Archive

All JGI Features
Home › Items tagged with: biomass

Content Tagged "biomass"

Foxtail millet project in GenomeWeb Daily News

From Genomics in the Journals: “Bennetzen and colleagues from the University of Georgia, the HudsonAlpha Institute, the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute, and elsewhere used Sanger sequencing complemented by high-throughput sequencing methods to generate a high-quality, 400 million base reference genome for foxtail millet. “ Read more at GenomeWeb Daily News [Read More]

An alternative surrogate for gene discovery in switchgrass

Selected for the DOE JGI 2007 Community Sequencing Program because of traits such as high yield, perennial growth and low nutrient requirements, switchgrass is a promising candidate bioenergy crop that could be used to develop cellulosic biofuels. One of the challenges with sequencing switchgrass is the fact that it is a polyploid, containing multiple, full… [Read More]

White rot fungal genomics analysis on EcoSeed

Scientists at the Energy Department’s Joint Genome Institute are comparing the genetic structure of two strains of white rot fungi in order to develop better enzymes for biofuel production.White rot fungi digest moist wood, causing it to rot and decay. These fungi possess natural enzymes that break down the cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin of plant… [Read More]

Searching for the basis of ligninolytic selectivity

Many fungal genome projects being carried out at the DOE JGI focus on understanding how enzymes can break down cellulose and lignin, the two most abundant biopolymers on Earth, in order to harness these capabilities for industrial applications such as biofuels production. Scanning electron micrograph of Ceriporiopsissubvermispora mycelium on wood.  (Robert Blanchette, University of Minnesota)… [Read More]

Elucidating bacteria’s roles in ant fungal gardens

Leafcutter ants cultivate fungal gardens that serve as their primary food source. Working toward the goal of harnessing novel enzymes for breaking down plant biomass to produce cellulosic biofuels, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) researchers have been studying the process by which the fungi break down the plant leaves harvested by the ants and… [Read More]

Dietary impacts on hoatzin crop microbial communities

Many DOE JGI metagenomic projects focus on microbial communities in the guts of the cow, termite and even the desert locust, all known to break down plant biomass for energy. In studying these and other gut microbial communities, researchers hope to identify and isolate genes involved in plant biomass degradation, and apply them to biofuel… [Read More]

The role of hydrophobins in plant-fungal mutualism

To get an idea of the importance of mutualistic relationships between plants and fungi, consider that a third of the carbon sequestered in the soil of boreal forests are composed of the wood residues after the fungi break down the cellulose. Maintaining the interface between the fungi and their hosts is the job of small… [Read More]

A toolkit for T. reesei

The availability of an organism’s genome sequence is useful for improving downstream applications such as large-scale biofuel production, but it is only the first step on this path. In the case of the fungus Trichoderma reesei, whose genome sequence was published by the DOE JGI in 2008, the cellulases in T. reesei have multiple industrial… [Read More]

Spider mite genome project in CBC News

“They can change the repertoire [of genes] that they’re using in order to be able to feed on hosts that they would not be adapted to,” said Miodrag Grbic, a University of Western Ontario biologist, who led an international project to sequence the spider mite’s genome. The results were published this week in the journal… [Read More]