COBRA improves the completeness and contiguity of viral genomes assembled from metagenomes

LX Chen, JF Banfield - Nature Microbiology, 2024 - nature.com
Viruses are often studied using metagenome-assembled sequences, but genome
incompleteness hampers comprehensive and accurate analyses. Contig Overlap Based Re …

Widespread extracellular electron transfer pathways for charging microbial cytochrome OmcS nanowires via periplasmic cytochromes PpcABCDE

PC Portela, CC Shipps, C Shen, V Srikanth… - Nature …, 2024 - nature.com
Extracellular electron transfer (EET) via microbial nanowires drives globally-important
environmental processes and biotechnological applications for bioenergy, bioremediation …

Complete genomes of Asgard archaea reveal diverse integrated and mobile genetic elements

LE Valentin-Alvarado, LD Shi, KE Appler… - Genome …, 2024 - genome.cshlp.org
Asgard archaea are of great interest as the progenitors of Eukaryotes, but little is known
about the mobile genetic elements (MGEs) that may shape their ongoing evolution. Here, we …

Methanotrophic Methanoperedens archaea host diverse and interacting extrachromosomal elements

LD Shi, J West-Roberts, MC Schoelmerich… - Nature …, 2024 - nature.com
Methane emissions are mitigated by anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea, including
Methanoperedens. Some Methanoperedens host huge extrachromosomal genetic elements …

Giant genes are rare but implicated in cell wall degradation by predatory bacteria

J West-Roberts, L Valentin-Alvarado, S Mullen… - BioRxiv, 2023 - biorxiv.org
Across the tree of life, gene lengths vary, but most are no more than a few thousand base
pairs in length. The largest protein often reported is the∼ 40,000 aa eukaryotic Titin. Even …

Convergent evolution of viral-like Borg archaeal extrachromosomal elements and giant eukaryotic viruses

J Banfield, LE Valentin-Alvarado, LDE Shi… - bioRxiv, 2024 - biorxiv.org
Borgs are huge extrachromosomal elements of anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea. They
exist in exceedingly complex microbiomes, lack cultivated hosts and have few protein …

Ultrahigh-mobility microbial cytochrome nanowires generate power from humidity

P Dahl, Y Gu, C Shipps, V Batista, N Malvankar - 2024 - researchsquare.com
Mixed electronic-ionic conductors are crucial for various technologies, including harvesting
power from humidity in a durable, self-sustainable, manner unrestricted by location or …