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“Bioprospecting Termites” at Spectre Footnotes

In 2005, the microbial ecologist Falk Warnecke, of the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute, traveled with researchers from Caltech and the San Diego biotech company Diversa to Costa Rica, where they opened up a termite nest in a tree. The group dissected 165 worker termites, freezing the contents of their third guts in liquid… [Read More]

Nikos Kyrpides and the GSC on GenomeWeb

Genomics “is now mature enough to go ahead and develop all the standards that would facilitate the comparisons across different groups more efficiently, such as standards in gene calling and annotation,” Kyrpides said. Standards development in the area of metadata “is one of the most intensely developing area under the auspices of GSC,” and he… [Read More]

T. reesei research on ISA’s InTech

During World War II, Trichoderma reesei frustrated American Army quartermasters in the South Pacific by speeding up the rate at which canvas supplies wore out. Now the same fungus is a key producer of industrial enzymes that break down biomass for biofuel production. In 50 short years, the fungus has gone from being the bane… [Read More]

T. reesei work on MycoRant

A recent post at sciencedaily.com, Fungal Map Of Mutations Key To Increasing Enzyme Production For Bioenergy Use, discussed once again the use of Trichoderma reesei as a possible biofuel producer. This time some work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was mentioned. “We want to understand the path that we’ve taken to high enzyme production… [Read More]

Shewanella research on Environmental Protection

Researchers have completed the first thorough, system-level assessment of the diversity of an environmentally important genus of microbes known as Shewanella. Microbes belonging to that genus are used to confine and clean up contaminated areas in the environment. The team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State University and the Pacific Northwest… [Read More]

Microbial genomics model on GenomeWeb

Scientists have come up with a way to determine whether marine microbes are specialized to grow in nutrient-rich or -poor environments based on their genomic content, according to a feature article scheduled to appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. An international research team sequenced and compared the genomes… [Read More]

Genomic model research on Huliq

Cavicchioli and his lab compared the traits of S. alaskensis‘ genome against the genome of Photobacterium angustum, a bacterium collected and sequenced from the warmer, nutrient-rich waters off Sydney, Australia. They then tested the model developed based on these two genomes to successfully predict whether several dozen bacterial samples were those that grow in nutrient-rich… [Read More]

Genomic model research on ScienceCentric

‘The method used by Cavicchioli’s group to predict bacterial habits lends credence to the idea that sequencing cultivated organisms is biased toward sequencing those that thrive in nutrient-rich conditions, even though those that get by in nutrient-poor conditions are more abundant in the environment,’ Kyrpides said. ‘Despite the number of microbial genome projects being done,… [Read More]

Genomic model research on The Medical News

With other UNSW and US colleagues, Professor Cavicchioli compared the genomes of two common ocean bacteria that employ different strategies for living: one lives in nutrient-rich waters and is fast to grow and replicate itself, and another lives in poor-nutrient waters, and grows more slowly. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National… [Read More]

Genomic model research on Xinhua

Sampling just a few genes can reveal not only the “lifestyle” of marine microbes but of their entire environments, new research suggests. The finding means researchers may be able to predict the types of microbes that thrive in specific marine environments by sampling the genomes of just a few dominant species, according to research co-author… [Read More]