Engineering topics

Glass, Jennifer

Publications and source records attributed to Glass, Jennifer.

4 records

DOE OSTI2025

From genes to function: regulation, maturation, and evolution of cytochrome c nitrite reductase in nitrate reduction to ammonium

ABSTRACT The dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium pathway converts nitrate to ammonium, a vital reaction in the global nitrogen cycle. The second step of the pathway is performed by cytochromecnitrite reductase (NrfA), a soluble, periplasmic cytochrome responsible for the reduction of nitrite to ammonium. The pentaheme NrfA catalyzes this six-electron and eight-proton reduction of nitrite at a single active site with the help of its quinol oxidase partners. In this review, we discuss our current understanding of (i) the structure, homology, and evolution of both NrfA and its redox partners, (ii) the regulation of thenrfoperon, and (iii) the maturation of NrfA proteins via unique cytochrome maturation pathways.

Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology↗

DOE OSTI2025

Microfluidic droplets with amended culture media cultivate a greater diversity of soil microorganisms

ABSTRACT Uncultivated but abundant soil microorganisms have untapped potential for producing broad ranges of natural products, as well as for bioremediation. However, cultivating soil microorganisms while maintaining a broad microorganism diversity to enable phenotyping and functional analysis of as diverse individual isolates as possible remains challenging. In this study, we developed and tested the ability of several culture media formulations that contain defined soil metabolites or soil extracts to maintain microorganism diversity during culture. We also assessed their performance in microfluidic droplet cultivation where single-soil microorganism isolates were encapsulated and cultivated in picoliter-volume water-in-oil emulsion droplets to enable clonal growth needed for downstream functional analyses. Our results show that droplet cultivation with media supplemented by soil extract or soil metabolites enables the recovery of soil microorganisms with higher diversity (up to 1.5-fold higher richness) compared to bulk cultivation methods. Importantly, 1.7-fold more of less abundant (<1%) phyla and 11-fold more of unique genera were recovered, demonstrating the utility of this method for interrogating highly diverse soil microorganisms for broad ranges of applications. IMPORTANCE Although soil microorganisms hold a significant value in bioproduction and bioremediation, only a small fraction—less than 1%—can be cultured under specific media and cultivation conditions. This indicates that there are ample opportunities in harvesting the diverse environmental microorganisms if isolating and recovering these uncultured microorganisms are possible. This paper presents a new cultivation technique composed of isolating single-soil microorganism cell from anin situsoil microorganism community in microfluidic droplets and conducting in-droplet cultivation in media supplemented by soil extract or soil metabolites. This method enables the recovery of a broader diversity of the original microorganism community, laying the groundwork for a high-throughput phenotyping of these diverse microorganisms from their natural habitats.

Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology↗

DOE OSTI2021

On the Past, Present, and Future Role of Biology in NASA’s Exploration of our Solar System

Here we provide a brief perspective on the role of biology in NASA’s planetary science goals, and its spacecraft missions, past, present, and future. We argue that while biology - via astrobiology - generates much interest and excitement for NASA, biology is vastly under-represented as a science within NASA Planetary Science Division missions.

Hand, Kevin↗

NASA NTRS2016

The Astrobiology Primer v2.0

Astrobiology is the science that seeks to understand the story of life in our universe. Astrobiology includes investigation of the conditions that are necessary for life to emerge and flourish, the origin of life, the ways that life has evolved and adapted to the wide range of environmental conditions here on Earth, the search for life beyond Earth, the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and consideration of the future of life here on Earth and elsewhere. It therefore requires knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, and many more specialized scientific areas including astronomy, geology, planetary science, microbiology, atmospheric science, and oceanography. However, astrobiology is more than just a collection of different disciplines. In seeking to understand the full story of life in the Universe in a holistic way, astrobiology asks questions that transcend all these individual scientific subjects. Astrobiological research potentially has much broader consequences than simply scientific discovery, as it includes questions that have been of great interest to human beings for millennia (e.g., are we alone?) and raises issues that could affect the way the human race views and conducts itself as a species (e.g., what are our ethical responsibilities to any life discovered beyond Earth?).

Domagal-Goldman, Shawn D.↗