“Viruses are critical components of every microbial ecosystem. The JGI is especially interested in developing standards for virus genomes because we generate much of this data ourselves,” said JGI research scientist and first author Simon Roux.
As more and more researchers continue to assemble new genome sequences of uncultivated viruses, JGI researchers led a community effort to develop guidelines and best practices for defining virus data quality.
The projects of 13 Biosciences Area scientists and engineers received funding through the FY18 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. These projects span a diverse array of topics and approaches including the study of microbiomes in relation to patterns of mutualism, crop productivity, and gut health; synthetic biology for engineering biosurfactant production and energy conversion pathways; and the application of technologies such as machine learning, high-resolution optical microscopy, and single-cell transcriptomics. Together, these efforts account for 18.75 percent of the $20 million allocated. Lab-wide, 74 projects were selected from a field of 215.
Using metagenome data sets collected over several years in northern freshwater lakes, a team led by researchers at Ohio State University and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) uncovered 25 novel sequences of virophages, parasites that live in giant viruses and use their machinery to replicate and spread. Virophages can alter the way viruses interact with other microbes, such as algae and cyanobacteria, which regulate the flow of carbon in freshwater lakes and help determine whether the bodies of water serve as sinks or sources for carbon. The identification of these novel sequences, reported in the October 11 issue of Nature Communications, doubles the number of virophages known since their discovery a decade ago. Read more on the JGI website..
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