Increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses like methane are altering the global climate, causing catastrophic wildfires, storm events, and drought. This proposal targets microbial methane production in freshwater wetland soils, as this production is the largest natural source of methane. Results from this proposal can improve greenhouse gas predictions across the globe. Additionally, this research…
Sphagnum Microbiome Genetic Interactions
The importance of plant-microbiome systems on carbon and nitrogen processes is perhaps most pronounced in Sphagnum moss dominated ecosystems, which occupy 3% of the Earth’s land surface yet store approximately 25% of terrestrial carbon. Much of the nitrogen needed to support Sphagnum comes from a symbiosis with microbes, yet we don’t know how the symbiosis…
Marine Angiosperm Genome Initiative
Seagrasses are the only flowering plants that live in the sea. Understanding the genomic basis for their many unique adaptations is fundamental to successful management, as seagrasses are being lost globally. Seagrasses are among the world’s largest carbon sinks and thus relevant to the DOE missions carbon cycling, biogeochemistry and JGI plant flagship genomics. Translational…
Genome Level Diversity in Brassica rapa
To avoid competing with land use for food crops, biofuel crops are often grown on marginal land. Understanding how to improve soil health and provide enhance stress tolerance traits is essential for improving biofuel production. This study aims to explore the genome level diversity that exists in the important crop model Brassica rapa, a relative…
Roles of Microbial Communities in the Atacama Desert
The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert (Chile) is one of the driest deserts on Earth. Its soils represent one of the few environment types that yet have barely been investigated at the level of metagenomics. Due to the extremely low content of biomass these Atacama Desert sediments have been claimed to be Mars-like. We…
Exploring Seaweed Genome Diversity
Seaweed represent a 6 billion dollar industry across the world, and are a source of many materials spanning the chemical and food sectors. Understanding how seaweeds construct these molecules will allow us to harness their biosynthetic machinery in the biomanufacturing of fuels, lubricants, polymers, and other commodity and specialty chemicals. To help us understand the…
Infections and Host-Pathogen Interactions of Chlorella
The non-photosynthetic, predatory cyanobacterium Vampirovibrio chlorellavorus (Melainabacteria) is a globally important obligate pathogen of Chlorella species/strains of interest as biofuel feedstocks. This project proposes two sequencing approaches to generate information for querying: (i) pathogen and host genomics; and, (ii) the mode of infection and host reaction to infection via transcriptomics); and, (iii) explore evolution and…
Nitrate in Coastal Waters
The proposal calls for metagenomic and metatranscriptomics sequencing, and metabolomics analysis from salt marsh sediments exposed to a decade of chronic anthropogenic nitrate enrichment. These sediments are part of a multi-PI research project at the Plum Island LTER where the team has been fertilizing two whole salt marsh creeks since 2004, while maintaining two additional…
Fungal Comparative ENCODE Project
The FUNCODE project aims to generate a genome-wide library of the rules that govern gene expression in five important model fungi. The resources generated during the project will support a wide range of basic and applied research and biotechnological and industrial applications of fungi, including an understanding of gene regulatory circuits behind plant waste decomposition…
Regulatory Genomics of Brachypodium
This is a proposal to develop the most advanced systems-level understanding of transcriptional regulation of grass growth. Brachypodium distachyon is a model system for the study of energy crops such as sorghum, miscanthus, and switchgrass, and the team’s approach depends on a unique combination of reagents that were developed in collaboration with JGI. The identification…