A proposal by Georgia Tech researchers has been selected for the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) 2014 Community Science Program (CSP). Researchers include Athanasios Nenes, professor & Georgia Power Faculty Scholar in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; Kostas Konstantinidis, Carlton S. Wilder Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and graduate student Natasha DeLeon-Rodriguez.

The CSP provides high-throughput DNA sequencing resources to support genomics research of relevance to urgent energy and environmental challenges. The Georgia Tech project seeks to explore how microbes survive in the extreme environment of the upper troposphere. This project represents a bold new direction for the DOE JGI program and may contribute insight into how microbes affect cloud formation and the Earth's water cycle.

Additional details can be found here.