Diatoms play a major role in ocean biogeochemical cycles and are important tools in bioengineering for natural products and nanotechnology. Diatoms and other algae growing at varying resource-limited growth rates allocate carbon to different metabolic pathways to optimize growth; however, the molecular mechanisms controlling these pathway gating strategies are not...
The chlamydiae are a family of obligate intracellular bacteria that have a unique bi-phasic developmental cycle, unique cellular properties, and a unique set of challenges to studying its biology. While genetic manipulation is becoming routine in Chlamydia, there are significant challenges to working with this intracellular parasite. The body of...
Historically, the difficulty of obtaining pure cultures of abundant marine
microbial plankton has an obstacle to reconstructing the underlying
mechanisms of biogeochemistry in the ocean. While a number of dominant
marine species from the ocean surface have been cultured, the dominant
microbial plankton of the dark ocean proved far more...
Pseudomonas is a diverse genus of Gamma proteobacteria that are ubiquitous in the natural environment, including soil, water, plant surfaces, and animals. The Pseudomonas fluorescens group is a diverse collection of seven subgroups and more than 50 named species. This group is known for their production of a variety of...
Members of the SAR11 clade of heterotrophic α-proteobacteria are ubiquitous and abundant in the world's oceans where they are thought to play a pivotal role in the global carbon cycle. The first SAR11 bacterium cultivated in vitro, 'Candidatus Pelagibacter ubique' HTCC1062 (Ca. P. ubique), was isolated by dilution into sterile...
Symbiosis is the close and protracted interaction between organisms. The molecular interactions that occur during symbiosis are complex with multiple barriers that must be overcome. Many Gram-negative, host-associated bacteria use a type III secretion system to mediate associations with their eukaryotic hosts. This secretion system is a specialized apparatus for...
Limnology is undergoing a transition to high-throughput -omic analysis of freshwater
bacterial communities. An important first step in making the transition is to
characterize several genomes that can be used as references to guide metagenome
assembly and analysis. Here I characterize four new freshwater cyanobacterial
genomes, a pair of lake...