Department Of Energy Joint Genome Institute Research Articles

Twenty-five years of Genomes OnLine Database (GOLD): data updates and new features in v.9.

The Genomes OnLine Database (GOLD) (https://gold.jgi.doe.gov/) at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE-JGI) continues to maintain its role as one of the flagship genomic metadata repositories of the world. The ever-increasing number of projects and metadata are freely available to the user community world-wide. GOLD's metadata is consumed by scientists and remains an important source for large-scale comparative genomics analysis initiatives. Encouraged by this active user engagement and growth, GOLD has continued to add new components and capabilities. The new features such as a public Application Programming Interface (API) and Ecosystem landing page as well as the growth of different entities in this current GOLD v.9 edition are described in detail in this manuscript.

Genome Sequence of Bacillus subtilis natto VK161, a Novel Strain That Produces Vitamin K2.

Bacillus subtilis strain natto VK161 was selected for its high production of vitamin K2 Its genome was sequenced and annotated in the Department of Energy-Joint Genome Institute (DOE-JGI) annotation pipeline. It resulted in a chromosome of 4,073,396 bp, which is composed of 4,332 protein-coding genes, 23 rRNA genes, and 77 tRNA genes.

The genome portal of the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute: 2014 updates

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a national user facility, serves the diverse scientific community by providing integrated high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis to enable system-based scientific approaches in support of DOE missions related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization. The JGI Genome Portal (http://genome.jgi.doe.gov) provides unified access to all JGI genomic databases and analytical tools. The JGI maintains extensive data management systems and specialized analytical capabilities to manage and interpret complex genomic data. A user can search, download and explore multiple data sets available for all DOE JGI sequencing projects including their status, assemblies and annotations of sequenced genomes. Here we describe major updates of the Genome Portal in the past 2 years with a specific emphasis on efficient handling of the rapidly growing amount of diverse genomic data accumulated in JGI.

The Fast Changing Landscape of Sequencing Technologies and Their Impact on Microbial Genome Assemblies and Annotation

BackgroundThe emergence of next generation sequencing (NGS) has provided the means for rapid and high throughput sequencing and data generation at low cost, while concomitantly creating a new set of challenges. The number of available assembled microbial genomes continues to grow rapidly and their quality reflects the quality of the sequencing technology used, but also of the analysis software employed for assembly and annotation.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn this work, we have explored the quality of the microbial draft genomes across various sequencing technologies. We have compared the draft and finished assemblies of 133 microbial genomes sequenced at the Department of Energy-Joint Genome Institute and finished at the Los Alamos National Laboratory using a variety of combinations of sequencing technologies, reflecting the transition of the institute from Sanger-based sequencing platforms to NGS platforms. The quality of the public assemblies and of the associated gene annotations was evaluated using various metrics. Results obtained with the different sequencing technologies, as well as their effects on downstream processes, were analyzed. Our results demonstrate that the Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing system, the primary sequencing technology currently used for de novo genome sequencing and assembly at JGI, has various advantages in terms of total sequence throughput and cost, but it also introduces challenges for the downstream analyses. In all cases assembly results although on average are of high quality, need to be viewed critically and consider sources of errors in them prior to analysis.ConclusionThese data follow the evolution of microbial sequencing and downstream processing at the JGI from draft genome sequences with large gaps corresponding to missing genes of significant biological role to assemblies with multiple small gaps (Illumina) and finally to assemblies that generate almost complete genomes (Illumina+PacBio).

The Genome Portal of the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute

The Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is a national user facility with massive-scale DNA sequencing and analysis capabilities dedicated to advancing genomics for bioenergy and environmental applications. Beyond generating tens of trillions of DNA bases annually, the Institute develops and maintains data management systems and specialized analytical capabilities to manage and interpret complex genomic data sets, and to enable an expanding community of users around the world to analyze these data in different contexts over the web. The JGI Genome Portal (http://genome.jgi.doe.gov) provides a unified access point to all JGI genomic databases and analytical tools. A user can find all DOE JGI sequencing projects and their status, search for and download assemblies and annotations of sequenced genomes, and interactively explore those genomes and compare them with other sequenced microbes, fungi, plants or metagenomes using specialized systems tailored to each particular class of organisms. We describe here the general organization of the Genome Portal and the most recent addition, MycoCosm (http://jgi.doe.gov/fungi), a new integrated fungal genomics resource.

The Eucalyptus grandisGenome Project: Genome and transcriptome resources for comparative analysis of woody plant biology

Background The International Year of Forests 2011 [http://www. un.org/en/events/iyof2011/] will be a milestone for forest tree genomics. The draft genome sequence of Eucalyptus grandis was released in January 2011 in the USA (Phytozome [http://www.phytozome.net]) and in Belgium (BOGAS, [http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be/webtools/bogas/]). The genome sequencing was funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and performed at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in collaboration with members of the Eucalyptus Genome Network (EUCAGEN, [http://www.eucagen.org]) who contributed genetic materials, linkage maps, EST resources and bioinformatics support. The E. grandis genome together with that of Populus trichocarpa[1]and other woody plant genomes recently completed (e.g. Vitis, Cacao, Prunus, Citrus and Malus)will provide excellent opportunities for comparative studies of the unique biology of woody plants. Eucalypts are currently the most widely grown hardwood fibre crop in the world and eucalypt breeding programs will benefit greatly from the new genomic resources. The reference genome sequence of Eucalyptus, a foundation tree genus in Australia comprising more than 70% of the native forest estate, will also offer important benefits for ecological and evolutionary biology studies. We report the sequencing, assembly and annotation of the E. grandis genome. Genome sequencing and assembly Whole-genome (8X) shotgun sequencing was performed for a partially inbred (S1), 17-year-old tree of E. grandis (est. genome size 640 Mbp, n = 11), BRASUZ1 (Suzano, Brazil). A total of 7.7 million Sanger reads (5.4 Gbp) were produced from plasmid, fosmid and BAC libraries. An inbred genotype was selected to circumvent perceived problems with the assembly of a highly heterozygous eucalypt genome. However, microsatellite genotyping showed that BRASUZ1 was much less homozygous than expected, with large parts of the genome remaining heterozygous presumably due to viability selection. This finding was confirmed during the assembly of the S1 genome approximately 25% of the assembly occurred in two haplotypes of 3-4X coverage, while the remainder of the genome assembled into a single haplotype of 6-7X coverage. Linkage maps with over 2400 DArT and microsatellite markers were subsequently used as a framework for the assembly of 11 large chromosome scaffolds. The chromosome scaffolds contained 88% (605 Mbp) of the draft assembly, with the remainder of the assembly sequence (85 Mbp) in 4941 smaller scaffolds. Based on similarity searches with 1.6 million ESTs from BRASUZ1, it was estimated that 96% of expressed gene loci were included in the 11 chromosome assemblies.

Incorporating Genomics and Bioinformatics across the Life Sciences Curriculum

Incorporating Genomics and Bioinformatics across the Life Sciences Curriculum

SoyDB: a knowledge database of soybean transcription factors.

BackgroundTranscription factors play the crucial rule of regulating gene expression and influence almost all biological processes. Systematically identifying and annotating transcription factors can greatly aid further understanding their functions and mechanisms. In this article, we present SoyDB, a user friendly database containing comprehensive knowledge of soybean transcription factors.DescriptionThe soybean genome was recently sequenced by the Department of Energy-Joint Genome Institute (DOE-JGI) and is publicly available. Mining of this sequence identified 5,671 soybean genes as putative transcription factors. These genes were comprehensively annotated as an aid to the soybean research community. We developed SoyDB - a knowledge database for all the transcription factors in the soybean genome. The database contains protein sequences, predicted tertiary structures, putative DNA binding sites, domains, homologous templates in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), protein family classifications, multiple sequence alignments, consensus protein sequence motifs, web logo of each family, and web links to the soybean transcription factor database PlantTFDB, known EST sequences, and other general protein databases including Swiss-Prot, Gene Ontology, KEGG, EMBL, TAIR, InterPro, SMART, PROSITE, NCBI, and Pfam. The database can be accessed via an interactive and convenient web server, which supports full-text search, PSI-BLAST sequence search, database browsing by protein family, and automatic classification of a new protein sequence into one of 64 annotated transcription factor families by hidden Markov models.ConclusionsA comprehensive soybean transcription factor database was constructed and made publicly accessible at http://casp.rnet.missouri.edu/soydb/.

Energy Department Expanding Microbial Genome Efforts

“Take off your ties,” decreed one official from the Department of Energy (DOE), mandating both informal dress and mood for the 2007 Joint Genomics: GTL Contractor-Grantee Workshop V and USDA-DOE Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy Joint Program Meeting that were held in Bethesda, Md., last February. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), whose programs continue to expand. Specifically of interest to microbiologists, JGI is plowing plenty of resources, enthusiasm, and energy into the analysis of microbial genomes.