Despite its name, the Dead Sea does support life, and not just in the sense of helping visitors float in its waters. Algae, bacteria, and fungi make up the limited number of species that can tolerate the extremely salty environment at the lowest point on Earth. Some organisms thrive in salty environments by lying dormant…
A recipe for amplifying genomes cell by cell
Detailed protocol outlines steps for extracting ample DNA from uncultured microbes. The Science: Characterizing uncultured microbes starts with isolating and sequencing enough DNA from an environmental sample that may be as small as a single cell. The Impact: The protocol has been successfully employed to amplify the genomes of 201 single cells from uncultured microbes…
#JGInPoetry – Genomics in Verse
Our call for verses to help us communicate our science yielded several poems, a couple of which even met the writing challenges we set. We’ve shared these on social media and we hope the muse continues to inspire as we look forward to receiving more poems about genomics, energy and environment. “Ode to a Gutless…
Steven Hallam, University of British Columbia
CIFAR Scholar and Associate Professor, University of British Columbia Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Life Sciences Institute I have collaborated with the JGI since 2002 before the CSP program came online. These collaborations have spanned my postdoctoral years with Ed DeLong [now at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa] and my time as an independent investigator at the University…
Going deep to improve maize transcriptome
Researchers employ RNA-Seq techniques to improve annotations for analysis. The Science: A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the University of California, Berkeley, and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center generated an ultra-deep, high quality transcriptome–the fraction of the genome that provides information about gene activity–of maize….
Prochlorococcus “genomic backbones” study in The Scientist
“Some of us did not believe that microbes are infinitely diverse,” despite a prevailing assumption, said Steve Giovannoni, who studies bacterioplankton at Oregon State University and who was not involved in the study. “That very high diversity is channeled into patterns, and we’re starting to see what those patterns look like.” Read the full story in…
Discovering diversity, one cell at a time
The game where one has to guess how many jelly beans or marbles can fill a jar should never be played with the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus. By some estimates, in a single liter of water as many as 100 million cells of this tiny bacterium can be found. These important organisms serve as the base of…
Every Day is Earth Day @JGI
More than four decades ago, the first celebration of Earth Day raised the idea of protecting the environment to a greater public awareness. Today, the annual event is a reminder of the longstanding goal to provide a cleaner, healthier and sustainable environment for everyone to live in. Here at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint…
Deciphering the virulence of a fern fungus
Researchers annotate genome of the smallest known fungal plant pathogen. The Science: Researchers sequenced and analyzed the genome of Mixia osmundea, the smallest fungal plant pathogen (13.6 million bases) to date, to provide insight into its mode of pathogenicity and reproductive biology. The Impact: Aside from learning how the fungal pathogen reproduces, genome annotation revealed…
Microbes in Antarctic lake divvy up the waters
Recently sequenced microbes living in Deep Lake are mostly specialists, cornering different niches in the lake ecosystem The Science: Four microbes dominate in the Antarctica’s Deep Lake, making up 70% of the microbial community. They belong to a group called haloarchaea that require high salt concentrations to grow and are naturally adapted to extreme conditions…