Soil microorganisms carry out important processes, including support of plant growth and cycling of carbon and other nutrients. However, the majority of soil microbes have not yet been isolated and their functions are largely unknown. Although metagenomic sequencing reveals microbial identities and...

The soil microbiome performs many functions that are key to ecology, agriculture, and nutrient cycling. However, because of the complexity of this ecosystem we do not know the molecular details of the interactions between microbial species that lead to these important functions. Here, we use a...

"Moisture modulates soil reservoirs of active DNA and RNA viruses" Soil is known to harbor viruses, but the majority are uncharacterized and their responses to environmental changes are unknown. Here, we used a multi-omics approach (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics) to detect...

Two factors that are well-known to influence soil microbiomes are the depth of the soil as well as the level of moisture. Previous works have demonstrated that climate change will increase the incidence of drought in soils, but it is unknown how fluctuations in moisture availability affect soil...

Human infections caused by viral pathogens trigger a complex gamut of host responses that limit disease, resolve infection, generate immunity, and contribute to severe disease or death. Here, we present experimental methods and multi-omics data capture approaches representing the global host...

A major challenge in biotechnology and biomanufacturing is the identification of a set of biomarkers for perturbations and metabolites of interest. Here, we develop a data-driven, transcriptome-wide approach to rank perturbation-inducible genes from time-series RNA sequencing data for the discovery...

The rhizosphere represents a dynamic and complex interface between plant hosts and the microbial community found in the surrounding soil. While it is recognized that manipulating the rhizosphere has the potential to improve plant fitness and health, engineering the rhizosphere microbiome through...

Agriculture is the largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG) production. Conversion of nitrogen fertilizers into more reduced forms by microbes through a process known as biological nitrification drives GHG production, enhances proliferation of toxic algal blooms, and increases cost of crop...

Metabolite exchange between plant roots and their associated rhizosphere microbiomes underpins plant growth promotion by microbes. Sorghum bicolor is a cereal crop that feeds animals and humans and is used for bioethanol production. Its root tips exude large amounts of a lipophilic benzoquinone...

Elmore JR, Dexter GN, Baldino H, Huenemann JD, Francis R, Peabody GL 5th, Martinez-Baird J, Riley LA, Simmons T, Coleman-Derr D, Guss AM, Egbert RG. High-throughput genetic engineering of nonmodel and undomesticated bacteria via iterative site-specific genome integration. Sci Adv. 2023 Mar 10;9(10)...

Christine H Chang, William C Nelson, Abby Jerger, Aaron T Wright, Robert G Egbert, Jason E McDermott, Snekmer: a scalable pipeline for protein sequence fingerprinting based on amino acid recoding, Bioinformatics Advances , Volume 3, Issue 1, 2023, vbad005, https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbad005...

"Visualizing the Hidden Half: Plant-Microbe Interactions in the Rhizosphere" Plant roots and the associated rhizosphere constitute a dynamic environment that fosters numerous intra- and interkingdom interactions, including metabolite exchange between plants and soil mediated by root exudates and the...