Researchers have studied both sides of plant-fungi symbiosis in one of the first cross-kingdom spatially-resolved transcriptomics studies to date.
Getting to the Bottom of Fungal Functions Across Earth’s Forests
Researchers have pioneered new understanding of which fungi take on certain functions at the forest floor. For the first time, they compared three different fungal guilds in a range of different locations. They sampled soils in four forest ecosystems, extracted RNA to understand gene expression, and developed new tools to map that soil RNA to fungal genomes.
Cracking Sugarcane’s Genetic Code
Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants. Exploring sugarcane’s genetic code could help researchers develop more resilient and productive crops, with implications for both sugar production and biofuels
Finding the Fermenters
Most organisms use oxygen to convert food into energy. However, in environments with little or no oxygen, life had found other ways to produce energy, using a process called fermentation. To better understand the range of bacteria and archaea that rely on this form of metabolism, researchers at UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara recently compiled a list of with more than 8,300 organisms from multiple sources, including the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase). The researchers also built an interactive browser that allows other researchers to study the genomes and predict the metabolic abilities of microbes that are likely to thrive in environments with little or no oxygen.
Giant Bacteria Genome Yields Clues to How it Meets its Energy Needs
The Biosciences Area’s Nathalie Elisabeth and Jean-Marie Volland collaborated on a study led by researchers from Cornell that produced the first full genome of a species of giant bacteria. Members of the Epulopiscium genus, the largest known heterotrophic bacteria, are a million times larger than E. coli. They live in the guts of tropical marine fish, an environment rich in sodium, which the team’s analysis suggests the bacteria use, along with polysaccharides from their host’s diet, to meet their outsize energy requirements.
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