“In the same way that microbes play critical roles in and around our own bodies, we are adopting this concept of host-associated metagenomics in plant genomics as well, as it will ultimately lead to predictive interventions that will increase plant health and productivity, disease resistance, and carbon capture,” co-author Susannah Tringe, who heads the metagenome…
Getting to the Root— Unearthing the Plant-Microbe Quid Pro Quo
While the flower may attract the bee and the admiring eye of the passerby, it is the unseen complex network of life below ground where the action is. The microbial community or microbiome that inhabits the rhizosphere and endosphere —the niches immediately surrounding and inside a plant’s root—facilitates the shuttling of nutrients and information into…
Soybeans Annotated, Revisited
Revisiting the importance of studying the microbes in termite guts
According to Leadbetter, the termite holds the key to unlocking all of this potential. But understanding how to do it won’t be easy.People have enlisted the help of microbes before, but never with this degree of complexity. “For 6,000 years,” he said, “we’ve been making beer, wine and bread using yeast,” which is a single-cell…
Understanding a Cereal Disease with DNA Sequencing
An international coalition of researchers, including those from the DOE Joint Genome Institute have now isolated the Barley stripe mosaic virus resistance gene from Brachypodium distachyon. They found the single dominant gene responsible by analyzing the offspring of intercrossed disease-resistant and disease-susceptible Brachypodium. Their results were published in June in PLoSOne. Brachypodium distachyonis a good…
Maturing Metagenomics Needs Ground Rules
For every known star in our universe, there are billions of microbes here on Earth. But scientists are unable to culture most of these species in the lab. One approach to getting to know these beguiling bugs is to look at the big picture of their community. Metagenomics aims to characterize the overall genomic profile…
GEBA Gets More Cellulase
Fungal genomics and coal formation in The Green Optimistic
White rot fungi from the class of fungi known as Agaricomycetes are capable of degrading the polymer lignin. Lignin is found in plant tissues and is largely responsible for the rigid structure of plant cell walls. The researchers postulated that fungal degradation of lignin caused plant matter to be broken down into its basic components and…
Fungal genomics and coal formation in Clean Technica
In an ironic twist, genomics researchers have stumbled upon an incredible discovery – the same ancestral fungus that ended coal formation millennia ago may now be able to boost biofuel and bioenergy production. Read more at Clean Technica
Fungal genomics and coal formation in BioBased Digest
In Massachusetts, a group of 70 researchers led by David S. Hibbett of Clark University, in Worcester, Mass. and Igor V. Grigoriev of the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute comparing the genomes of 31 fungi to determine how white rot fungi breaks down lignin and could be a major breakthrough in cellulosic ethanol technology. Read…