In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago, various strategies were deployed to prevent 4.9 million barrels of light crude oil from fouling the waters and reaching the shores. A team of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers found that nature also played a role in the dispersal process as marine microbial communities responded to the oil plume that made its way from the wellhead at a depth of 5,000 feet to the surface of the water. As reported in an article published online June 21, 2012 in The ISME Journal, the team describes using a combination of genomics techniques to study the way the microbes responded to the influx of oil. Read more at http://bit.ly/KPKJO9