The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) has selected 35 new genomic sequencing projects for its 2011 Community Sequencing Program (CSP)—a targeted sampling of the planet’s biodiversity—to be characterized for bioenergy and environmental applications. Supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science, the DOE JGI’s…
UC Merced students participate in DOE JGI’s Education program
Students in biology professor Carolin Frank’s lab last year didn’t do “cookbook” lab experiments, following instructions toward an expected result. Instead, in another example of the undergraduate research opportunities available to UC Merced students, they worked on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute project to annotate the genome of a particular type of…
Leaf-cutter ant microbiome breaks down plant biomass
Leaf-cutter ants are community gardeners on a very large scale. Living in colonies composed of several millions, the ants harvest hundreds of kilograms of leaves annually and use them to cultivate fungal gardens that serve as their primary food source. Leaf-cutter ant. (From the October 2010 issue of PLoS Genetics. Image by Jarrod J. Scott,…
Beyond Genomics—DOE JGI leads method validation effort in Metatranscriptomics
Ultra-high throughput DNA sequencing platforms that allow researchers to sequence the genetic code of organisms at lightning speed for just pennies are enabling more focused genomic studies on a massive scale. One example involves the transcriptome, a tiny but complex fraction of the complete genetic sequence that is transcribed into different types of RNA molecules….
A bacterium for breaking down dioxins
Isolated from the River Elbe in Germany, Sphingomonas wittichii RW 1 belongs to a family of bacteria that play a role in breaking down complex aromatic compounds associated with decaying plant mater and chemical pollution. S. wittichii itself is capable of completely breaking down toxic dioxin pollutants, and was selected for sequencing by the DOE…
HudsonAlpha involved in cacao genome project
A first draft of the cacao genome is complete, a consortium of academic, governmental, and industry scientists announced today. Indiana University Bloomington scientists performed much of the sequencing work, which is described and detailed at http://www.cacaogenomedb.org/, the official website of the Cacao Genome Database project. Despite being led and funded by a private company, Mars…
HudsonAlpha involved in cacao genome project
Excerpted from EurekAlert!: “Mockaitis, a biochemist-turned-genomicist, joined the project in early 2009, and quickly set to work with her collaborators to tackle the challenge of sequencing and accurately pasting together the approximately 400 million base pairs of the tree’s genome. Mockaitis’ Cacao Genome Group partners at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Subtropical Horticulture Research Station…
New clues for understanding a novel cellulolytic process
Fibrobacter succinogenes is an anaerobic bacterium that breaks down plant cell wall biomass in ruminants and converts the cellulose into glucose. Sequenced at the DOE JGI for the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), the 3.8 million base genome was completed and the information submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information in late 2009….
Bacterial lessons in rare metal recovery
One of the goals of the DOE’s Genomics:GTL Program is understanding how microbes and microbial communities perform the functions that have helped them thrive in a wide variety of environments and which have applications in the DOE mission areas of bioenergy, carbon cycling and biogeochemistry. British scientists applied information gleaned from Desulfovibrio genomes sequenced by…
Brachypodium genome project on The Warsaw Voice
Brachypodium distachyon, commonly called purple false brome, is a model grass that enables researchers to more easily and thoroughly study temperate cereals, such as wheat, barley, rye and oats. These grasses are one of the most important groups of domesticated plants. The sequencing of the nuclear genome of Brachypodium is a big step towards intensified…