New publication!

One of the seminal projects from my Genomics Aotearoa Postdoc position with Associate Professor Kim Handley is now published online at ISMEJ Communications. The background behind this particular paper is that we found clear niche differentiation of two Actinomycetota sister lineages (Aquiluna and Rhodoluna) across the saline divide of the Waiwera River estuary. As both lineages were initially described and isolated from freshwater environments, this natural population represented a great opportunity to explore the underlying genetic mechanisms that facilitated Aquiluna's transition and adaptation to the brackish (salty) estuarine environment, and how this aligned with other metagenome-assembled genomes obtained for these genera worldwide. Check it out now!