Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant growth, second only to nitrogen in terms of crop nutrient requirements. Compared with other nutrients, phosphorus is the least mobile and available to plants in most soils. New agricultural practices are needed to provide this essential nutrient for production of food and energy crops while sustaining the environment….

The model filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa colonizes freshly burned plant material and shows robust growth on cellulosic material. Filamentous fungi are of interest to bioenergy researchers because they provide insights into improving plant cell wall deconstruction, which could be useful for second-generation biofuels production. Through a systems biology approach, researchers hope to harness the genomic…

The only existing complete genomes available from marine ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) were isolated from a tropical aquarium and the other an obligate sponge symbiont. Although the genomes of these organisms have been extremely valuable to the field, neither organism is truly representative of abundant planktonic (water column) AOA found in the ocean. Studies suggest there…

The Functional Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea (FEBA) is an effort to develop a pipeline for microbial functional annotation in order to help bridge the gap between sequencing microbial genomes and characterizing the genes encoded by these genomes. Many of the microbial species being studied in this pilot project have direct relevance to DOE missions…

Most freshwater systems are net carbon dioxide emitters due to the processing of terrestrial carbon. Globally this amounts to an estimated total of 1.9 Petagrams (nearly 2 billion kilograms) terrestrial carbon per year, nearly half of which is emitted. This number is of the same order of magnitude as the net ecosystem productivity of the…

The western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) ecosystem is one of the most sensitive environments to climate change, having experienced an increase in mean air temperatures of 2–3°Celsius over the past 50 years. It is not surprising that WAP waters are warming as well. Efforts are underway to understand how this warming will alter the ecology of…

Crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing legumes has proven effective in replenishing nutrient-deficient soils but evidence suggests the byproducts of these legumes have a wider influence on soil biogeochemical processes than previously thought. Root nodules are associated with symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria generating hydrogen as a by-product of nitrogenase activity. In practice, 40-60 percent of electron transfers of…

Lower termites that feed on wood have symbiotic microbes in their hindguts. Higher termites such as Nasitutermes sequenced by the DOE JGI don’t have these symbionts. While higher termites make up the majority of termite species and have prokaryotic microbiota in their guts, for species other than wood-feeders, the roles of these microbes in breaking…

The Synthetic Yeast genome project, or Sc2.0 (www.syntheticyeast.org), aims to design, construct, and replace the native 12Mb genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with a fully synthetic version. In doing so, researchers hope to learn more about questions such as genome organization, gene content, and the intimate relationship between genome structure and evolution. Additionally, yeasts are being…

The Earth’s climate is warming, causing both biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks to the climate system. Increasing temperature seems to alter the way soil organic matter (SOM) is processed, causing the carbon stored in soils to transfer to the atmosphere. Though soil microbes are major drivers of soil carbon cycling, the process by which temperature affects…