Seminars & Events

Mathematics and Computer Science Division
"Comparing Microbial Communities using DNA Clustering"

DATE: December 9, 2011
TIME: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
SPEAKER: Susan Huse, Assistant Research Scientist, Marine Biological Laboratory, MA
LOCATION: Bldg 240 Conference Rm: 1404 & 1405, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Folker Meyer

Description:
Seminar: Microbial communities are highly diverse with a richness of bacterial organisms that is often difficult to assess. Recent advances in DNA sequencing have uncovered more bacterial organisms than we had ever seen before. To augment classifications of bacterial communities based on the our limited ability to assign taxonomic names, a common technique is to sequence the ribosomal RNA gene, and cluster them, assuming that similar sequences represent organisms that are closely related and more divergent sequences represent organisms that are more distantly related. Unfortunately, different clustering algorithms can lead to different results, including sample-size dependencies. The appropriate choice of clustering technique is critical for meaningful comparisons of microbial communities.

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