Research Highlights
April 2005
Shewanella profiling paper appears in PNAS
Researchers within the U.S. Department of Energy's Shewanella Federation have implemented an integrative approach using experimental and computational analyses to provide more detailed insight into the function of genes in the Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 genome. This metabolically versatile organism can reduce a wide range of organic compounds, metal ions, and radionuclides. The paper describing their results appeared in the February 8 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The results presented in this paper represent an important step towards obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of microbial genomes and developing the ability to predict biological function from genome sequence.
Jim Fredrickson, a co-author on the paper and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory chief scientist, leads the Shewanella Federation is a multi-investigator and cross-institutional consortium formed to characterize and model the biology of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. The federation is funded by the DOE's Office of Biological and Environmental Research through their Genomics: Genomes to Life program. In addition to BIATECH, PNNL and Argonne National Laboratory, the Federation also includes teams led by study co-authors James M. Tiedje, Michigan State University; Kenneth H. Nealson, University of Southern California; and Monica Riley, Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole.
The paper's lead author is Eugene Kolker, BIATECH. Other contributing institutions include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the Wadsworth Center, and The Scripps Research Institute. The full article can be accessed at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/6/2099.