Transcript Microbiology in the 21st Century International Symposium on Designing the Microbial Research Commons October 8, 2009 Washington, DC.

Microbiology in the 21st
Century
International Symposium on Designing
the Microbial Research Commons
October 8, 2009
Washington, DC
Our charge
1. What are the research and applications
opportunities from improved integration of
microbial information within the global
community?
2. What are the challenges and barriers?
My charge
• To represent microbiology and set the
stage for our discussion.
• I was asked to do an overview of
“biomedicine and the environment.”
• The charge was so broad and so
challenging that I have decided to focus on
the clinical to the exclusion of the
environmental.
• Further, it is impossible to talk about
microbiology in the 21st century without
talking about microbiology in the 20th
century.
Outline
• Definitions
• Primer in microbiology
• Professional societies, journals and culture
collections
• Microbiology, genetics and genomics
• 21st century
1. Definitions
Common
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a. Belonging equally to or shared equally by two or more; joint:
common interests.
b. Of or relating to the community as a whole; public: for the common
good.
2. Widespread; prevalent.
3. a. Occurring frequently or habitually; usual.
b. Most widely known; ordinary: the common housefly.
4. Having no special designation, status, or rank: a common sailor.
5. a. Not distinguished by superior or noteworthy characteristics; average:
the common spectator.
b. Of no special quality; standard: common procedure.
c. Of mediocre or inferior quality; second-rate: common cloth.
6. Unrefined or coarse in manner; vulgar: behavior that branded him as
common
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Common
Commons
• 1. commons The common people; commonalty.
• 2. commons (used with a sing. or pl. verb) a. The social class
composed of commoners.
• b. The parliamentary representatives of this class.
• 3. The House of Commons. Often used in the plural.
• 4. A tract of land, usually in a centrally located spot, belonging to or
used by a community as a whole: a band concert on the village
common.
• 5. The legal right of a person to use the lands or waters of another,
as for fishing.
• 6. commons (used with a sing. verb) A building or hall for dining,
typically at a university or college.
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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Commons
Influential Essay
• "The Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett
Hardin, Science, 162(1968):1243-1248.
The phrase
Has entered our
common
vocabulary
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http://www.sciencemag.org/content/
vol302/issue5652/images/medium/covermed.gif
2. Primer in microbiology
Microbiology for
dummies
Microbiology
• Microbiology is the study of organisms
that are too small to be seen by the
naked eye.
• A microscope is needed to see the
individual cells of microbes.
What life forms?
• The major groups of microbes are
archeae, bacteria, viruses, protozoa,
fungi and algae.
• The cognate disciplines are bacteriology.
virology, protozoology, mycology and
phycology.
Microbiology is experimental.
• Because microbes are so small, early
microbiologists figured out ways to grow
them in the laboratory so we could see
populations of them growing together in
colonies.
• Many of the early techniques were
developed by 19th century bacteriologists.
Nature provides its own ways
of seeing colonies
Prior to the microscope, microbes
also were known indirectly, by
what they did
Microbes are best known for the
diseases they cause
Pathogen – general name for an organism
that causes a disease.
The word pathogen is used to describe all microbes
able to cause disease in animals and/or plants.
Infectious disease=
pathogen-caused disease
An infectious disease is a clinically
evident disease resulting from the
presence of pathogenic microbial agents,
including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa,
multicellular parasites, and the aberrant
proteins known as prions.
Examples of bacterial diseases
• Leprosy
• Gonorrhea
• Syphilis
Plague: the Black Death
• In the early 1330s an outbreak of bubonic plague
occurred in China. In October of 1347, several Italian
merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea.
Within days the disease spread to the city and the
surrounding countryside. By the following August, the
plague had spread as far north as England, where people
called it "The Black Death" because of the black spots it
produced on the skin. …Each spring, the plague attacked
again, killing new victims. After five years 25 million
people were dead--one-third of Europe's people.
http://www.themiddleages.net/plague.html
Examples of viral diseases
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AIDS
Herpes
Measles
Small pox
Louis Pasteur
Refutation of theory of
spontaneous generation
Pasteur boiled meat broth in a
flask then drew out and curve the
neck of the flask in a flame.
No microorganisms developed
in the broth.
(
Robert Koch
“Koch’s postulates”
Criteria by which
bacteria cause a disease
(1876)
Koch’s postulates
1. The microorganism must be found in abundance
in all organisms suffering from the disease, but
not in healthy organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a
diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause
disease when introduced into a healthy
organism.
4. The microorganism must be reisolated from the
inoculated, diseased experimental host and
identified as being identical to the original
3. Professional societies,
journals and culture
collections
Professional societies
• The American Society for Microbiology
(ASM) is the world's largest –and one of
the oldest - life science membership
organizations. Beginning with 59 scientists
in 1899 as the Society for American
Bacteriologists (SAB), ASM now has over
40,000 members, representing 24
disciplines of microbiological specialization
plus a division for microbiology educators.
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http://cbe.wisc.edu/cels/monograph/mono6x17.htm
Bergey's Manual of Determinative
Bacteriology
• The first edition of was initiated by action of the Society
of American Bacteriologists (now called the American
Society for Microbiology) by appointment of an Editorial
Board consisting of David H. Bergey and others. This
Board, under the auspices of the Society of American
Bacteriologists who, then as now, published the Journal
of Bacteriology as a service to science, brought the first
edition of the Manual into print in 1923. The Board, with
some changes in membership and Dr Bergey as
Chairman, published a second edition of the Manual in
1925 and a third edition in 1930.
Society for General Microbiology
(UK)
The Society publishes four journals :
International Journal of Systematic and
Evolutionary Microbiology
• Journal of General Virology
• Microbiology
• Journal of Medical Microbiology
And one magazine: Microbiology Today.
INTERNATIONAL UNION OF
MICROBIOLOGICAL SOCIETIES -IUMS
IUMS was founded in 1927 as the International
Society of Microbiology, and became the
International Association of Microbiological
Societies affiliated to the International Union of
Biological Sciences (IUBS) as a Division in
1967. It acquired independence in 1980 and
became a one of the 29 scientific unions
Member of International Council of Science
(ICSU) in 1982.
IUMS is an umbrella for the many national
microbiology societies.
IUMS
• The first International Congress for
Microbiology was held in Paris in 1930. At
the time of the 10th International Congress
of Microbiology held in Mexico in 1970 the
Executive Committee decided to create
three sections covering the fields of
Bacteriology, Virology and Mycology.
World Federation of Culture
Collections
• The WFCC is a Multidisciplinary Commission of the
International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) and a
Federation within the International Union of
Microbiological Societies (IUMS). The WFCC is
concerned with the collection, authentication,
maintenance and distribution of cultures of
microorganisms and cultured cells. Its aim is to promote
and support the establishment of culture collections and
related services, to provide liaison and set up an
information network between the collections and their
users, to organize workshops and conferences,
publications and newsletters and work to ensure the long
term perpetuation of important collections.
WFCC World Data Center for
Microorganisms (WDCM).
• The WFCC (through the activities of Professor Skerman,
University of Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues
in the 1960's) pioneered the development of an
international database on culture resources worldwide.
The result is the This data resource is now maintained at
National Institute of Genetics (NIG), Japan and has
records of nearly 476 culture collections from 62
countries. The records contain data on the organization,
management, services and scientific interests of the
collections. Each of these records is linked to a second
record containing the list of species held.
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http://www.wfcc.info/aboutwfcc.html
World Federation of Culture
Collections (http://www.wfcc.info)
The Education and Capacity Building Committee is in charge of the training
of culture collection personnel in other collections
In the Patents and Intellectual Property Rights Committee, the emphasis is
on the formulation of a universal material transfer agreement and an
agreement for royalties.
The Transport, Quarantine and Safety Regulations Committee is concerned
with continuing the inventory and the harmonization of the international
rules, directives and laws that are applicable to the risk classes of
organisms.
The Networking and Interoperability Committee elaborates links between
the collections and to DNA databases, and evaluates the principles of
knowledge management with regard to the linked databases.
The Standardization and Normalization Committee deals with the
standardization and normalization for the completion of the "Guidelines for
the Establishment and Operation of Collections of Cultures of
Microorganisms" (2nd ed., 1999).
The Endangered Collections Committee investigates the condition of
endangered collections,
• A useful link:
• http://wdcm.nig.ac.jp/hpcc.html
Home Pages of Culture
Collections in the World
All of these efforts are under
staffed and underfunded.
4. Microbiology, genetics
and genomics
Microbiology has played a central
role in the development of
genetics and molecular biology
DNA is the genetic material
• Avery, MacLeod and McCarty Studies on
the chemical nature of the substance
inducing transformation of pneumococcal
types. (1944, in Experimental Medicine,
vol. 79). --demonstrated that the
“transforming principle” was DNA not
protein.
Recombinant DNA
• In 1972 American biochemist Paul Berg
(1926–) developed a technique to splice DNA
fragments from different organisms and
created the first "recombinant" DNA, or DNA
molecules formed by combining segments of
DNA, usually from different types of
organisms. In 1980 Berg was awarded the
Nobel Prize in chemistry for this
achievement, now referred to as
"recombinant DNA technology."
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2219/History-Genetics-MILESTONES-IN-MODERNGENETICS.html#ixzz0TKi3hURQ
Genetic engineering –con’t
• In 1976 an artificial gene inserted into a bacterium
functioned normally. The following year, DNA from a
virus was fully decoded, and three researchers,
working independently, developed methods to
sequence DNA — in other words, to determine how
the building blocks of DNA (the nucleotides A, C, G,
and T) are ordered along the DNA strand. In 1978
bacteria were engineered to produce insulin, a
pancreatic hormone that regulates carbohydrate
metabolism by controlling blood glucose levels. Just
four years later, the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical
company marketed the first genetically engineered
drug: a type of human insulin grown in genetically
modified bacteria.
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http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2219/History-Genetics-MILESTONES-IN-MODERN-GENETICS.html
Diamond v. Chakrabarty
• Genetic engineer Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty, working for General
Electric, developed a bacterium (a strain of Pseudomonas) capable
of breaking down crude oil, which he proposed to use in treating oil
spills. He requested a patent for the bacterium in the United States
but was turned down by a patent examiner, because the law dictated
that living things were not patentable.
• The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences agreed with the
original decision; however, the United States Court of Customs and
Patent Appeals overturned the case in Chakrabarty's favor, writing
that "the fact that micro-organisms are alive is without legal
significance for purposes of the patent law." Sidney A. Diamond,
Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, appealed to the
Supreme Court.
“Patenting life” 1980
• In a 5–4 ruling, the court ruled in favor of
Chakrabarty, and upheld the patent,
holding that:
– A live, human-made micro-organism is
patentable subject matter under [Title 35
U.S.C.] 101. Respondent's micro-organism
constitutes a "manufacture" or "composition of
matter" within that statute.
Polymerase chain reaction -PCR
• The 1985 invention of the polymerase chain reaction
(PCR), which amplifies (or produces many copies of)
DNA, enabled geneticists, medical researchers, and
forensic specialists to analyze and manipulate DNA from
the smallest samples.
• In 2003, Ricki Lake and Bernard Possidente described
American biochemist Kary Mullis's (1944–) development
of PCR as the "genetic equivalent of a printing press"
The work was done under while Mullis was employed at
now defunct biotechnology company called Cetus.
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2219/History-Genetics-MILESTONES-IN-MODERN-GENETICS.html#ixzz0TKjeydNO
Genome
andGenome
genomics
Definition
Genome (Winkler, 1920) –haploid
ensemble of genes; haploid
chromosome set
Genomics (Roderick, 1986) –
Mapping, sequencing, analysis of
genomes, and name of a new
journal
Genomics
“The study of biology from the
perspective of the entire genetic
content of the organism.”
Nierman and Nelson. 2002. Genomics
for applied microbiology. Advances in
Applied Microbiology 51: 191-230.
Microbiology and genomics
• Genomics was born out of tools developed
within the microbiological sciences:
• Bacterial and phage genetics
• Gene splicing and genetic engineering
• Direct DNA sequencing accomplished
using microbial vectors
Early milestones in genomics (USA)
The early work on genomics focused on the human genome.
1988 Office of Genome Research
National Institutes of Health
1989 National Center for Genome
Research
1990 Human Genome Project (HGP)
initiated
Genomes decoded
• In 1995 investigators at the Institute for
Genomic Research published the first
complete genome sequence for any
organism: the bacterium Haemophilus
influenzae, with nearly two million genetic
letters and 1,000 recognizable genes. The
following year the yeast genome, composed
of about 6,000 genes, was sequenced, and in
1997 the genome of the bacterium E. coli,
which contains approximately 4,600 genes,
was sequenced.
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http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2219/History-Genetics-MILESTONES-IN-MODERNGENETICS.html#ixzz0TKkbMGTV
New meaning
to “et al.”
20th century milestones in
bioinformatics
• 1981 - The Smith-Waterman algorithm for
sequence alignment is published.
1982 GenBank established (NIH - USA)
• 1988 National Center for Biotechnology
Information (NCBI) created
• 1990 BLAST algorithm (Lipman and colleagues
at NCBI)
• 1993 Sanger Centre, Hinxton, UK
• 1994 EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute,
Hinxton, UK
• 1997 PSI-BLAST
5. 21st century
Microbiology and more
Why we are here:
• Materials
• Literature
• Data bases
Each area brings different economic, historical,
institutional and legal baggage
Materials
Essential resources for the
community
• Stable, well curated resources of living
stocks.
• Microbes are used as a resource in a
number of industries.
World Federation of Culture
Collections
• Type strains – references for
taxonomy/systematics
Model strains
Patent deposits
Need quality management controls – best
practices
Physical resources
• Cultures themselves: fungi, protozoa,
bacteria, viruses (plasmids)
• Issues concern quality control, toxicity,
security, and sustainability
Digital resources
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Taxonomic data
Strain information
Genetic sequence data
Relevant literature
Data bases
Basic/applied research
• Financial returns – intellectual property
rights
• MTA – material transfer agreement…”now
treat every biological deposit as if it were
of potentially commercial value.” (pg. 30)
1% OF WORLD’S MICROBIAL
RESOURCES KNOWN
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• “Rather than distorting the open access
values of the entire research
semicommons to accommodate this
limited set of material shave downstream
commercial opportunities…pg. 47 draft for
Microbial Commons.
Convention of Biological Diversity
• Quite restrictive access measures in
several developing countries, likely as a
reaction to the excess of bio-prospecting
and patenting from developed countries in
the past.
(pg. 33 – draft Microbial Commons)
Literature
PRIORITY
“There is a universal understanding in science that
the first discover must have either a right to first
publication or at least an embargoes period of
exclusivity during which that the discoverer
cannot be pre-empted by second comers having
access to the same research materials. These
and related norms of science tend to preserve
the reputational benefits that are known to be
the primary motivator of the not-for-profit
scientific activity” (pg 42 –draft Microbial
Commons)
Scholarly publication
• Scientists submit work to a recognized
journal; work reviewed by editors and
reviewers (unpaid). The system provides a
gate keeping function that ensures quality
and yields reputational benefits.
Professional societies and commercial
publishers produce the journals.
Commercialization of scholarly
publishing: librarian perspective
• Perhaps the greatest impediment to
communications is that academic societies
have turned to commercial publishers to
produce their journals.
• Average cost of a chemistry periodical
in 2009 was $3690.
• (Library Journal Periodicals Price Survey)
Library costs
• Between 1986 and 2006, journal expenditures of
North American research libraries increased by
a staggering 321% as libraries expanded access
to journals by licensing bundles of journals (e.g.,
Science Direct) from different publishers (e.g.,
Elsevier). At the same time, the average journal
cost increased by 180% while the U.S.
Consumer Price Index rose by 84%. In other
words, journal costs have outstripped inflation by
a factor of more than two.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/projects/scholcomm/costs.shtml
Cornell University
• In its December 17, 2003 resolution, the Cornell
University Faculty Senate delivered a scathing
indictment of the commercial science publishing industry
and especially of Elsevier, the giant which now owns
such venerable publishers as Academic Press. (The
resolution was updated on May 11, 2005. Faculty
senates of Ivy League schools have not been known to
be gathering places of revolutionary hotheads, so the
strong language used in the Cornell resolution deserves
special attention. The resolution does not mince words. It
uses phrases like "crisis in the cost of journals,"
"literally unbearable," "unsustainable," "threatens to
undermine core academic values," "Elsevier's prices
are radically out of proportion with the importance of
those journals..." http://theoryofcomputing.org/crisis.html
• Publishers used to do the typesetting of papers; thanks
to TeX, nowadays the authors do the typesetting.
Publishers used to perform an essential service by
distributing the scientific papers; thanks to the Web, this
service is no longer needed. Why should the community
subsidize, with enormous investment of volunteer work,
commercial enterprises that take away the copyright,
charge exorbitant fees, and restrict access to the online
versions of their publications? (It only adds to the irony
that virtually every mathematics and CS journal uses
some version of TeX, created with great care and
distributed free of charge by Don Knuth.)
• http://theoryofcomputing.org/crisis.html
• Publishers have sought to configure the
online environment on the model of print
media.
Free full text journal articles
• Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, Applied
and Environmental Microbiology, Applied Microbiology,
Bacteriological Reviews, BMC Immunology, BMC
Infectious Diseases, BMC Microbiology, Clinical and
Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, Clinical and
Molecular Allergy, Clinical Microbiology Reviews,
Infection and Immunity, Journal of Bacteriology, Journal
of Clinical Microbiology, Journal of Immune Based
Therapies and Vaccines, Journal of Virology, Medical
Immunology, Microbiology and Immunology, International
Microbiology, Retrovirology, Virology Journal, Microbial
Cell Factories, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy,
and Malaria Journal.
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http://www.neurotransmitter.net/fulltextmicrobiology.html
ASM Journals Public Access
Policy
“ASM provides free access to full-text articles 6
months after the final version is published in an
issue of one of the 9 primary research journals.
For the review journals, Clinical Microbiology
Reviews and Microbiology and Molecular
Biology Reviews, access to full-text articles is
made freely available 1 year after an issue's
publication. Tables of contents, abstracts, and
search features are freely available to all users.”
http://journals.asm.org/misc/index_compliance.dtl
NIH Policy and ASM
• Effective April 2008, the NIH initiated a policy
requiring that all investigators funded by the NIH
either submit or have submitted for them to the
National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central
an electronic version of their final peer-reviewed
manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to
be made publicly available no later than 12
months after the official date of publication.
Authors of ASM journal articles are automatically
in compliance with this policy and need take no
action themselves.
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http://journals.asm.org/misc/index_compliance.dtl
Databases
“-omes” and “-omics”
• Transcriptome – all the RNA transcripts of an
organism
• Proteome – all the proteins of an organism
• Metabolome – all the metabolites of an
organism
(and many, many other variants)
• Convergence of microbial and genomics
research
• In silico research – computational biology
Characteristics of “omics” research
• Huge data sets
• “High throughput” (i.e. fast, automated)
methods for collecting data
• Computers and mathematics
• These methods facilitate a new kind of biologist
who does “in silico” research.
th
20
Century enabling
technology for DNA synthesis
• 1981 high throughput robotic detection
(Hitachi and Wada) – later incorporated
into ABI technology
• 1986 – First commercial DNA sequencer
ABI Prism 370 1000 bases / day
• 1995 capillary electrophoresis ABI (Prism
310) 5000-15,000 bases / day
• 1998 PE Biosystem – Prism 3700 multiple
capillary
500,000-1 million bases/ day
“Sequencing by synthesis”
• Roche (454) 450 bp
• Illumina (Genome Analyzer) 50 – 100 bp
• ABI (SOLID) 50-100 bp
• 20 million bases /run? More?
• Sequencing technologies evolve very fast.
We mycologists need to collaborate with the
best sequencing centers with the fastest and/or
most appropriate technologies.
• Data generation – huge
• Data manipulation - huge
• Massive storage capacity
The psychological impact of
genomics as expressed in
metaphors
• Wealth
• Explosion
• Avalanche
• Tidal wave/tsunami
• Deluge
• Flood
Fewer positive metaphors
• Wealth
• Data mining
• The rate of change in new technological
systems outpaces human capacity to
adopt to the technological advances, much
less to exploit those advances for
maximum social and economic benefits.”
•
(pg 55 – draft Microbial Commons)
Our challenge
The Convention on Biological
Diversity
What is the Convention?
“Signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth
Summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity is
dedicated to promoting sustainable development.
Conceived as a practical tool for translating the
principles of Agenda 21 into reality, the Convention
recognizes that biological diversity is about more than
plants, animals and micro organisms and their
ecosystems – it is about people and our need for food
security, medicines, fresh air and water, shelter, and a
clean and healthy environment in which to live.”
• http://www.cbd.int/convention/
• Article 15. Access to Genetic
Resources
•
1. Recognizing the sovereign rights of
States over their natural resources, the
authority to determine access to genetic
resources rests with the national
governments and is subject to national
legislation.
• WIPO Copyright Treaty adopted in Geneva on
December 20, 1996)
• Art. 2. (Scope) Copyright protection extends to
expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of
operation or mathematical concepts as such.
• Art. 5 (Databases) Compilations of data or other
material, in any form, which by reason of the selection or
arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual
creations, are protected as such. This protection does
not extend to the data or the material itself and is without
prejudice to any copyright subsisting in the data or
material contained in the compilation.
•
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/trtdocs_wo033.html#preamble
A problem
WIPO was designed for writer and
entertainers, not for scientists.
What is the WTO?
“The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the
only global international organization
dealing with the rules of trade between
nations. At its heart are the WTO
agreements, negotiated and signed by the
bulk of the world’s trading nations and
ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to
help producers of goods and services,
exporters, and importers conduct their
business.” http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm
• “In practice, these provisions – written by
lawyers for lawyers – have nothing to do th
science and could not be understood or
used by scientists….
• After a long discussion of EC Infosco pg 110 – draft for
the Microbial Commons)
Hope
• The genome sciences, less encumbered
by past traditions, societies and journals
and born during the Internet era have
done the best job of creating scientific
commons, including from microbiology.
GenBank Data Usage
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/
“The GenBank database is designed to
provide and encourage access within
the scientific community to the most
up to date and comprehensive DNA
sequence information. Therefore,
NCBI places no restrictions on the
use or distribution of the GenBank
data.”
European Bioinformatics Institute
EBI
• A vast multi-dimensional “information
space” built up over many years by the
genomic research community and
coordinated body by EBI…operate under
the rules of public science, …scrutiny by
the global research community (pg 58 – draft
of Microbial Commons)
Standards in Genomic
Sciences, Vol 1, No 1 (2009)
• The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) is
an initiative working towards richer descriptions
of our collection of genomes and metagenomes
through the development of standards and tools
for supporting compliance and exchange of
contextual information. Established in
September 2005, this international community
includes representatives from the International
Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration
(INSDC), major genome sequencing centers,
bioinformatics centers and a range of research
institutions.
•
http://www.standardsingenomics.org/index.php/sigen/article/viewArticle/sigs25165/53
Standards in Genomic
Sciences, Vol 1, No 1 (2009)
• The rapid pace of genomic and metagenomic
sequencing projects , which now include studies of
microbiomes, will only increase as the use of ultra-highthroughput sequencing methods becomes more
common place. Therefore, the role of standards
becomes even more vital to scientific progress and data
sharing. It is clear that we need new standards to
capture additional contextual data as well as tools to
support its use in downstream computational analyses.
The GSC aims to hold workshops designed to allow the
community to advance identified GSC projects and
propose new ones. Face-to-face workshops also help to
grow GSC membership and broaden linkages between
the GSC and related projects within the wider scientific
commons. http://www.standardsingenomics.org/index.php/sigen/article/viewArticle/sigs25165/53
The vision for the Genomic Rosetta
Stone (GRS) project
• The GSC is creating a mapping of identifiers describing
complete genomes across a wide range of relevant
databases so that information about genomes and the
organism from which they derive can be more easily
integrated. This mapping will include as many genomic
databases as possible. The development of this
"Genomic Rosetta Stone" (GRS) is core to the aim of
auto-populating the Genome Catalogue with metadata
harvested from other sources.
• http://darwin.nercoxford.ac.uk/gc_wiki/index.php/Genomic_Rosetta_Stone
Infectious diseases
Continue to emerge
Continue to fund much of life
science research
The microbial sciences have
entered popular culture which
helps with funding.
Nevertheless, we have our
work cut out for us
The end of my lecture is the
beginning of our real work.
Thank you!