Opportunitis for Facility-Enabled Science at the Doe Joint Genome Institute (JGI)

Fundamental unsolved problem in genomics is the need for high-throughput approaches to bridge the gap between the availability of DNA sequence data and our ability to assign biological function to it. The DOE JGI’s niche is the development of a diversity of large-scale experimental and computational synthetic biology capabilities to link sequence to biological insights relevant to energy and environmental research. This will range from preparing material and applying functional capabilities prior to genomic analysis to post-sequence processing and manipulations to enable the Institute’s users to carry out sequence-to-function studies that are beyond the capabilities of individual laboratories. Here, I will discuss new sequence-to-function capabilities that have been established at the DOE JGI and some scientific examples enabled with these capabilities (a synthetic pathway for the fixation of carbon dioxide in vitro [Science 2017] and SAR11 bacteria linked to ocean anoxia and nitrogen loss [Nature 2016]).