Baking sourdough bread requires a starter, and so do mammalian guts, which are first colonized by microbial communities from the mother and then acquire more microbes over time. These gut microbial communities are important for maintaining health and combating disease, and it’s why the Human Microbiome Project launched by the National Institutes of Health in…
DNA Sequencing at the JGI on PhysicsToday blog
According to the Department of Energy, 200 million base pairs were sequenced for all genome projects in the whole of 1998. By 2003 one large project alone, the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI), sequenced some 1.5 billion bases in a month. If the march of DNA sequencing had been increasing according to Moore’s law, then,…
JGI-Murdoch University rhizobial project
Rhizobia are soil bacteria that can form a symbiotic relationship with legumes such as common domesticated crops such as peas, beans or clovers. These symbiotic bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen inside nodules formed on the legume roots contributing around 65% of the nitrogen currently used in agricultural production. A joint venture has been established between the…
Methanotroph Methylosinus trichosporium
Considered the second most important greenhouse gas, methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane-oxidizing bacteria called methanotrophs help reduce levels of atmospheric methane. To better understand the bacteria involved in the global methane cycle, the DOE JGI sequenced, assembled and annotated the genome of Methylosinus trichosporium OB3b. The project was led by…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…