Microbiome Exploration and Discovery

The cross-cutting nature of microbiome research in environmental sciences, health, agriculture, energy, and natural and built environments requires the development of new solutions and community coordination to tackle grand challenges that will accelerate basic discovery and lead to transformative advances. The exponential growth of microbiome data over the past few decades has ushered in a new era of biology, shifting the focus from descriptive observations and small-scale experimental paradigms to data-driven exploration and hypothesis generation, enabled by and relying on a rapidly growing suite of transformative data science strategies. The DOE JGI is a leader in microbiome data science through its user-centric scientific programs that have expanded the microbial tree-of-life, discovered numerous new viruses and host associations, explored microbe-plant interactions, and discovered new biochemical pathways that play important roles in nutrient cycling and microbial survival. I will discuss some of our recent scientific studies, as well as provide an overview of the new National Microbiome Data Collaborative.