JGI sequencers on GenomeWeb
The US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute now uses a collection of next-gen sequencers from a variety of firms, following the phasing out of its Sanger machines. Read more on GenomeWeb. [Read More]
Chlorella project on ScienceDaily
Microalgae are prime targets for research on biofuels. Leading candidates as alternative sources of biodiesel, their culture has the unquestionable advantage, compared to oleaginous land plants, of not competing with cultivated land necessary for human food. Producing fuel from water, sunlight and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere appears as a miracle solution that has fostered… [Read More]
Clostridia bacterial genomes sequenced for biofuel production
Cellulose and hemicellulose are considered the largest components of plant biomass and researchers have been looking for ways to break down these materials efficiently and cost-effectively for commercial cellulosic biofuel production. Many microbes that can break down biomass do so with the help of enzyme complexes known as cellulosomes, and the DOE JGI has been… [Read More]
Spanish fungal pipeline project part of CSP 2011 portfolio
The project being coordinated by Mr Pisabarro focuses on a dozen fungi and has a very concrete objective: “We know what genes there are in each fungus, but we do not know how they use them. We asked ourselves how the various fungi employed the arms they have in order to degrade wood and we… [Read More]
Barley selected as a CSP 2011 project
JGI is going to sequence the genome of barley (Hordeum vulgare), a reasonably close relative of wheat, an important crop in its own right, and a monster genome (though not as much of a monster as wheat itself). Barley will be the fourth grass genome sequenced by JGI and the sixth grass genome sequenced in… [Read More]
Chlorella for the carbon cycle and biodiesel production
Green algae are key components of the global carbon cycle and help sequester half of the carbon in the atmosphere. From a bioenergy perspective, algae are increasingly viewed as a viable feedstock for biofuel and biodiesel production because of their high lipid content. However, algal viruses can infect up to a fifth of all algae… [Read More]
UC Merced students participate in DOE JGI’s Education program
Students in biology professor Carolin Frank’s lab last year didn’t do “cookbook” lab experiments, following instructions toward an expected result. Instead, in another example of the undergraduate research opportunities available to UC Merced students, they worked on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute project to annotate the genome of a particular type of… [Read More]
Leaf-cutter ant microbiome breaks down plant biomass
Leaf-cutter ants are community gardeners on a very large scale. Living in colonies composed of several millions, the ants harvest hundreds of kilograms of leaves annually and use them to cultivate fungal gardens that serve as their primary food source. Leaf-cutter ant. (From the October 2010 issue of PLoS Genetics. Image by Jarrod J. Scott,… [Read More]
A bacterium for breaking down dioxins
Isolated from the River Elbe in Germany, Sphingomonas wittichii RW 1 belongs to a family of bacteria that play a role in breaking down complex aromatic compounds associated with decaying plant mater and chemical pollution. S. wittichii itself is capable of completely breaking down toxic dioxin pollutants, and was selected for sequencing by the DOE… [Read More]
HudsonAlpha involved in cacao genome project
A first draft of the cacao genome is complete, a consortium of academic, governmental, and industry scientists announced today. Indiana University Bloomington scientists performed much of the sequencing work, which is described and detailed at http://www.cacaogenomedb.org/, the official website of the Cacao Genome Database project. Despite being led and funded by a private company, Mars… [Read More]