Seminars & Events

Mathematics and Computer Science Division
"The Era of Genomics: Tooling Up for the Data Bonanza"

DATE: February 4, 2011 to February 4, 2011
TIME: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
SPEAKER: Dr. Dawn Field, Head, Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics Group, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
LOCATION: TCS Conference Center Rooms 1404 & 1405, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Folker Meyer

Description:
We currently have over 1000 genomes in the public domain, hundreds of metagenomes and many more gene marker data sets, and these numbers are rapidly increasing. Next-generation sequencing technologies promise to further fill the public databases with a bounty of information unthinkable even a few years ago. Each data set represents an organism, or in the case of metagenomes and marker gene sequences a community, with a biological history, sampling location, environmental context and particular set of biologically interesting set of traits. Hence, each of these data sets makes a unique contribution to the ongoing creation of our public online catalogue of life.

We are now witnessing the rapid democratization of access to sequencing capacity - an immense opportunity for the global community - if proper stewardship of these data keeps pace. This must include enriching the biological context of these sequences within public databases, which will in turn necessitate the adoption of a fresh attitude to reporting results, both in our papers and our submissions to the public databases. The discrete and large genome, metagenome and marker gene data sets (e.g. ribosomal gene surveys) provide ideal opportunities for comparison and contrasting using computational means to solve a wide-range of questions in biology (including questions in medicine, physiology, developmental biology, biogeochemistry, evolution, ecology, etc).

To exploit fully the promise of these data we need both scientific innovation and community agreement on how to provide appropriate stewardship of these resources for the benefit of all. In this talk, I will focus on describing why community-level approaches can help us ‘tool up’ for this data bonanza. In particular, I will describe the motivations behind the formation of the Genomic Standards Consortium and overview the current activities of this international community in developing and implementing genomic standards and consensus-driven projects. I will also focus on the next frontier in this field – that of determining the function and extent of the “Unknown Genome”, the large fraction of sequenced genetic material found within genomic and metagenomic data sets that has yet to be characterised.

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