Ben J. Woodcroft

TL;DR: The recovery of 7,903 bacterial and archaeal metagenome-assembled genomes increases the phylogenetic diversity represented by public genome repositories and provides the first representatives from 20 candidate phyla.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the draft genome sequence of Amphimedon queenslandica, a demosponge from the Great Barrier Reef, and show that it is remarkably similar to other animal genomes in content, structure and organization.

TL;DR: This work identifies small RNAs from animal phyla that diverged before the emergence of the Bilateria, a close relative of the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis (starlet sea anemone), which possesses an extensive repertoire of miRNA genes, two classes of piRNAs and a complement of proteins specific to small-RNA biology comparable to that of humans.

TL;DR: The discovery of divergent methyl-coenzyme M reductase genes in population genomes recovered from anoxic environments with high methane flux that belong to a new archaeal phylum, the Verstraetearchaeota, indicate that methanogen diversity is only beginning to understand and support an ancient origin for methane metabolism in the Archaea, which is changing the authors' understanding of the global carbon cycle.

TL;DR: It is shown that changes in vegetation and increasing methane emissions with permafrost thaw are associated with a switch from hydrogenotrophic to partly acetoclastic methanogenesis, resulting in a large shift in the δ13C signature (10–15‰) of emitted methane.