Draft Genome Sequence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Strain Awamori Number 101, Commonly Used to Make Awamori, a Traditional Spirit, in Okinawa, Japan.

We report here the draft genome sequence for Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain Awamori number 101, an industrial strain used for producing awamori, a distilled alcohol beverage. It was constructed by assembling the short reads obtained by next-generation sequencing. The 315 contigs constitute an 11.

Potential for microbial H and metal transformations associated with novel bacteria and archaea in deep terrestrial subsurface sediments.

Geological sequestration in deep underground repositories is the prevailing proposed route for radioactive waste disposal. After the disposal of radioactive waste in the subsurface, H may be produced by corrosion of steel and, ultimately, radionuclides will be exposed to the surrounding environment. To evaluate the potential for microbial activities to impact disposal systems, we explored the microbial community structure and metabolic functions of a sediment-hosted ecosystem at the Horonobe Underground Research Laboratory, Hokkaido, Japan.

A new view of the tree of life.

The tree of life is one of the most important organizing principles in biology(1). Gene surveys suggest the existence of an enormous number of branches(2), but even an approximation of the full scale of the tree has remained elusive. Recent depictions of the tree of life have focused either on the nature of deep evolutionary relationships(3-5) or on the known, well-classified diversity of life with an emphasis on eukaryotes(6).

Microbial diversity and changes in the distribution of dehalogenase genes during dechlorination with different concentrations of cis-DCE.

A dechlorinating consortium (designated as TES-1 culture) able to convert trichloroethene (TCE) to ethene was established from TCE-contaminated groundwater. This culture had the ability of complete dechlorination of TCE within about one month. From the clone library analysis of 16S rRNA gene, this culture was mainly composed of fermentation bacteria, such as Clostridium spp.