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DOE JGI finishes 100th microbial genome

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Microbes, thriving in even the world's most extreme environments, are capable of performing myriad biological functions, learned over the billions of years they have inhabited the planet. On May 23, at the general meeting of the American Society of Microbiology (ASM), the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) will announce that it has finished the sequence of100 microbial genomes and released this information for the benefit of the global research community.

Funder: US Department of Energy's Office of Science
Meeting: 106th American Society for Microbiology General Meeting

Nanotube membranes open possibilities for cheaper desalinization

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Business Announcement

A nanotube membrane on a silicon chip the size of a quarter may offer a cheaper way to remove salt from water. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have created a membrane made of carbon nanotubes and silicon that may offer, among many possible applications, a less expensive desalinization.

Journal: Science

A ruler to measure the universe

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, including principal authors now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have published the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever constructed, a wedge-shaped slice of the cosmos that encompasses 600,000 uniquely luminous red galaxies and extends 40 percent of the way back in time to the Big Bang. Large-scale structures repeating every 450 million light years confirm the accelerating expansion of the universe due to dark energy.

Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, NASA, Monbukagakusho, National Science Foundation, Higher Education Funding Council England, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Max Planck Society, SDSS Participating Institutions

Screening tool to help detect explosives nets technology transfer award for LLNL researchers

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Business Announcement

Airport screeners, military personnel and others have a new ally in the war against terrorism – a portable, sensitive and accurate explosives detector developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers.

Researchers tie metal's strength to three line defects

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lab researchers have discovered that three is the magic number when it comes to strengthening metals. Since the Iron Age, metallurgists have known that metals such as steel become stronger and harder the more you hit (or beat) on them. But it wasn't always clear why this happened. Vasily Bulatov and colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discovered that the common explanation for this hardening process ignored a key component.

Journal: Nature

Revealing the secrets of WRN

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Scripps Research Institute have determined the structure and biochemistry of the exonuclease domain of WRN, a protein that protects humans from premature aging and cancer. Mutated WRN causes Werner's syndrome, which shows few signs until its victims are in their 20s, then causes rapid aging and often cancer. Understanding how the normal WRN protein works could lead to new forms of treatment for cancer and age-related pathologies.

Journal: Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
Funder: NIH/National Cancer Institute, DOE/US Department of Energy

Cell surface profiling technique could yield cancer blood test

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A chemical profiling technique that has potential for detecting the onset of cancer at the cellular level has been developed by scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: National Institutes of Health

Scientists discover second known blue ring in solar system

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Blue may be a color that most of us can feel, but the solar system's seventh planet is feeling it, too – in its outermost ring.

Journal: Science

MINOS experiment sheds light on mysterious neutrinos

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have successfully observed the transformation of neutrinos – a particle that is relatively massless, has no electric charge, yet is fundamental to the structure of the universe – from one type to another.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

DOE JGI releases experimental metagenomics data management & analysis system

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

To tackle the computational challenges of analyzing the complex world of microbial communities, the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) has released to the worldwide research community IMG/M, an experimental metagenome data management and analysis system.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy
Meeting: DOE Joint Genome Institute Annual Users Meeting