Workshop Description
Archaea and bacteria are of great interest to DOE Biological and Environmental Research (BER) funded researchers because of their importance to biogeochemical cycles, relationships with eukaryotic species (e.g., plants, humans, fungi), and potential roles in biofuel production. As a result, many BER Science Focus Areas (SFAs) have isolation efforts for characterizing the prokaryotic populations at their study sites. However, linking genotype to phenotype and phylogenetic analyses can be hindered by poor genome assemblies. Often this is due to the inability of short read data to span genomic repeats. Long read sequencing data (i.e., Nanopore and Pacbio) can span these repeats, but has its own set of challenges and expertise. This workshop aims to teach participants how to go from an isolate to sequencing to assembly of a genome.
Workshop Goals
Train scientists on methods to obtain high-quality genome assemblies from their isolates
Networking to exploring shared goals and opportunities for collaboration
Promote better communication between computational, modeling, and bench scientists.
Discussion among SFA scientists about near-term and future goals, including shared gaps and needs for additional computational tools, such those that can connect data across the diverse research of BER SFAs
Demonstrate best practices for sharing and publishing isolate data using KBase
Participants can publish genomes they generate from this workshop with a KBase using the ASM Microbiology Resource Announcement Narrative template