The US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute is in the process of hiring about 20 new staffers who will help analyze the growing amount of data it is generating through its sequencing activities. JGI, which is headquartered in Walnut Creek, Calif., says some of the new staffers will hold positions within its separate plant,…
Shewanella research on ScienceDaily
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 frequently participate in bioremediation by confining and cleaning up contaminated areas in the environment. The team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State University and the…
T. reesei research a DOE National Impact story
In 2008, scientists funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) mapped the genome of this important organism using the Army reference strain. According to Eddy Rubin, DOE JGI Director in 2008 interview, “the genome of T. reesei provides us with a roadmap…
Cheryl Kerfeld at iPlant Genomics Education Conference
We learned about many kinds of annotation projects. Charles Hardnet from Spelman College showed electron micrographs of the phage that his students isolated and annotated through their school’s partnership with HHMI. For the bacterial projects, Derek Wood, Brad Goodner, Daniel Rhoades, and Steve Slater from colleges across the US described a joint endeavor where students…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…