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Content Tagged "microbial genomics"

(De)Coupling marine microbial abundance and activity levels

Prochlorococcus count among the most abundant species of tiny cyanobacteria in the oceans. An estimated 100 million cells of this unicellular organism can be found in a single liter of seawater, and these cyanobacteria help remove some 10 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. A long-held assumption has been that the size… [Read More]

Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup microbes project in Examiner.com

The first research effort reported in an article published online June 21, 2012, in the ISME Journal involved samples taken immediately after the Deepwater Horizon spill began and during the ensuing clean up efforts.The researchers found that a variety of microbes consumed parts of the oil spill selectively. Each group of microbes specifically targeted one group of… [Read More]

Deepwater Horizon cleanup microbes project in Oil and GasOnline

To learn more about the microbial community’s response to the oil spill, researchers led by Berkeley Lab senior scientist Janet Jansson availed themselves of the expertise and resources at two of the Lab’s national user facilities, the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and the Advanced Light Source (ALS). The work done… [Read More]

DOE JGI’s IMG/M data system in Berkeley Lab’s release on the Human Microbiome Project

Berkeley Lab’s role in mapping the human microbiome revolves around big data, both analyzing it and making it available for scientists to use worldwide…. Berkeley Lab scientists developed and maintain a comparative analysis system called the Integrated Microbial Genomes and Metagenomes for the Human Microbiome Project (IMG/M HMP). It allows scientists to study the human microbiome… [Read More]

Analyzing enzymes for a PAH degradation pathway

Microbial activity is crucial for breaking down compounds, removing pollutants and chemically transforming organic compounds. Some of these pollutants are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in contaminated soils. The PAH phenanthrene, for example, can be broken down by the bacterium Arthobacterphenanthrenivorans, which was isolated from a creosote-polluted site in Greece, and used by the microbe… [Read More]

Permafrost study referenced in ScienceNews

In Nature in December, a team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif., and colleagues reported one such microbe’s draft genome — put together from DNA acquired from the semifrozen dirt in an Alaskan black spruce forest. The Alaskan microbe carries genes tuned to transform organic matter into methane, a finding that… [Read More]

Tanja Woyke: Genome Technology 2011 Young Investigator

What inspired Tanja Woyke to pursue her current area of focus is also what makes it possible: single-cell genomic technology. “It allows one to sequence the genome of one individual microbial cell by amplifying its genome a billion-fold using a process called multiple displacement amplification,” she says. “I find this quite fascinating. Such an approach… [Read More]

New tools for the IMG/M analysis system

Since the initial release of the Integrated Microbial Genomes with Microbiome samples (IMG/M) system in 2007 to support the comparative analysis of metagenomic data sets, DOE JGI researchers have made several updates in order to keep pace with the rapid increase in data set generation due to advances in sequencing technologies. As reported by researchers… [Read More]

Microbial response to the thawing Arctic

The frozen Arctic soils keep an estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon out of the Earth’s atmosphere, more than 250 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the United States in the year 2009. Rising global temperatures have led to increasing concerns on the potential impacts of thawing permafrost upon the carbon… [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study on Medill News Reports

Microbes frozen for thousands of years can spring to life and digest the carbon to release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, amplifying warming and melting. Scientists can’t yet predict how much of the carbon stored in Arctic permafrost will reach the atmosphere, but microbes could play a pivotal role. Read more on Medill Reports Chicago [Read More]