With help from two DOE national user facilities ­– JGI and the Environmental Molecular Sciences – a team at the University of British Columbia has developed a math model that could help researchers and policy makers track the impact of climate change on the microbial networks that drive the world’s marine ecosystems. The model couples omic information and biogeochemical data from the Saanich Inlet ecosystem in British Columbia, Canada, which has long been used as an analog for studying oxygen minimum zones. Read more about the impact of this work, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, here.

The mutualistic relationship between tree roots and ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi has been shaping forest ecosystems since their inception. ECM fungi are key players supporting the growth, health and stress tolerance of forest trees globally, and help boost the productivity of bioenergy feedstock trees. To learn more about what characteristics are dominant in the most common ECM fungus Cenococcum geophilum, a team including researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) compared its genome with the genomes of two close relatives, neither of which are ECM fungi. They found specific adaptations in the Cenococcum genome that could help their hosts be more resistant to drought stress, a finding that could be useful in developing more plant feedstocks for bioenergy amidst the changing climate. The study was published date September 2 in Nature Communications. Read more at JGI News.