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Unusual Metabolism and Hypervariation in the Genome of a Gracilibacterium (BD1-5) from an Oil-Degrading Community

The candidate phyla radiation (CPR) comprises a large monophyletic group of bacterial lineages known almost exclusively based on genomes obtained using cultivation-independent methods. Within the CPR, Gracilibacteria (BD1-5) are particularly poorly understood due to undersampling and the inherent fragmented nature of available genomes. Here, we report the first closed, curated genome of a gracilibacterium from… [Read More]

Genomic Signatures for Sedimentary Microbial Utilization of Phytoplankton Detritus in a Fast-Flowing Estuary

In fast-flowing, river-dominated estuaries, “hotspots” of microbial biogeochemical cycling can be found within areas of extended water retention. Lateral bays located off of the North and South channels of the Columbia River estuary are proposed to be such hotspots. Previous metagenomic studies on water samples indicated that these regions function both as sources and sinks… [Read More]

Early Diverging Fungus Mucor circinelloides Lacks Centromeric Histone CENP-A and Displays a Mosaic of Point and Regional Centromeres

Centromeres are rapidly evolving across eukaryotes, despite performing a conserved function to ensure high-fidelity chromosome segregation. CENP-A chromatin is a hallmark of a functional centromere in most organisms. Due to its critical role in kinetochore architecture, the loss of CENP-A is tolerated in only a few organisms, many of which possess holocentric chromosomes. Here, we… [Read More]

Niche differentiation among annually recurrent coastal Marine Group II Euryarchaeota

Since the discovery of archaeoplankton in 1992, the euryarchaeotal Marine Group II (MGII) remains uncultured and less understood than other planktonic archaea. We characterized the seasonal dynamics of MGII populations in the southern North Sea on a genomic and microscopic level over the course of four years. We recovered 34 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) of MGIIa… [Read More]

Trichoderma harzianum transcriptome in response to cadmium exposure

Cadmium (Cd) is a heavy metal present in the environment mainly as a result of industrial contamination that can cause toxic effects to life. Some microorganisms, as Trichoderma harzianum, a fungus used in biocontrol, are able to survive in polluted environments and act as bioremediators. Aspects about the tolerance to the metal have been widely… [Read More]

Diversity, evolution, and classification of virophages uncovered through global metagenomics

BACKGROUND: Virophages are small viruses with double-stranded DNA genomes that replicate along with giant viruses and co-infect eukaryotic cells. Due to the paucity of virophage reference genomes, a collective understanding of the global virophage diversity, distribution, and evolution is lacking. RESULTS: Here we screened a public collection of over 14,000 metagenomes using the virophage-specific major… [Read More]

IMG-ABC v.5.0: an update to the IMG/Atlas of Biosynthetic Gene Clusters Knowledgebase

Microbial secondary metabolism is a reservoir of bioactive compounds of immense biotechnological and biomedical potential. The biosynthetic machinery responsible for the production of these secondary metabolites (SMs) (also called natural products) is often encoded by collocated groups of genes called biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). High-throughput genome sequencing of both isolates and metagenomic samples combined with… [Read More]

Microbial communities of the Laurentian Great Lakes reflect connectivity and local biogeochemistry

The Laurentian Great Lakes are a vast, interconnected freshwater system spanning strong physicochemical gradients, thus constituting a powerful natural laboratory for addressing fundamental questions about microbial ecology and evolution. We present a comparative analysis of pelagic microbial communities across all five Laurentian Great Lakes, focusing on Bacterial and Archaeal picoplankton characterized via 16S rRNA amplicon… [Read More]

De novo Nanopore read quality improvement using deep learning

BACKGROUND: Long read sequencing technologies such as Oxford Nanopore can greatly decrease the complexity of de novo genome assembly and large structural variation identification. Currently Nanopore reads have high error rates, and the errors often cluster into low-quality segments within the reads. The limited sensitivity of existing read-based error correction methods can cause large-scale mis-assemblies… [Read More]

Comparative Genomics and Transcriptomics to Analyze Fruiting Body Development in Filamentous Ascomycetes

Many filamentous ascomycetes develop three-dimensional fruiting bodies for production and dispersal of sexual spores. Fruiting bodies are among the most complex structures differentiated by ascomycetes; however, the molecular mechanisms underlying this process are insufficiently understood. Previous comparative transcriptomics analyses of fruiting body development in different ascomycetes suggested that there might be a core set of… [Read More]