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Back To Sampling In The Black Sea and Rough Rough Weather
September 9th 2010 Hello everyone! I know it has been a long time since the last post from Sorcerer II. Let me take the time to explain…………..in early August we sailed to Greece. As I have mentioned in the past we have permits with each country to collect samples, these permits have certain time windows and other country specific stipulations. Once stipulation on the Greek permit was that for each Greek sample collected we must have a Greek collaborator onboard Sorcerer II. One...
10 Days of Italian Sampling Coming to a Close
Tuesday July 20th On July 16th we finished our Straits of Messina sampling and headed into the Ionian and Adriatic Seas. We sailed overnight and collected our Ionian Sea sample, we continued northeast and on July 18th we collected our Adriatic Sea sample. After we collected the Adriatic Sea sample we turned around and headed back to the Straits of Messina to resample the south entrance on July 19th. We proceeded through the straits...
Research Schooner Tara in San Diego Calls for Innovative Citizen Science and Oceanography 2.0
Sampling of ocean life is hindered by the extreme cost, limited logistical flexibility, and high carbon footprint of classical oceanographic research vessels. The Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) expedition aboard the Sorcerer II yacht (2004-2010) paved the way for a new brand of oceanography based on the use of sailing boats to obtain samples suitable for DNA sequencing analyses of plankton. The Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013) extended this concept and sampled eco-morpho-genetic data from...
Structural and functional diversity of the microbial kinome.
The eukaryotic protein kinase (ePK) domain mediates the majority of signaling and coordination of complex events in eukaryotes. By contrast, most bacterial signaling is thought to occur through structurally unrelated histidine kinases, though some ePK-like kinases (ELKs) and small molecule kinases are known in bacteria. Our analysis of the Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) dataset reveals that ELKs are as prevalent as histidine kinases and may play an equally important role in prokaryotic...
Complete Khoisan and Bantu genomes from southern Africa.
The genetic structure of the indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples of southern Africa, the oldest known lineage of modern human, is important for understanding human diversity. Studies based on mitochondrial and small sets of nuclear markers have shown that these hunter-gatherers, known as Khoisan, San, or Bushmen, are genetically divergent from other humans. However, until now, fully sequenced human genomes have been limited to recently diverged populations. Here we present the complete...
New Insights into the Genetic Basis of Monge's Disease and Adaptation to High-Altitude.
Human high-altitude (HA) adaptation or mal-adaptation is explored to understand the physiology, pathophysiology, and molecular mechanisms that underlie long-term exposure to hypoxia. Here, we report the results of an analysis of the largest whole-genome-sequencing of Chronic Mountain Sickness (CMS) and nonCMS individuals, identified candidate genes and functionally validated these candidates in a genetic model system (Drosophila). We used PreCIOSS algorithm that uses Haplotype Allele...
The dynamic genome of Hydra.
The freshwater cnidarian Hydra was first described in 1702 and has been the object of study for 300 years. Experimental studies of Hydra between 1736 and 1744 culminated in the discovery of asexual reproduction of an animal by budding, the first description of regeneration in an animal, and successful transplantation of tissue between animals. Today, Hydra is an important model for studies of axial patterning, stem cell biology and regeneration. Here we report the genome of Hydra...
Toward a cDNA map of the human genome.
Advances in the Human Genome Project are shaping the strategies for identifying the 50,000-100,000 human genes. High-resolution genetic maps of the human genome combined with sequencing herald an era of rapid regional definition of disease genes. However, only once their chromosome band location is known will the systematic partial sequencing of thousands of random cDNA clones provide the reagents for teh rapid assessment of the genes responsible for the inherited disorders. We now present...
Sequence and analysis of chromosome 1 of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
The genome of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana has five chromosomes. Here we report the sequence of the largest, chromosome 1, in two contigs of around 14.2 and 14.6 megabases. The contigs extend from the telomeres to the centromeric borders, regions rich in transposons, retrotransposons and repetitive elements such as the 180-base-pair repeat. The chromosome represents 25% of the genome and contains about 6,850 open reading frames, 236 transfer RNAs (tRNAs) and 12 small nuclear...
J. Robert Beyster and Life Technologies 2009-2010 Research Voyage Launch
After two years of intensive sampling in the waters off California and the west coast of the United States, the Sorcerer II Expedition embarked once again on March 21, 2009. Our destination: the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Seas. Funded by generous donations from the Beyster Family Foundation Fund of The San Diego Foundation and Life Technologies Corporation, the Sorcerer II Expedition will continue the metagenomic study of the microbiota living at or near the ocean’s surface (mostly...