BIOSphere

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News BIOSphere

• Rampant helper syndrome

  The Archaea are single-celled organisms and a domain unto themselves, quite apart from the so called eukaryotes, being bacteria and higher organisms. Many species live under extreme conditions, and carry out unique biochemical processes shared neither with bacteria nor with eukaryotes. Methanogenic more

• JGI Launches Community Sequencing Program

  WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - The Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is poised for a resounding response to the age-old question, "If we build it, will they come?" Already, collaborators are queuing up to take advantage of one of the world's most powerful DNA sequencing facilities for the more

• JFC - Jülich Fine Chemicals and Prokaria enter into strategic partnership on new enzymes for asymmetric reduction

  JFC - Jülich Fine Chemicals GmbH and Prokaria ehf today announced the signing of a partnership agreement. This strategic move brings together one of the world´s most diverse extreme ecosystems and the most interesting growth segment of chiral selective biosynthesis. Under the terms of the agreement more

White papers BIOSphere

• Characterizing Environments: Recent Discoveries Enabled by Metagenomic Analysis with the Genome Sequencer FLX System

  Metagenomics is the study of genomic content in a complex mixture of microorganisms. The two primary goals of this approach are to characterize the organisms present in a sample and identify what roles each organism has within a specific environment. Metagenomics samples are found nearly everywhere, including several microenvironments within the human body, soil samples, extreme environments such as deep mines, and the various layers within the ocean. Until recently, technical and economic constraints limited the depth of analysis necessary to obtain a representative picture of microbial and viral communities, their metabolic profiles, and their adaptation dynamics. Advancements in sequencing technologies, including the introduction of massively parallel pyrosequencing with the Genome Sequencer FLX System, have enabled a tremendous groundswell of research in the field of metagenomics. Dramatic improvements in throughput and the elimination of biased cloning steps have extended the field far beyond tradition more

Publications BIOSphere

• The Emergence of Environmental Homeostasis in Complex Ecosystems

  by James G. Dyke, Iain S. Weaver The Earth, with its core-driven magnetic field, convective mantle, mobile lid tectonics, oceans of liquid water, dynamic climate and abundant life is arguably the most complex system in the known universe. This system has exhibited stability in the sense of, bar a more

• Nanoscale analysis of pyritized microfossils reveals differential heterotrophic consumption in the ~1.9-Ga Gunflint chert [Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences]

  The 1.88-Ga Gunflint biota is one of the most famous Precambrian microfossil lagerstätten and provides a key record of the biosphere at a time of changing oceanic redox structure and chemistry. Here, we report on pyritized replicas of the iconic autotrophic Gunflintia–Huroniospora microfossil assemb more

• Used planet: A global history [Sustainability Science]

  Human use of land has transformed ecosystem pattern and process across most of the terrestrial biosphere, a global change often described as historically recent and potentially catastrophic for both humanity and the biosphere. Interdisciplinary paleoecological, archaeological, and historical studies more

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