Terpenes play key roles in plant growth, defense, and environmental interactions. Terpenes are also economically important because of their use in industrial materials, pharmaceutical products, and as biofuel precursors. Collectively, hundreds of terpene compounds have been characterized from eucalypts, a group of 900 tree species belonging to the Myrtaceae (myrtle) family and containing the closely-related genera Angophora, Corymbia and Eucalyptus. As part of a proposal by the DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), the JGI worked on resequencing several eucalypt genomes to establish the feasibility of genome wide association studies for genetic traits that are desirable from a biofuels production perspective. By using genomic database alignment tools, researchers searched for TPS genes in the eucalypt Corymbia citriodora. Learn more on the JGI website.
Scientists Discover How to Protect Yeast from Damage in Biofuel Production
Some chemicals used to speed up the breakdown of plants for production of biofuels like ethanol are poison to the yeasts that turn the plant sugars into fuel. Researchers from the UW-Madison-based Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Joint BioEnergy Institute, and several Department of Energy National Laboratories have identified two changes to a single gene that can make yeast tolerate the pretreatment chemicals. They published their findings recently in the journal Genetics. To learn more read the University of Wisconsin-Madison news release.
Congratulations to Biosciences Area Director’s Award Recipients
Do Bacteria Ever Go Extinct? New Research Says Yes
Patrick Shih, Director of Plant Biosystems Design at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and faculty scientist with the Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology (EGSB) Division, collaborated with a team of researchers led by the University of British Columbia in a new study that has found that bacteria go extinct at substantial rates, although appear to avoid the mass extinctions that have hit larger forms of life on Earth. The finding contradicts widely held scientific thinking that microbe taxa, because of their very large populations, rarely die off. The study “Bacterial diversification through geological time,” published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution used massive DNA sequencing and big data analysis to create the first evolutionary tree encompassing a large fraction of Earth’s bacteria over the past billion years. To learn more read the University of British Columbia news release.
Meet the Summer 2018 Biosciences Interns!
This summer the Biosciences Area has hosted student interns ranging from high school- through graduate school-level. They came to our laboratories through a number of programs dedicated to training the next generation of scientists. Some of our interns took time from their busy summer to share with us highlights of their experiences in the Biosciences Area.
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