Catalog of candidate genes involved in plant-microbe relationships Published Dec. 18, 2017 in Nature Genetics, a team led by researchers at Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) have exploited a catalog of bacterial genomes to identify and characterize candidate genes that aid bacteria in adapting to plant environments, specifically genes involved in bacterial root colonization. This image depicts a phylogenetic tree of over 3,800 high quality and non-redundant bacterial genomes. Outer ring denotes the taxonomic group, central ring denotes the isolation source, and inner ring denotes the root-associated genomes within plant-associated genomes. Taxon names are color-coded based on phylum: green - Proteobacteria, red - Firmicutes, blue -Bacteroidetes, purple - Actinobacteria. Credit: Asaf Levy, JGI As the global population rises, estimated to hit nearly 10 billion by 2050, so does the need to ...