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    A vertical tree stump outdoors with about a dozen shiitake mushrooms sprouting from its surface.
    Tracing the Evolution of Shiitake Mushrooms
    Understanding Lentinula genomes and their evolution could provide strategies for converting plant waste into sugars for biofuel production. Additionally, these fungi play a role in the global carbon cycle.

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    Soil Virus Offers Insight into Maintaining Microorganisms
    Through a collaborative effort, researchers have identified a protein in soil viruses that may promote soil health.

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    Data yielded from RIViT-seq increased the number of sigma factor-gene pairs confirmed in Streptomyces coelicolor from 209 to 399. Here, grey arrows denote previously known regulation and red arrows are regulation identified by RIViT-seq; orange nodes mark sigma factors while gray nodes mark other genes. (Otani, H., Mouncey, N.J. Nat Commun 13, 3502 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31191-w)
    Streamlining Regulon Identification in Bacteria
    Regulons are a group of genes that can be turned on or off by the same regulatory protein. RIViT-seq technology could speed up associating transcription factors with their target genes.

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    The switchgrass diversity panel growing at the Kellogg Biological Station in Michigan. (David Lowry)
    Mapping Switchgrass Traits with Common Gardens
    The combination of field data and genetic information has allowed researchers to associate climate adaptations with switchgrass biology.

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    Artist rendering of genome standards being applied to deciphering the extensive diversity of viruses. (Illustration by Leah Pantea)
    Expanding Metagenomics to Capture Viral Diversity
    Along with highlighting the viruses in a given sample, metagenomics shed light on another key aspect of viruses in the environment — their sheer genetic diversity.

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    Photograph of a stream of diatoms beneath Arctic sea ice.
    Polar Phytoplankton Need Zinc to Cope with the Cold
    As part of a long-term collaboration with the JGI Algal Program, researchers studying function and activity of phytoplankton genes in polar waters have found that these algae rely on dissolved zinc to photosynthesize.

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    Silver Age of GOLD Introduces New Features
    The Genomes OnLine Database makes curated microbiome metadata that follows community standards freely available and enables large-scale comparative genomics analysis initiatives.

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    Graphical overview of the RNA Virus MetaTranscriptomes Project. (Courtesy of Simon Roux)
    A Better Way to Find RNA Virus Needles in the Proverbial Database Haystacks
    Researchers combed through more than 5,000 data sets of RNA sequences generated from diverse environmental samples around the world, resulting in a five-fold increase of RNA virus diversity.

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    HPCwire Editor's Choice Award (logo crop) for Best Use of HPC in the Life Sciences
    JGI Part of Berkeley Lab Team Awarded Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences
    The HPCwire Editors Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences went to the Berkeley Lab team comprised of JGI and ExaBiome Project team, supported by the DOE Exascale Computing Project for MetaHipMer, an end-to-end genome assembler that supports “an unprecedented assembly of environmental microbiomes.”

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    Digital ID card with six headshots reads: Congratulations to our 2022 Function Genomics recipients!
    Final Round of 2022 CSP Functional Genomics Awardees
    Meet the final six researchers whose proposals were selected for the 2022 Community Science Program Functional Genomics call.

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    CSP New Investigators FY23 R1
    JGI Announces First Round of 2023 New Investigator Awardees
    Twice each year we look for novel research projects aligned with DOE missions and from PIs who have not led any previously-accepted proposals through the CSP New Investigator call.

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    screencap from Amundson and Wilkins subsurface microbiome video
    Digging into Microbial Ecosystems Deep Underground
    JGI users and microbiome researchers at Colorado State University have many questions about the microbial communities deep underground, including the role viral infection may play in other natural ecosystems.

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    2022 JGI-UC Merced interns (Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)
    Exploring Possibilities: 2022 JGI-UC Merced Interns
    The 2022 UC Merced intern cohort share how their summer internship experiences have influenced their careers in science.

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    Using Team Science to Build Communities Around Data
    As the data portals grow and evolve, the research communities further expand around them. But with two projects, communities are forming to generate high quality genomes to benefit researchers.

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    Cow Rumen and the Early Days of Metagenomics
    Tracing a cow rumen dataset from the lab to material for a hands-on undergraduate research course at CSU-San Marcos that has since expanded into three other universities.

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Home › Our Science › Science Programs & Platforms Leads › I-Min (Amy) Chen

I-Min (Amy) Chen

Dr. I-Min Amy Chen, JGI

Dr. I-Min A. Chen received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Southern California. Her research has been focused on semantic and object-oriented data modeling, and biological data management. Amy was one of the co-authors and key developers of the Object-Protocol Model (OPM) data management tools for scientific applications developed at Berkeley Lab. Dr. Chen is currently the Microbiome Computational Resource Lead at JGI, responsible for the data management infrastructure of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) family of systems. Before joining LBNL in 2006, she was Director of Application Development Systems at Gene Logic, Inc. from 1997 to 2005, responsible for the development of key components of Gene Logic’s flagship Genesis data management platforms for gene expression data, one of the most successful data management systems of their kind, deployed to tens of pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Education

  • BA, Computer Science, National Taiwan University
  • PhD, Computer Science, University of Southern California

Software

Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes

Publications

  1. Chen I-MA, Chu K, Palaniappan K, Ratner A, Huang J, Huntemann M, Hajek P, Ritter S, Varghese N, Seshadri R et al. The IMG/M data management and analysis system v.6.0: new tools and advanced capabilities. Nucleic acids research Oct 2020
  2. Roux S, Páez-Espino D, Chen I-MA, Palaniappan K, Ratner A, Chu K, Reddy TBK, Nayfach S, Schulz F, Call L et al. IMG/VR v3: an integrate ecological and evolutionary framework for interrogating genomes of uncultivated viruses. Nucleic acids research Nov 2020
  3. Chen IA, Markowitz V, Palaniappan K, Szeto E, Chu K, Huang J, Ratner A, Pillay M, Hadjithomas M, Huntemann M, Mikhailova N, Ovchinnikova G, Ivanova NN, and  Kyrpides NC. Supporting community annotation and user collaboration in the integrated microbial genomes (IMG) system, BMC Genomics 17:307, doi:10.1186/s12864-016-2629-y, April 2016
  4. Chen IA, Markowitz V, Szeto E, Palaniappan K, and Chu K. Maintaining a Microbial Genome & Metagenome Data Analysis System in an Academic Setting, SSDBM 14, July 2014
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