Latest Metagenomics Stories

Research gives clearer picture of inhabitants living in ocean surface and gleans insights into how they adapt and survive ROCKVILLE, Md. and SAN DIEGO, Nov. 3, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit genomic research organization, published results today describing the sequencing and analysis of 137 marine microbial genomes living in the global ocean surface. The research was published by JCVI lead authors Shibu Yooseph and...

A University of Oklahoma technology"”GeoChip"”played a critical role in an intensive study of the dispersed oil plume that formed at a depth between 3,600 and 4,000 feet some 10 miles from BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.An OU research team led by Jizhong Zhou, director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics, developed the new generation GeoChip, which contributed to the findings of the study by simultaneously detecting more than 150,000 different functional...

Home to a diverse range of microorganisms, a healthy human body contains at least tenfold more bacteria cells than human cells. The most abundant and diverse microbial community resides in the intestine, and changes to the gut microbiota are linked with diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. In a report published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have analyzed the long-term effects of gut bacterial transplantation in rats, revealing crucial...

At birth, your body was 100-percent human in terms of cells. At death, about 10-percent of the cells in your body will be human and the remaining 90-percent will be microorganisms. That makes you a "supraorganism," and it is the interactions between your human and microbial cells that go a long way towards determining your health and physical well-being, especially your resistance to infectious diseases.To learn more about the community of symbiotic microbes that outnumber our own...

More than a thousand microbial genomes have been sequenced at various sequencing centers in the past 15 years to better understand their roles in tasks ranging from bioenergy to health to environmental cleanup. Conservative estimates suggest roughly 10,000 microbial genomes will be publicly available within the next two years, but genomic standards have not caught up with the technological advances that have made the sequencing process faster and cheaper. As a result, the torrent of DNA...

Diversity of human microbes greater than previously predictedThe Human Microbiome Project (HMP) on Thursday published an analysis of 178 genomes from microbes that live in or on the human body. The researchers discovered novel genes and proteins that serve functions in human health and disease, adding a new level of understanding to what is known about the complexity and diversity of these organisms.The human microbiome consists of all the microorganisms that reside in or on the human body....

Consortium Finds Greater Microbial Diversity in Human Microbiome than Previously Known ROCKVILLE, Md., May 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute, a not-for-profit genomic research organization, have published (along with other members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Jumpstart Reference Strains Consortium), a catalog of 178 microbial reference genomes isolated from the human body. Other members of the Consortium are: Baylor...

Microorganisms can indeed live in extreme environments, but the ones that do are highly adapted to survive and little else, according to a collaboration that includes Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the University of Oklahoma.The metagenomic study of a "stressed" microbial community in groundwater near a former waste disposal pond site on DOE's Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) revealed microbes with an overabundance of genes...

The thousands of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that live in our gut are essential contributors to our good health. They break down toxins, manufacture some vitamins and essential amino acids, and form a barrier against invaders. A study published today in Nature shows that, at 3.3 million, microbial genes in our gut outnumber previous estimates for the whole of the human body. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, working within the...

CARLSBAD, Calif., March 2 /PRNewswire/ -- MO BIO Laboratories, Inc., the leader in soil, water and microbial nucleic acid purification, announces the launch of two innovative new products, PowerBiofilm(TM) DNA Isolation Kit and PowerBiofilm(TM) RNA Isolation Kit. The PowerBiofilm(TM) kits are designed to isolate high-quality DNA or RNA from virtually any type of biofilm sample, from dental plaque to microbial mats. Biofilms are a ubiquitous form of microbial life in natural, industrial and...