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Wealth of Unsuspected New Microbes Expands Tree of Life1 min read

by Maryann Villavert on April 11, 2016

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Geochemistry Department In The Press Publication

ToL-TABL-16-0411
The Tree of Life, which depicts how life has evolved and diversified on the planet, is getting a lot more complicated.

UC Berkeley researchers, who have discovered more than a thousand new types of bacteria and Archaea over the past 15 years lurking in Earth’s nooks and crannies, have rejiggered the tree to account for the microscopic new life forms. The new tree, published online in the journal Nature Microbiology, reinforces once again that the life we see around us – plants, animals, humans and other so-called eukaryotes – represent a tiny percentage of the world’s biodiversity.

The work was led by Jill Banfield, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division and a UC Berkeley professor in the departments of earth and planetary science and environmental science, policy and management.

The research was supported primarily by Berkeley Lab’s Genomes to Watershed Scientific Focus Area. Metagenomic sequencing was carried out at the Joint Genome Institute.

“The Tree of Life is one of the most important organizing principles in biology,” said Banfield in a UC Berkeley news release. “The new depiction will be of use not only to biologists who study microbial ecology, but also biochemists searching for novel genes and researchers studying evolution and earth history.”

Go here to read the UC Berkeley news release.

This post prepared by Dan Krotz

News & Events

EGD Postdoc Fellow Receives Young Researcher Presenter Award1 min read

January 21, 2021

Pramod Bhuvankar, an EGD postdoctoral fellow working with research scientist Abdullah Cihan, received a Young Researcher Presenter Award during the 2020 Computational Methods in Water Resources conference in December. His presentation, “Pore-scale simulations of permeability decline in porous media due to fines migration,” described a pore-scale CFD study of clay mobilization in porous media due…

Berkeley Lab Partners with International Collaborators in Geothermal Energy Research1 min read

January 20, 2021

  Scientists from the Energy Geosciences Division have begun working with European partners on three new geothermal research projects through the Department of Energy’s membership in GEOTHERMICA, a transnational consortium that combines the in-country financial resources and research expertise of 15 participating countries to demonstrate and validate novel concepts in geothermal energy use. This marks the…

EESA Senior Scientist Talks Earthquake Building Resilience1 min read

Berkeley Lab senior scientist David McCallen leads a subproject called Earthquake Sim, or EQSIM, for the DOE’s Energy Exascale Computing Project. He is also professor and director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. McCallen recently spoke with Scott Gibson of…

EESA Scientist Coauthors New Comprehensive Guide on Removing CO2 from the Atmosphere2 min read

January 18, 2021

Berkeley Lab researchers are working on ways to sequester more carbon in soil, including through agricultural practices. (Credit: Berkeley Lab) Scientists say that any serious plan to address climate change should include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies and policies, which makes the newly launched CDR Primer an especially vital resource, says Berkeley Lab scientist Margaret Torn, one…

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