Projects

361462-191001-021000
19-NGI3-71
18-NGI3-5 (191001-363513-3J)
10/1/2018
2022-9-30 0:0:0
Active
$226,810.00
Bioinformatics to Support Ecosystem Fisheries and Blue Economy ‘Omics Applications
Wang
Shiao
USM
EM-DM-CE
OAR
Building bioinformatics infrastructure supports 'omics observations and characterizations of sites and microbiomes important to the sustainable use of ocean resources. This includes bioinformatic analysis to characterize microbial communities collected from the Gulf of Mexico, (rich in oil and natural gas) and from the Great Lakes (economic resource and source of drinking water), both of which are threatened by harmful algal blooms. Such characterizations will be integrated into a global database to extend the ability to classify microbial genomes from individual samples, such as microbes associated with energy reserves. Completed were the development and assessment of bioinformatics workflows (Tourmaline, an amplicon sequence processing workflow that uses QIIME 2 and Snakemake https://github.com/NOAA-AOML/tourmaline) and the application of workflows to characterize microbial communities in the Gulf of Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Great Lakes. Also developed were training and resources for bioinformatics expertise (workshops, updated university course Applications of Biotechnology in Marine Biology, and development of course on data science using Python available on GitHub and YouTube). Engagement with academic and governmental groups was done to develop and promote metadata and data standards and the development of a user-friendly visual interface to allow assignment of individual microbial genomes to sample type.