GLBRC Data Sets

This Data Catalog is a collection of data from GLBRC's Sustainability research carried out in Michigan and Wisconsin. The Data Catalog summarizes each data table in order to allow the GLBRC community to better understand the data that have been collected and encourage collaboration.

The active fraction of soil organic carbon is an important component of soil health and often is quickly assessed as the pulse of CO2 released by re-wetting dried soils in short-term (24–72 h) assays.

Nutshells are the recalcitrant and membranous layers that encompass and provide protection to the seed of a fruit. Rich in lignin, these are often waste products of the food industry and are a potential energy-dense feedstock for biorefineries to convert to biofuels.

Adverse environmental conditions reduce crop productivity and often increase the load of unfolded or misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). This potentially lethal condition, known as ER stress, is buffered by the unfolded protein response (UPR), a set of signaling pathways designed to either recover ER functionality or ignite programmed cell death.

Plants and soil microorganisms interact closely in the rhizosphere where plants may exchange carbon (C) for functional benefits from the microbial community. For example, the bioenergy crop, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is thought to exchange root-exuded C for nitrogen (N) fixed by diazotrophs (free-living N-fixers).

Recent expansion of croplands in the United States has caused widespread conversion of grasslands and other ecosystems with largely unknown consequences for agricultural production and the environment. Here we assess annual land use change 2008–16 and its impacts on crop yields and wildlife habitat.

Stems of bioenergy sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench.), a drought‐tolerant C4 grass, contain up to 50 nodes and internodes of varying length that span 4–5 m and account for approximately 84% of harvested biomass. Stem internode growth impacts plant height and biomass accumulation and is regulated by brassinosteroid signaling, auxin transport, and gibberellin biosynthesis.

Long-term climate change and periodic environmental extremes threaten food and fuel security and global crop productivity.

The potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N₂O) is accumulating in the atmosphere at unprecedented rates largely due to agricultural intensification, and cultivated soils contribute ~60% of the agricultural flux.

Dollo’s law posits that evolutionary losses are irreversible, thereby narrowing the potential paths of evolutionary change. While phenotypic reversals to ancestral states have been observed, little is known about their underlying genetic causes.

Phylogenetic trees are essential for studying biology, but their reproducibility under identical parameter settings remains unexplored.

Bacterial promoters are often predicted by similarity to the Escherichia coli −10 and −35 consensus elements.

Ascomycota, the largest and most well-studied phylum of fungi, contains three subphyla: Saccharomycotina (budding yeasts), Pezizomycotina (filamentous fungi), and Taphrinomycotina (fission yeasts). Despite its importance, we lack a comprehensive genome-scale phylogeny or understanding of the similarities and differences in the mode of genome evolution within this phylum.

Microbiomes are vital to human health, agriculture, and protecting the environment. Predicting behavior of self-assembled or synthetic microbiomes, however, remains a challenge. In this work, we used unicellular and guild-based metabolic models to investigate the production of medium-chain fatty acids by a mixed microbial community that is fed multiple organic substrates.

Plant leaves harbor complex microbial communities that influence plant health and productivity. Nevertheless, a detailed understanding of phyllosphere community assembly and drivers is needed, particularly for phyllosphere fungi. Here, we investigated seasonal dynamics of epiphytic phyllosphere fungal communities in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), a focal bioenergy crop.

Serrulatane diterpenoids are natural products found in plants that have been characterized as having anti‐microbial properties and share a common diterpene backbone. One example, leubethanol from Texas sage (Leucophyllum frutescens) has demonstrated activity against multi‐drug‐resistant tuberculosis.

The alphaproteobacteria have metabolic activities and lifestyles of societal and industrial importance that differ from those in many other bacteria. Here we report the genome-wide identification of transcription start sites (TSSs) from two alphaproteobacteria grown under conditions that result in significant changes in gene expression.

AmeriFlux is a network of sites measuring ecosystem CO₂, water, and energy fluxes in North, Central, and South America supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

Allopolyploidy generates diversity by increasing the number of copies and sources of chromosomes. Many of the best-known evolutionary radiations, crops, and industrial organisms are ancient or recent allopolyploids. Allopolyploidy promotes differentiation and facilitates adaptation to new environments, but the tools to test its limits are lacking.

Biomanufacturing from renewable feedstocks can offset fossil fuel-based chemical production. One potential biomanufacturing strategy is production of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) from organic feedstocks using either pure cultures or microbiomes.