When you hear about the biological processes that influence climate and the environment, such as carbon fixation or nitrogen recycling, it’s easy to think of them as abstract and incomprehensibly large-scale phenomena.
When you hear about the biological processes that influence climate and the environment, such as carbon fixation or nitrogen recycling, it’s easy to think of them as abstract and incomprehensibly large-scale phenomena. Yet parts of these planet-wide processes are actually driven by the tangible actions of organisms at every scale of life, beginning at the smallest: the microorganisms living in the air, soil, and water.
So, if you want to understand how an ecosystem – be it a tropical forest, an agricultural zone, or a watershed – will fare in the face of natural and human-induced changes, you need to understand what the microbes in that community are up to. But how do you examine the roles that a diverse group of creatures play if you can’t even see them without a microscope?
The best way to do this is to look at their genes, and researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new DNA analysis technique that reveals a very interesting, and previously hard-to-study, aspect of a microbial community’s genome.
As described in the journal mBio, a team led by Aindrila Mukhopadhyay has optimized existing methods to isolate plasmids – the small packages of DNA that enable microorganisms like bacteria to quickly acquire and share genes. Often, these DNA molecules, which are separate from the chromosomes, encode functions that can confer a survival advantage in certain situations.
Read more at DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Image: Research leader Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, left, and lead author of the paper, Ankita Kothari, right, in their lab. (Credit: Irina Nogueira Da Silva/Berkeley Lab)
