Microbial ecology of four coral atolls in the Northern Line Islands.

Microbes are key players in both healthy and degraded coral reefs. A combination of metagenomics, microscopy, culturing, and water chemistry were used to characterize microbial communities on four coral atolls in the Northern Line Islands, central Pacific. Kingman, a small uninhabited atoll which lies most northerly in the chain, had microbial and water chemistry characteristic of an open ocean ecosystem.

Facile approach for constructing TEV insertions to probe protein structure in vivo.

The tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease has been used as a tool to examine protein structure in vivo. TEV cleavage sites (TEVcs) have been introduced via cloning into unique restriction sites or random transposon mutagenesis. We describe a facile, efficient method for introducing TEVcs at precise locations in a gene to test specific predictions about protein structure.