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Permafrost soil metagenome study on Voice of America

Lead author Janet Jansson, senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California says the trapped microorganisms in permafrost are still active. Jansson and colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey and the Joint Genome Institute at the Department of Energy set out to identify microbes in permafrost and find out what they would do once… [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]

DOE JGI sequencing capabilities in InSequence

The US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute is tweaking its sequencing technology lineup as it gears up to produce more than 47 trillion bases of DNA sequence in the 2012 fiscal year, with more than half that sequencing output slated to go toward its largest user program, the Community Sequencing Program. Read more on GenomeWeb [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study on Examiner.com

The carbon dioxide contained in the polar caps is estimated to be 1,672 billion metric tons. The slow but steady melting of the polar regions from global warming has and will continue to release more carbon as carbon dioxide as the ice sheets melt.More interesting and more potentially dangerous is the effect that melting ice… [Read More]

CSP 2012 project on Science Codex

Dan Lindner, a research plant pathologist with the Northern Research Station’s Center for Forest Mycology Research (CFMR), is one of 13 scientists participating in the ‘1000 Fungal Genomes’ project, which in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Joint Genome Institute will sequence two species from every known fungal family. The project is a first… [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study in Gizmodo

A team of researchers from Berkeley took chunks of permafrost soil from Alaska, and shipped them back to the lab to thaw them out in controlled conditions. As they woke up, the gassy little microorganisms trapped in the melting ice spewed out more methane than the contestants in a bean-eating competition. Read more in Gizmodo [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study in Alaska Dispatch

Researchers have carted chunks of Alaska permafrost off to California, where have learned that allowing the once frozen soil to thaw wakes up hungry microbes, according to newscientist.com, which also offered a cautionary tale. Read more in the Alaska Dispatch [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study in Discover

What’s the News: Melting  permafrost in a warming world could mean lots of greenhouses gasses, especially methane, released into the atmosphere. But it also means an unusual community of soil bacteria coming out of hibernation, so to speak. A new study looks at what those permafrost microbes do, exactly, as their environment warms up. Read… [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study in Time

One of those wild cards is the 1,672 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent trapped in the form of methane in the Arctic permafrost, the soils kept frozen by the far North’s extreme temperatures. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas—it has 20 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide—and the total amount of carbon equivalent in… [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study on LiveScience

“Nobody has looked at what happens to microbes when the permafrost thaws,” said Janet Jansson, a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. She led a study that recorded what happened when chunks of Alaskan permafrost thawed for the first time in 1,200 years. Read more on LiveScience [Read More]