Modeling and mapping microbial diversity and function with marker genes, genomes and metagenomes

Microbiomics is a new science, born of molecular ecology and metagenomics. Molecular ecology uses specific marker genes amplified from environmental DNA samples to tell the microbiologist "Who is there?" -- what species occupy a particular site on or in the human body, for instance. Metagenomics looks at all the genes in an environmental DNA sample, thus providing a wealth of information about metabolic process (and disease processes) that might be under way there -- an answer to "What can they do?" Most large microbiomic projects will generate both kinds of information but our models for understanding one in terms of the other are as yet limited, and our ability to go from either to solid predictive knowledge -- "What will they do?" -- is limiting. Our project seeks to improve predictive ability through computational modeling and the bioinformatic analysis of available metagenomic data sets, and to produce a suite of software tools that should be of great use to many of the projects undertaken by the Canadian Microbiome Initiative.