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Content Tagged "biomass"

Poplar leaf rust fungal genome project on KRVN

Wheat stem rust causes major epidemics of both barley and wheat worldwide. A strain known as Ug99 has spread across Africa and into Central Asia, and has been able to overcome most of the stem-rust-resistant wheat varieties developed over the past 50 years. Poplar leaf rust can cause significant losses in poplar tree plantations. Poplar… [Read More]

Selaginella genome project in Biofuels Journal

Published online May 5 in Science Express, a team of researchers from over 60 institutions, that included DOE JGI’s Dan Rokhsar and Igor Grigoriev, the senior authors of this work, reported the genome sequence of Selaginella moellendorffii and used a comparative genomics approach to identify the core genes that are likely to be present in a common ancestor… [Read More]

Selaginella genome project on redOrbit

Grigoriev noted that the Selaginella genome helps fill in a large gap in plant evolution from the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas, sequenced at the DOE JGI and published in 2007, to flowering plants with vascular systems. “Selaginella occupies a phylogenetically important position for which we had no reference,” he said. “On one end of the… [Read More]

Poplar leaf rust fungal genome project on Hoosier Farmers

Poplar leaf rust can cause significant losses in poplar tree plantations. Poplar is an important crop for the wood industry and is becoming increasingly important to the biofuel industry in the United States and Europe because of its rapid and significant production of biomass. Read more on Hoosier Farmers [Read More]

Poplar rust fungus in comparative genomics study

Rust plant pathogens make up a large fungal group which cannot survive on their own so they use crops as hosts, leading to reduced yields and potentially hindering efforts to grow biomass for fuel. To learn more about these, a 2006 Community Sequencing Program project generated the 101-million base pair genome of the poplar leaf… [Read More]

First analysis of Trichoderma species as biocontrol agents

Trichodermaatroviride and T. virens are filamentous fungi commonly found in the soil and are good at protecting crops such as beans, tomatoes, strawberries and cotton against a range of fungal pathogens. Their ability to do so could offer bioenergy crop growers an alternative to chemical pesticide treatment. Both were selected for sequencing by the DOE… [Read More]

Finding cellulases in sediment from a paper mill

During the DOE JGI User Meeting held in Walnut Creek, Calif. from March 22-24, 2011, collaborator Daniel Distel noted that more than 20 enzymes are needed to break down cellulose. To assist in identifying novel cellulose degraders and thus improve cellulosic biofuel production processes, a team of DOE JGI researchers including Microbial Program head TanjaWoyke… [Read More]

Phil Hugenholtz on metagenomics and ecogenomics in Australian Life Scientist

In research published in Nature in 2007, Hugenholtz, along with collaborators from the California Institute of Technology and Diversa (now Verenium) Corporation, used metagenomics to detail the process by which a dry wood feeding termite, a Nasutitermes species, breaks down cellulose.  They generated 62 million base pairs – a “drop in the ocean by today’s… [Read More]

UCLA team makes isobutanol from cellulose on ScienceDaily

While there were many possible microbial candidates, the research team ultimately chose Clostridium cellulolyticum, which was originally isolated from decayed grass. The researchers noted that their strategy exploits the host’s natural cellulolytic activity and the amino acid biosynthetic pathway and diverts its intermediates to produce higher alcohol than ethanol. The researchers also noted that Clostridium… [Read More]

DOE JGI Highlight: First genome of a Harmful Algal Bloom species

Algae play key roles in the global carbon cycle, helping trap carbon emissions. But some algal species can bloom, discoloring coastal waters and reduce the amount of light and oxygen available in the ecosystem. To describe these events, the term “harmful algal blooms” (HABs) was introduced two decades ago to note that accumulation of algal… [Read More]