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Studying the  genomes of microorganisms is incredibly useful for understanding the microbiome of the earth, but … To access the genomes of uncultured  microbes , scientists usually employ two different methods; shotgun metagenomic … and most genomes that were acquired through it were usually only around 30% complete.  Described in  ISME …

The Science The first step in the deadly dance between a virus and microbial cell is an embrace. For a virus with a “head-tail” morphology, this means using proteins on its tail fibers to latch onto a specific …

… of the National Academy of Sciences . The team focused on the dominant bacterial clades shared between honey … pollen’s pectin and hemicellulose are degraded mainly by just two clades:  Gilliamella,  which mostly resides in the bee’s ileum, a structure analogous to the human small intestine; and  Bifidobacterium,  …

… (Berkeley Lab) and other institutions shared their works-in-progress with 86 participants in an online workshop to … workshop, Volkan Sevim, a computational biologist at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), … that low sequence identity may belie. The technology he’s using is magical; transform any length of amino acid …

The Impact Traditional methods for breaking down biomass use aerobic methods (those using oxygen) to remove lignin and transform the remaining … into  biofuels and bioproducts. If anaerobic fungi could be used to effectively modify lignin without oxygen and make …

… have successfully automated aspects of a commonly-used process for studying microbial communities, with … The Impact Stable isotope probing is a long and laborious process — as well as a key way scientists study microorganisms. Because microorganisms live in complex communities, like within …

… boggy wetlands produces an estimated 5% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding how sphagnum, a primary … their role as carbon sources. Summary Sphagnum, a genus of just under 400 mosses that can carry up to 25 times their dry …

CheckV can help researchers assess virus sequence fragments and data quality. The Science Through … technologies and computational approaches, more and more virus sequences are being recovered and identified from … and removal of contamination from the host organism. As reported in Nature Biotechnology , a team from the U.S. …

… sigma factors that initiate transcription in bacteria. Using this technology, which combines an in vitro … coelicolor . The Impact As an integrative genome science user facility, connecting genes to functions is part of the … (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National …

… different lifestyles. The Science The bacterium SAR324 is unusually cosmopolitan. In the ocean’s North Pacific … surface, to the blue-lit twilight zone, to the continuous pressure of the dark abyss, 4000 m (2.5 miles) deep. … the metabolisms that SAR324 and other microbes use could inform scientists’ understanding of carbon fluxes …

… may not seem to amount to much, the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is actually a vital source of protein in many … works on food crops specifically, “[At the JGI] we do use Phaseolus as a test model quite frequently for R&D in … trait. Traditionally beans have had a shelf-life about roughly 6-9 months before their color begins to …

… the genetic codes of plants is often challenging because in many plants chromosomes are present in more than two … his words, the history of the strawberry is complicated because, “when you have comparisons to other closely related … an early algorithm and developing it in order to talk about the subgenome identity.”  These days, Session is …