The other good news of this Bastille Day: our paper on the Serpula lacrymans genome is reported online July 14 in Science Express. The Domestic Dry Rot (Serpula lacrymans, Basidiomycete, Coniophoraceae) comprises two subgroups, S. lacrymans varshastensis, found in montane conifer forests in the Himalayan foothills, and S. lacrymans var lacrymans, cause of building dry rot, which diverged in historic time [Kauserud et al. (2007) Mol. Ecol.16: 3350-3360]. Read…
Breaking down cellulose without blasting lignin: “Dry rot” genome offers lessons for biofuel pretreatment
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Feared by realtors and homeowners alike, dry rot due to the fungus Serpula lacrymans causes millions of dollars worth of damage to homes and buildings around the world. This brown rot fungus’ capacity to break down the cellulose in wood led to its selection for sequencing by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)…
DOE JGI’s role in national quest for cellulosic biofuels in the New York Times
The rumen is like a huge bathtub, he said, holding about 50 large soda bottles’ worth of fluid redolent with bacteria. Relying on these symbiotic microbes, cows eat up to 150 pounds of grass a day, a food inedible to most animals, including humans. Hess was after those microbial secrets, and the placid heifer was…
Mycosphaerella genome project in Capital Press
Septoria typically infects young seedlings that have recently emerged, creating lesions, and spreading to the higher leaves. It can affect yield and quality, Goodwin said. Control methods are typically fungicide sprays, he noted. Igor Grigoriev, of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif., has been sequencing the genomes of other…
Wallaby Yields Insight Into Limiting Methane
Research published in the June 30 edition of Science Express features an analysis of the microbial content of the Tammar wallaby gut, which may inform strategies for diminishing greenhouse gas emissions from other ruminants. Selected as a sequencing target by the DOE JGI’s Community Sequencing Program (CSP) in 2007, scientists had became interested in these mini…
DOE JGI/JBEI collaboration in DomesticFuels.com
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are trying to discover salt-loving organisms that may be more efficient in treating biomass and improve sugar yield for biofuel production. The class of solvents known as ionic liquids, are liquid forms of salt that…
UCLA microbiologists find energy-efficient structures in archaeon
a type of Archaea known as Methanosprillum hungatei contains incredibly efficient energy-storage structures. The findings are published in the July 5 issue of the journal Environmental Microbiology. M. hungatei is of considerable environmental significance because of its unique ability to form symbiotic relationships with syntrophic bacteria to break down organic matter and produce methane gas. Yet while their important role in…
Efficiency Improvements in Biofuels Production
To overcome the difficulties of converting cellulosic biomass into high energy-content fuel, researchers have been seeking to improve various stages of the process. One big obstacle that stands in the way is that most enzymes are inefficient at breaking down biomass when in the presence of ionic liquids, solvents that have proven effective at treating the…
DOE JGI/JBEI collaboration in Green Car Congress
Such salt-tolerant enzymes, particularly cellulases, offer significant advantages for industrial utility over conventional enzymes, they said. The group plans to expand this research to develop a full complement of enzymes that is tailored for the ionic liquid process technology with the goal of demonstrating a complete biomass-to-sugar process, one they hope can enable the commercial…
A Microbiological “Template” for Mitigating Methane Emissions
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Carbon dioxide may be the most name-dropped greenhouse gas, but methane is 20 times more potent. In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated that 20 percent of the nation’s human-related methane emissions were attributable to livestock digestive processes. In Australia, livestock emissions account for 12 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas…