{"id":11776,"date":"2017-09-28T11:03:24","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T18:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/?p=11776"},"modified":"2017-10-16T13:34:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T20:34:20","slug":"examining-the-lifestyles-of-microbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/press\/examining-the-lifestyles-of-microbes\/","title":{"rendered":"Examining the lifestyles of microbes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Microbes are everywhere\u2014in humans they protect us from harmful bacteria and help us digest food; in soils, they provide nutrients and encourage growth of plants. Microbes even live in sediments below the seafloor where they play a key role in the underwater ecosystem.\u00a0Scientists are identifying and characterizing more\u00a0microbes\u00a0each year using DNA sequencing technologies. As each new species is sequenced, scientists add it to the microbial &#8220;tree of life,&#8221; creating a virtual census of what&#8217;s there.\u00a0Turns out it&#8217;s not an easy job. To put things in perspective, scientists aren&#8217;t sure how many microbes even exist. Estimates vary widely from millions to trillions.\u00a0University of Delaware professor <strong>Jennifer Biddle<\/strong> and <strong>Rosa Le\u00f3n-Zayas<\/strong>, who completed post-doctoral work at UD earlier this year, recently described new details about microbes known as Parcubacteria in a paper published in\u00a0<em>Environmental Microbiology<\/em>\u00a0[<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/1462-2920.13789\/abstract;jsessionid=EA7847D2F67FAB6392D70EA959F48AFF.f02t02\">C-DEBI Contribution 369<\/a>].\u00a0The Parcubacteria were found in sediment samples collected by James Cameron within the Challenger Deep region of the Mariana Trench during the Deepsea Challenge Expedition. Le\u00f3n-Zayas&#8217; doctoral advisor, Doug Bartlett at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, was a chief scientist on the expedition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microbes are everywhere\u2014in humans they protect us from harmful bacteria and help us digest food; in soils, they provide nutrients and encourage growth of plants. Microbes even live in sediments below the seafloor where they play a key role in the underwater ecosystem.\u00a0Scientists are identifying and characterizing more\u00a0microbes\u00a0each year using DNA sequencing technologies. As each&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41],"tags":[],"organization":[378],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11776"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11814,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11776\/revisions\/11814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11776"},{"taxonomy":"organization","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.darkenergybiosphere.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/organization?post=11776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}