Collected at the Southern Ocean Time Series, transcriptomes and manipulative experiments will establish virus and microbial processes that constrain the carbon cycle and system biogeochemistry (major DOE mission areas). Interactions on sinking particles, the specificity of virus-host relationships and trace metal effects will be examined. The cumulative data set will allow for the development of…
Regulating Water Use Efficiency Traits
Roots and stomata are plants’ primary entry and exit points for water. Therefore, they are key targets for manipulation to improve bioenergy crop productivity, resilience and sustainability by reducing the risk of crop losses due to inadequate water supply. The number of pores, called stomata, on the leaf surface influences how much water the crop…
Time-Series of Freshwater Lake Microbial Communities
Freshwater lakes contain diverse and dynamic microbial communities that play key roles in maintaining water quality, cycling nutrients, and regulating carbon uptake and storage. They are important hotspots for biogeochemical cycling in terrestrial landscapes. This project aims to use hundreds of samples collected over time in two very different lakes to understand how these communities…
EMF-Pine Co-Invasion in the Southern Hemisphere
Pine plantations in the Southern Hemisphere possess greatly impoverished assemblages of ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF), often fewer than 20 species at a single forest site, compared to native populations of those same pines. The filtering results in a loss of some EMF lineages and may lead to large-scale impacts on soil biogeochemical processes. This work is…
Measuring mRNA Levels in Chlamydomonas
The analysis of gene expression allows scientists to generate hypotheses important for the understanding of gene function. Proteins that participate in similar functions, or form larger protein complexes, are often encoded by genes that share similar expression profiles. This type of analysis has been limited to “steady-state” mRNA levels, that is the combined output of…
Methane Flux in the Amazon
Wetlands are the single largest global source of atmospheric methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. Seasonally inundated tropical forests are estimated to be the main contributors of biologenic emissions of this gas. This project aims to integrate microbial and tree genetic characteristics to measure and understand methane emissions at the heart of the Amazon rainforest….
Genomic Diversity in the Saccharum Complex
The proposal calls for sequencing accession (genetically unique plant samples from a particular geographic location) representatives of the Saccharum genus and key sugarcane cultivars to elucidate their genome structure, origin and phylogenetic relationships. This information will help optimize breeding and base-broadening programs and builds off the ongoing sugarcane genome proposal. Proposer: Angelique D’Hont, CIRAD (France)…
Epigenome Regulation of Gene Expression
Plant biomass degradation by fungi is a key step of the carbon cycle on earth, but carbon sequestration is also mediated by mutualistic fungi through symbiosis with plants. Indeed plant material is the most abundant repository of organic carbon and fungi are the primary decomposers of dead or alive plant cell walls. To do so,…
Finishing Genomes to Leverage Additional Information
Genomes of important model and many industrially important fungi are still incomplete. The goals of this project are: (a) to finish and annotate the genomes of ~25 strains; and, (b) to carry out functional analyses by novel CRISPR/Cas9 approaches. The next quantum leap in biology will come by integrating all levels of genome, transcriptome, proteome,…
Insights into Functional Diversity in Neurospora
This proposal investigates the genetic bases of fungal thermophily, biomass-degradation, and fungal-bacterial interactions in Sordariales, an order of biomass-degrading fungi frequently encountered in compost and encompassing one of the few groups of thermophilic fungi. The proposal fits into the DOE mission because it focuses on biological processes of industrial interest, it explores the functional diversity…