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Microbes as the unknown variable in thawing permafrost

Permafrost covers a quarter of the Earth’s land surface and stores significant amounts of carbon. As global temperatures rise and cause the frozen soils to thaw, so have concerns on the fate of the stored carbon and on the global climate. One of the recent studies that looked at this question was conducted by researchers… [Read More]

Permafrost soil metagenome study in Wired UK

As permafrost thaws, trapped frozen organic matter becomes accessible for microbes to degrade, releasing greenhouse gases as a byproduct. Understanding what sorts of microbes are in the ice is key to predicting the impact of the melting of permafrost soils.The US Department of Energy has teamed up with the Joint Genome Institute, the Earth Sciences Division of… [Read More]

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 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 UK Press Association

At the testing laboratories, US researchers extracted almost 40 billion elements of raw DNA, reflecting high microbial diversity in the soil.The scientists were also able to piece together the genetic code, or genome, of a previously unknown methane-producing “methanogen” that was present in large numbers. Reporting their findings in an early online edition of the journal… [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]