About Us
Phone Book
Contact Us

Our Science
Viruses Reprogram Cells into Different Virocells
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, so the adage goes, it must be a duck. But if the duck gets infected by a virus so that it no longer looks or quacks like one, is it still a duck? For a team led by researchers from The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan studying how virus infections cause significant metabolic changes in marine microbes, the answer is no. They refer to the infected microbial cells as virocells, the name change reflecting the metabolic changes the cells have undergone.
Read more
Fishing for Novel Cellulose Degraders
JGI researchers developed a function-driven, single-cell screen that they described as a “hook and bait” approach to isolate cellulose-degrading microbes. While the screen caught several microbes from known cellulose-degrading groups, the researchers also hooked and were able to reconstruct a high-quality draft co-assembled genome for a new genus level member of the novel candidate phylum Goldbacteria. The work appeared in The ISME Journal.
Read more
Dealing with Drought: Uncovering Sorghum’s Secrets
Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench is an African grass that adroitly handles droughts, floods and poor soils. This is the first paper that describes sorghum’s response to drought, from a large-scale field experiment led by a multi-institutional consortium to uncover the mechanisms behind sorghum’s capacity to produce high yields despite drought conditions.
Read more
Our Projects
Methane Flux in the Amazon
Wetlands are the single largest global source of atmospheric methane. This project aims to integrate microbial and tree genetic characteristics to measure and understand methane emissions at the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Read more
Infections and Host-Pathogen Interactions of Chlorella
The non-photosynthetic, predatory cyanobacterium Vampirovibrio chlorellavorus is a globally important obligate pathogen of Chlorella species/strains, which are of interest as biofuel feedstocks.
Read more
Insights into Functional Diversity in Neurospora
This proposal investigates the genetic bases of fungal thermophily, biomass-degradation, and fungal-bacterial interactions in Sordariales, an order of biomass-degrading fungi frequently encountered in compost and encompassing one of the few groups of thermophilic fungi.
Read more
Data & Tools
- IMG
- Genome Portal
- MycoCosm
- Phytozome
- GOLD
Here, There and Everywhere: Large and Giant Viruses Abound Globally
In Nature, a JGI-led team uncovered a broad diversity of large and giant viruses that belong to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV) supergroup. The expansion of the diversity for large and giant viruses offered the researchers insights into how they might interact with their hosts, and how those interactions may in turn impact the host communities and their roles in carbon and other nutrient cycles.
Read more
Expanding Virophage Diversity
Virophages are small viruses with double-stranded DNA genomes that co-infect eukaryotic cells along with giant viruses. In Microbiome, JGI researchers provided a global analysis of the diversity, distribution, and evolution of virophages - and in doing so, increased the number of known high quality virophage genome sequences 10-fold through computational approaches.
Read more
Improving the Cacao Genome and Phytozome
An updated reference genome for Theobroma cacao Matina 1-6 has now been completed and released by HudsonAlpha scientists, with the help of Mars Wrigley funding. The annotated genome has been updated to a high quality modern standard and includes RNA-seq data. The improved genome is available for comparative purposes on the latest version of the JGI plant portal Phytozome (phytozome-next.JGI.doe.gov).
Read more
User Programs
CSP Functional Genomics Call Ongoing
The CSP Functional Genomics call helps users translate genomic information into biological function. Proposals submitted by July 30, 2020 will be part of the next review.
Read more
Submit Letters of Intent for FICUS JGI-EMSL Call
Letters of Intent (LOI) for collaborative research applications with the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) are being accepted until March 18, 2020 at 11:00 PM (PDT).
Read more
CSP New Investigator Call Ongoing
The CSP New Investigator call targets investigators and research initiatives new to the JGI. Proposals submitted by March 2, 2020 will be part of the next review.
Read more
News & Publications
- News Releases
- Blog
- Publications
- Scientific Posters
- Newsletter
- Logos
- Photos
Inspiring STEM Careers Through a Hands-on Everglades Microbiome Study
The pilot project between JGI and a Boca Raton Community High School class in Palm Beach County, Florida has led to a data report published in the journal Environmental Microbiome. The class sought to apply the latest molecular techniques to learn more about the microbial communities in the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a 226-square mile area of the northern Everglades in Palm Beach County, and particularly about the microbes that play roles in the methane cycle.
Read more
Honey Bee Gut Microbiota Divvy Up Dinner
Honey bees rely on their gut microbiota to produce these enzymes to break down polysaccharides. An international team of researchers has identified the major metabolic roles of constituent microbes, publishing their findings in PNAS.
Read more
JGI on the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers List
Clarivate Analytics' 2019 list of Highly Cited Researchers includes 10 affiliated with the JGI . The 2019 list focused on Highly Cited Papers, defined in the Methodology section as “those that rank in the top 1% by citations for papers published and cited between 2008-2018.” Less than 6,300 Highly Cited science and social science researchers in one or more of 21 fields appear on the 2019 list.
Read more

December 9, 2013

1.1primer102804