulose. Most flagellate species are associated with host-specific symbionts from various bacterial lineages, which typically lack cultured representatives. In this study, we analyzed the genome of ‘Candidatus Ancillula trichonymphae’, an endosymbiont of Trichonympha flagellates from dry-wood termites, which… [Read More]

Description of Trichococcus ilyis sp. nov. by combined physiological and in silico genome hybridization analyses

Trichococcus species share high similarity of their 16S rRNA gene sequences (> 99%). Digital DNA-DNA hybridization values (dDDH) among all described Trichococcus species (T. flocculiformis DSM 2094T, T. pasteurii DSM 2381T, T. collinsii DSM 14526T, T. palustris DSM 9172T, and T. patagoniensis DSM 18806T) indicated that Trichococcus sp. strain R210T represents a novel species of… [Read More]

The Sphagnum Genome Project: A New Model for Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics

The inception of the Sphagnum (peat moss) genome project marks the first plant-based sequencing project aimed specifically at carbon cycling genomics in a plant system relevant to ecological and evolutionary genomics. Sphagnum provides considerable intra-and interspecific variation at the nucleotide level, and in physiology, morphology, net production, decomposition and carbon accumulation (peat formation). Because of… [Read More]

Performance evaluation and tuning of BioPig for genomic analysis

In this study, we aim to optimize Hadoop parameters to improve the performance of BioPig on Amazon Web Service (AWS). BioPig is a toolkit for large-scale sequencing data analysis and is built on Hadoop and Pig that enables easy parallel programming and scaling to datasets of terabyte sizes. AWS is the most popular cloud-computing platform… [Read More]

High-resolution phylogenetic microbial community profiling

Over the past decade, high-throughput short-read 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing has eclipsed clone-dependent long-read Sanger sequencing for microbial community profiling. The transition to new technologies has provided more quantitative information at the expense of taxonomic resolution with implications for inferring metabolic traits in various ecosystems. We applied single-molecule real-time sequencing for microbial community profiling,… [Read More]