Science illustrator Emily Coren’s rendering of Carl Zimmer’s keynote presentation at the DOE JGI Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting on March 20, 2012.
Pulp NonFiction: Fungal Analysis Reveals Clues for Targeted Biomass Deconstruction
Without fungi and microbes to break down dead trees and leaf litter in nature, the forest floor might look like a scene from TV’s “Hoarders.” Massive-scale genome sequencing projects supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and being carried out at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) highlight the importance of learning how the…
DOE JGI Genomics of Energy and Environment Meeting coverage by GenomeWeb
Purdue University’s Jody Banks kicked off the scientific sessions at the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute’s 7th annual User Meeting in Walnut Creek, Calif., this week with her talk on the Selaginella genome and how sequencing diverse species could help researchers understand plant evolution. Read more at GenomeWeb
Bioinformatics challenges for metagenomic analyses
There are more microbes in, on and around the planet than there are stars in the sky. However, the vast majority of these microorganisms have not yet been studied, in part because many of them do not thrive when moved out of their natural environment. A spoonful of soil contains a complex and diverse microbial…
Elucidating bacteria’s roles in ant fungal gardens
Leafcutter ants cultivate fungal gardens that serve as their primary food source. Working toward the goal of harnessing novel enzymes for breaking down plant biomass to produce cellulosic biofuels, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) researchers have been studying the process by which the fungi break down the plant leaves harvested by the ants and…
Analyzing enzymes for a PAH degradation pathway
Microbial activity is crucial for breaking down compounds, removing pollutants and chemically transforming organic compounds. Some of these pollutants are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in contaminated soils. The PAH phenanthrene, for example, can be broken down by the bacterium Arthobacterphenanthrenivorans, which was isolated from a creosote-polluted site in Greece, and used by the microbe…
Dietary impacts on hoatzin crop microbial communities
Many DOE JGI metagenomic projects focus on microbial communities in the guts of the cow, termite and even the desert locust, all known to break down plant biomass for energy. In studying these and other gut microbial communities, researchers hope to identify and isolate genes involved in plant biomass degradation, and apply them to biofuel…
2013 federal budget proposal in GenomeWeb Daily News
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds the Joint Genome Institute and other biology research aimed at developing better renewable biofuels and energy-related technologies, would receive $5 billion, compared to $4.9 billion this fiscal year. Read the full GenomeWeb News story on the Obama administration’s 2013 budget proposal.
A new approach for improve genome assembly
Assembling a genome from fragments of DNA sequence is often compared to assembling a puzzle. One of the problems researchers face with the increasing use of next-generation sequencing technologies is that the pieces of DNA sequence generated by the 454 or Illumina platforms are much smaller and far more numerous than those produced by the…
The role of hydrophobins in plant-fungal mutualism
To get an idea of the importance of mutualistic relationships between plants and fungi, consider that a third of the carbon sequestered in the soil of boreal forests are composed of the wood residues after the fungi break down the cellulose. Maintaining the interface between the fungi and their hosts is the job of small…