Office of
Biological and Environmental Research Weekly Report
May 5, 2008
BER Scientists
Receives Fulbright Senior Research Award.
Dr. Kenneth E. Hammel, research chemist at the U.S. Forest Service,
Forest Products Laboratory, Madison,
Wisconsin, and an associate
professor in the Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
has been named recipient of a Fulbright Senior Research Award by the
German-American Fulbright Program. Dr.
Hammel is supported by BER for imaging studies of the mechanisms used by
lignin-degrading fungi, a process directly relevant to the processing of
feedstocks into a chemical form that can be more easily converted into
biofuels. His award allows him to do
research that focuses on newly discovered fungal enzymes that have an important
role in carbon cycling in forest soils but he will continue to supervise studies
for BER. He will be working with
Professor Martin Hofrichter at the International
Graduate School
in Zittau, Germany.
Media Interest: No
Contact: Arthur Katz,
SC-23.2, (301) 903-4932
Bacteria
Can Eat as Well as Produce Antibiotics – Unexpected new microbial defensive
capabilities are emerging from genomic analyses of microbial diversity from the
Genomics:GTL program and genome sequencing projects at the DOE Joint Genome
Institute. Professor George Church and colleagues at the Harvard Medical
School Systems
Biology Center
report on yet another remarkable example of microbial adaptability in the April
4 issue of the journal Science.
It has long been recognized that bacteria living in soils fight to
maintain their territory by producing antibiotics against their competitors;
such antibiotics (such as streptomycin) have been widely used in medicine to
fight infection. In the course of
surveying soil microbes for useful capabilities in environmental remediation or
bioenergy production, the researchers discovered a further adaptation –some
microbes can eat their enemies’ ammunition. This means that the original
defensive purpose of these microbial antibiotics can be used as a dietary
source when other nutrients are lacking.
This new result may have implications for the general evolution of
antibiotic resistance of microbes in a variety of health and environmental
settings.
Media Interest: No
Contact:
Marvin Stodolsky, SC-23.2, (301) 903-4475