No Data Left Behind: Making the Most of Microbial Metagenomic Data

Session: 16. - How can Microbial Metagenomics Inform Management of Great Lakes Ecosystems?

Jenny Fisher, Indiana University Northwest, [email protected]

Abstract

High throughput sequencing technologies have become extremely popular, leading to the collection of massive amounts of data on diverse microbial communities using both functional metagenomics and amplicon sequencing. However, these datasets are often underutilized, with analyses focusing only on overall diversity in microbial communities or partial reconstruction of genomes of interest. Publicly available datasets can provide a wealth of unexplored sequence information for meta-analyses, preliminary data to guide experimental design, or to enhance new data collected during a study. For example, in one study of nearshore Lake Michigan, we used datasets originally collected for a fecal contamination study to assess impacts on environmental microbial communities that occur due to urban runoff. Databases such as VAMPS, NCBI Sequence Read Archive, and the Earth Microbiome Project aggregate sequence data from diverse projects as well as the metadata on sample sources, preparation, and sequencing methods. Several open source bioinformatics programs are available to analyze these public datasets, providing a low/no cost source of microbial community information. For resource managers and researchers that do not have funding to do their own sequencing, analysis of existing data can be used in developing targets for source-tracking or assessing functional changes to an ecosystem.

1. Keyword
microbiological studies

2. Keyword
data acquisition

3. Keyword
ecosystem health

4. Additional Keyword
metagenomics

5. Additional Keyword
DNA sequencing