To engineer yeast to do more, and understand genomes in general, Jef Boeke, Weimin Zhang (NYU Langone Health) and Leslie Mitchell (Neochromosome) have worked to replace yeast’s native chromosomes with synthetic versions. This project has turned out to be an international collaboration, with some artistic endeavors along the way. Eventually, the goal is to create an entirely human-generated yeast genome.

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• Submit your own proposal to work with the JGI
• Join us at the 2024 JGI User Meeting

• Episode Transcript
• Paper: Manipulating the 3D organization of the largest synthetic yeast chromosome
• NYU Release: Researchers Assemble Nine Synthetic Yeast Chromosomes

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Three stories of JGI-supported research, connected to nutrient cycles. Francis Martin and Lucas Auer discuss their work on communities of forest floor fungi. Allison Joy looks into seagrass meadows' carbon sequestration with insights from Adam Healey and Xiao Ma. And Karen Serrano and Benjamin Cole explain their research on the symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plant roots.

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• Submit your own proposal to work with the JGI
• Join us at the 2024 JGI User Meeting
• Episode Transcript

• Feature: Getting to the Bottom of Fungal Functions Across Earth’s Forests
• Paper: Metatranscriptomics sheds light on the links between the functional traits of fungal guilds and ecological processes in forest soil ecosystems

• Feature: Eelgrass proves to be much younger than we thought
• Paper: Ocean current patterns drive the worldwide colonization of eelgrass (Zostera marina)
• Paper: Seagrass genomes reveal ancient polyploidy and adaptations to the marine environment

• Feature: An Inside Look at How Plants and Mycorrhizal Fungi Cooperate
• Paper: Spatial co-transcriptomics reveals discrete stages of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis

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Rainforests store a big fraction of all the carbon on Earth, and soil microbes play a key role in pulling that carbon out of the atmosphere. This episode, researchers take a look at what happens to that storage when a rainforest hits a drought. Tag along with their experiments in a fully enclosed, human-made ecosystem: Biosphere 2.

Links from this episode:

• Submit your own proposal to work with the JGI
• Join us at the 2024 JGI User Meeting
• FICUS program

• Episode Transcript
• Paper: Drought re-routes soil microbial carbon metabolism towards emission of volatile metabolites in an artificial tropical rainforest https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-023-01507-7

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• Twitter: @JGI
• Email: jgi-comms at lbl dot gov