Prochlorococcus count among the most abundant species of tiny cyanobacteria in the oceans. An estimated 100 million cells of this unicellular organism can be found in a single liter of seawater, and these cyanobacteria help remove some 10 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. A long-held assumption has been that the size…
The poplar genome’s impact, a decade on
During his keynote speech at the DOE Joint Genome Institute’s Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting, science writer Carl Zimmer discussed the status of personalized medicine following the completion of the Human Genome Project. In an article published online October 25, 2012 in Tree Physiology, researchers including Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Jerry Tuskan present a similar…
IMG v4 announcement in GenomeWeb
The Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute has released a fourth version of the Integrated Microbial Genomes system, which serves as a community resource for analyzing and annotating genome and metagenome datasets….IMG currently contains 11,753 total genomes, plasmids and genome fragments; 2,075 metagenome samples; and 2,372 genomes and 804 metagenome samples in IMG/ER and IMG/M-ER,…
Cyanobacterial genomics a basis for improvements in photosynthesis
Plants trap carbon with the help of a key enzyme called RubisCO. To learn more about improving the efficiency of fixing carbon and of the photosynthetic process in general, researchers are studying cyanobacteria such as blue-green algae. At the DOE Joint Genome Institute, Structural Genomics Program head Cheryl Kerfeld and her colleagues have been collaborating…
Bioscriber, an online synthetic biology tutorial, debuts
Developed as a means of introducing the concept of DNA synthesis/synthetic biology to the general public and how it is used at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) for biofuels research, Bioscriber debuted on October 13, 2012 at the Berkeley Lab Open House. The initial…
From Form to Function: 2013 DOE JGI Community Sequencing Program Portfolio Announced
For architects, “form to function” means designing a building that best serves its intended purpose. For genomics researchers, the term could be applied to the ongoing transition from not just studying the genetic code of an organism, but also understanding what roles those genes play in the biology of the organism that encodes them. Several…
Button Mushroom Marks Niche in Forest Carbon Storage
Many people know the button mushroom (Agaricusbisporus) as a tasty ingredient in their food. In the forest, though, this mushroom helps break down leaf litter in environments rich with humus, a mixture of soil and compost that contributes to the health of the microbial communities in, on and around the plant as well as the…
Button mushroom genome in WalesOnline
As part of an international collaboration, Swansea University researchers have found the soft round fungus (Agaricus bisporus) plays a key part in the carbon cycle which makes the planet habitable.And, bizarrely, it could even one day form the basis of new plastics and bio-oils. Read more at WalesOnline
Button mushroom release from the University of Bristol
new work shows how its genes are actually deployed not only in leaf decay but also wood decay and in the development of fruiting bodies (the above ground part of the mushroom harvested for food). The work also suggests how such processes have major implications for forest carbon management. The analysis of the inner workings of…
Adaptable Button Mushroom Serves Up Biomass-Degrading Genes Critical to Managing the Planet’s Carbon Stores
The button mushroom occupies a prominent place in our diet and in the grocery store where it boasts a tasty multibillion-dollar niche, while in nature, Agaricus bisporus is known to decay leaf matter on the forest floor. Now, owing to an international collaboration of two-dozen institutions led by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research…