genomics Archives

Microscope image of the multicellular alga Streptosarcina arenaria, another terrestrial alga, which inhabits dry and tropical areas. (scale is 10 µm, corresponding to 0.01 mm) Photo: Tatyana Darienko

Complex Green Organisms Emerged A Billion Years Ago

by Keith CowingJanuary 24, 2024January 23, 2024

Of all the organisms that photosynthesize, land plants have the most complex bodies. How did this morphology emerge? A team of scientists led by the University of Göttingen has taken […]

A photograph of the tardigrade Ramazzottius varieornatus, in the center of a phylogeny of CAHS, the largest of the six desiccation-related protein families analyzed in this study. CREDIT Kazuharu Arakawa, Keio Institute of Advanced Biosciences

Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Radiation, Status Report, Tardigrades

Tardigrade Genomes Reveal The Secrets Of Extreme Survival

by Keith CowingJanuary 22, 2024January 22, 2024

Tardigrades may be nature’s ultimate survivors. While these tiny, nearly translucent animals are easily overlooked, they represent a diverse group that has successfully colonized freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments on […]

A portion of Earth's global ocean -- NASA

Commercial & Private Sector, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Nomenclature, Systematics, Natural History, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Documenting Life On Our Water Planet: The Global Ocean Gene Catalog 1.0

by Keith CowingJanuary 22, 2024February 16, 2024

Editor’s note: we will soon begin to explore the oceans of Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, and other worlds in our solar system – and eventually, worlds circling other stars. We’ll be […]

Tardigrade observed using a confocal fluorescent microscope. The tardigrade was overexposed to 5-MF, a cysteine selective fluorescent probe, that allows for visualization of internal organs. CREDIT Smythers et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0

Biophysics, Cryobiology, Microbiology & Virology, Press Release, Tardigrades

Molecular Sensor Enables Water Bear Hardiness By Triggering Dormancy

by Keith CowingJanuary 22, 2024January 22, 2024

Tardigrades – hardy, microscopic animals commonly known as “water bears” – use a molecular sensor that detects harmful conditions in their environment, telling them when to go dormant and when […]

NASA astronaut and Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Jasmin Moghbeli sequences DNA samples for the BioMole study -- NASA

Commercial & Private Sector, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Life Support Systems, Microbiology & Virology, Missions & Hardware, Space Life Science, Space Stations, Status Report, Tricorders & Sensors

Offworld Life Science: Sequencing DNA Samples On ISS For The BioMole Study

by Keith CowingJanuary 13, 2024January 13, 2024

NASA astronaut and Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Jasmin Moghbeli sequences DNA samples for the BioMole study demonstrating hardware that can analyze microbes to protect crew health and spacecraft life support […]

Number of true genera (blue) vs. the number of genera identified by seven clustering algorithms, for each environment category in the Temperature Dataset (left), respectively the pH Dataset (right). Only true genera that are represented by more than two sequences in the respective dataset (Temperature or pH) are considered, and only clusters meeting the quality criteria are counted. -- Scientific Reports

Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Fossils & Paleontology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Nomenclature, Systematics, Natural History, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release

New Dimensions Of Extremophile Genomes Discovered

by Keith CowingJanuary 12, 2024January 12, 2024

It has long been thought that an organism’s DNA provides clues only about its ancestry and how the various forms of life on Earth are related – the more similar […]

A hypothetical evolutionary scenario of the origin and fold switch of ribosom protein msL1/msL2. The Sewall Wright’s adaptive fitness landscape shows a possible order o events in which degeneration of rRNA in microsporidian species was compensated by the orig and subsequent evolution of a new ribosomal protein. In this hypothetical order of event microsporidian species have undergone a progressive reduction of their ribosomal RNA, whic was likely caused by the accumulation of deleterious mutations in microsporidian genomes du to frequent genetic drifts. Then a new protein msL1 could originate through the spontaneous d novo birth of a gene that was retained in microsporidia due to its ability to counterbalance th rRNA reduction. As rRNA continued to evolve and reduce in size, protein msL1 then underwe a fold switch to yield protein msL2, which three-dimensional structure allowed msL2 to regain i high affinity to its further reduced binding site (rRNA helix H52). -- biorxiv.org

Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report

A Conserved Ribosomal Protein Has Entirely Dissimilar Structures In Different Organisms

by Keith CowingJanuary 11, 2024January 10, 2024

Ribosomes from different species can markedly differ in their composition by including dozens of ribosomal proteins that are unique to specific lineages but absent in others. However, it remains unknown […]

Citizen Science / Open Science, Courses, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Status Report

NASA GeneLab For High Schools Summer 2024

by Keith CowingJanuary 10, 2024January 22, 2025

We are pleased to announce that we will be holding the program virtually once again for the summer of 2024 to increase national participation in this growing program for high […]

The fitness landscape of our system. (A) the threedimensional plot and (B) the heatmap of the fitness m∗ /m∗ coop of the cooperative state in our system as a function of the catalytic cleavage rate enhancement β/β0 and elongation asymmetry λ. The co-evolution of λ and β would increase together. A typical evolutionary trajectory in which small changes in these parameters are independent of each other is shown as a dashed line. -- biorxiv.org

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report

Emergence Of Catalytic Function In Prebiotic Information-coding Polymers

by Keith CowingJanuary 10, 2024January 10, 2024

Life as we know it relies on the interplay between catalytic activity and information processing carried out by biological polymers.

Comparative gene expression during cloudy and clear conditions: (A) RNA-to-DNA concentration ratio for clouds and clear atmospheric conditions; dots indicate individual samples, and boxplots display medians, 25th and 75th percentiles, and whiskers 1.5 interquartile ranges; ** indicates highly significant difference, highlighting the relatively higher total RNA concentration in clouds (Mann-Whitney test, p-value=0.004); (B) Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) polygons based on the 21,046 functional gene entries in MGs and MTs, illustrating the distinction between MGs and MTs, and the differences between MTs during cloudy and clear conditions; (C) volcano plot representing differential gene expression between atmospheric conditions, with genes significantly overexpressed in and outside clouds in blue and red, respectively; grey dots represent genes whose expression level is not affected; dashed lines represent significance thresholds; DEA coefficient: Differential Expression Analysis (DEA) coefficient, from the MTXmodel R package (78); this illustrates that overexpression of distinct genes depends on the atmospheric condition; (D) numbers of overrepresented Gene Ontology terms (GOs) derived from gene annotations during cloudy and clear conditions, in blue and red, respectively, referring to their classification as Biological Processes (BP), Cellular Components (CC) and Molecular Functions (MF). A number of biological functions are overexpressed in clouds compared with clear conditions. -- biorxiv.org

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biophysics, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Venus

Clouds, Oases For Airborne Microbes – Differential Metagenomics/ Metatranscriptomics Analyses Of Cloudy And Clear Atmospheric Situations

by Keith CowingJanuary 10, 2024January 10, 2024

Editor’s note: with recent speculation about the potential habitability of the clouds of Venus and the long-hypothesized notion of airborne life forms on Saturn and Jupiter these studies from Earth […]