fast.genomics: A Fast Comparative Genome Browser for Diverse Bacteria and Archaea - ENIGMA researchers have developed fast.genomics, a new tool which allows users to search for a protein and identify other proteins that share a common ancestor or are located in similar genomic regions. News Article →
Jinwoo Im is ENIGMA’s Third BioEPIC Virtual Research Slam Presenter - With anticipated occupancy early 2025, Berkeley Lab’s newest building Biological and Environmental Program Integration Center (BioEPIC), is located in the beautiful Berkeley hills overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. As part of Berkeley Lab’s Earth Month celebrations, a Research SLAM was hosted by Biosciences (BSA)… News Article →
Nuclear Waste Sites Yield Microbial Ecosystem Insights - In a flagship seven-year study, published this January in the journal Nature Microbiology, ENIGMA researchers explored how environmental stresses influence the composition and structure of microbial communities in the groundwater of the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), a former nuclear waste disposal site. News Article →
New Platform Explores Ecological Drivers of Change in Microbial Communities - ENIGMA researchers assess mechanisms for microbial taxa and community dynamics using process models. News Article →
Two model phages characterized by new CRISPR based technology extensible to diverse phages - ENIGMA researchers demonstrated for the first time that they can, on a genome-wide scale, identify phage genes that are essential (or not) to infecting bacteria, and then replace non-essential DNA with distinctive barcode tags. Their method could unlock potent biotechnology applications. News Article →
Mixed Nitrate and Metal Contamination Influences Operational Speciation of Toxic and Essential Elements - ENIGMA researchers compared the availability of elements in non-contaminated and acidic nitrate contaminated sediment and found that contamination impacted the bioavailability of essential elements. News Article →
To Study Competition and Cross-Feeding, Scientists Build Synthetic Microbiomes - A new study investigated complex interactions among four cross-feeding microorganisms in a synthetic community (SynCom) that converts cellulose to methane and carbon dioxide, paving the way toward a more predictive understanding of the impact of environmental perturbations on microbial interactions sustaining geochemically significant processes in natural systems. News Article →
Novel Protocol Leverages Automatic Liquid Transfer to Prepare Hundreds of Microbial Cell Cultures for Proteomic Analysis - ENIGMA researchers detailed a step-by-step protocol that consists of cell lysis in alkaline chemical buffer (NaOH/SDS) followed by protein precipitation with high-ionic strength acetone in 96-well format. This protocol, combined with previously established automated protein quantification and protein normalization protocols, provides a rapid, cost-effective method to prepare LC-MS… News Article →
Decomposition Decreases Molecular Diversity and Ecosystem Similarity of Soil Organic Matter - ENIGMA researchers collaborated with the Lehmann Lab at Cornell University to find that microbial decomposition drives significant variability in the molecular richness and diversity of soil organic matter between soil horizons and ecosystems. News Article →
Microbial Communities Vary Widely Underground, Even When Close - Study finds that geochemistry and hydrogeology can influence community type and function, even when those communities are only 10 cm apart. News Article →
Metal Contamination Causes Metabolic Stress in Environmental Bacteria - ENIGMA researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of Georgia discovered that mixed metal waste common to industrial dumping sites causes a distinctive physiological response in bacteria that does not occur during single metal exposure. News Article →
Multicopy suppressor screens reveal convergent evolution of single-gene lysis proteins - Using new barcoded screening technology, ENIGMA researchers uncovered genome-wide targets of diverse including single-stranded RNA-phages (ssRNA-phages)-derived protein antibiotics to efficiently identify the host mechanisms targeted in bacteriolysis. The novel approach could have significant applications for characterizing the hundreds of putative Sgl identified in genomic databases and recent studies. News Article →