Calit2 Hosts Leaders in Emerging Field at Metagenomics 2006

By Doug Ramsey, 858-822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu

San Diego, CA, October 5, 2006  -- As Metagenomics 2006 drew to a close today, participants were talking about metagenomics as a subdiscipline that is coming into its own, reflected in the success of the inaugural conference in an annual series organized by the UC San Diego division of Calit2.

"Researchers have been doing work on the margins of metagenomics for five or ten years but it is only now that the community is really coming together," said John Wooley, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at UCSD, who organized the conference with postdoctoral researcher Kayo Arima. "We are now establishing new vehicles for ongoing communication and collaboration under the auspices of Calit2 and, in particular, the CAMERA project." CAMERA is the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Research and Analysis, a joint venture of UCSD and J.Craig Venter Institute. Calit2 director Larry Smarr is the project's principal investigator; both he and CAMERA executive director Paul Gilna spoke at Metagenomics 2006. [For more on Smarr's speech to the conference, click here .]

All of the talks and one panel discussion are now archived and available for on-demand viewing. To watch the videos, click on the image or video link below [Real player and broadband connection required].

John Wooley
Opening Remarks
John Wooley, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research
University of California, San Diego
Length: 8:31 [video]
Larry Smarr
Cyber Metagenomics
Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2 
Professor, UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering
Length: 32:10 [video]
Francisco Rodriguez Valera
Stain Genome, Pangenome and Metagenome: The case of the Square Haloarchaeon
Francisco Rodriguez-Valera, Universidad Miguel Hernández  (Spain)
Length: 24:59 [video]
Jeffrey Gordon
It's So Nice to Have a Few Trillion Friends: Exploring the Structure and Functions of Our Human Gut Microbiota and Microbiome
Jeffrey I. Gordon, Washington University of St. Louis
Length: 32:37 [video]
Paul Gilna
The CAMERA Project: A Cyberinfrastructure for Microbial Metagenomic Research
Paul Gilna, Executive Director, CAMERA / UCSD / Calit2
Length: 26:30 [video]
Frank Oliver Gloeckner
Novel Approaches to Bioinformatics for Metagenome Analysis
Frank Oliver Glöckner, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Germany) 
Length: 21:50 [video]
Victor Markowitz
IMG/M: Towards a Production Metagenome Data Management and Analysis Systems
Victor Markowitz, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Length: 27:22 [video]
W. Ford Doolittle
Metagenomes and Metaspecies
W. Ford Doolittle
Dalhousie University (Canada)
Length: 36:42 [video]
Vincent Denef
Strain-Resolved Community Proteomics Reveals That Recombination Shapes the Genomes of Acidophilic Bacteria
Vincent Denef (for Jill Banfield), UC Berkeley
Length: 28:11 [video]
Edward F. DeLong
Microbial Ocean Metagenomics: The Central Dogma Meets Systems Ecology
Edward F. DeLong, MIT
Length: 40:03 [video]
Jonathan Eisen
The 'Axis of Evol' and the Uses of Evolutionary Analysis in Metagenomic Studies
Jonathan Eisen, UC Davis
Length: 31:43 [video] (technical difficulties with final 5 mins)
Jo Handelsman
Functional Metagenomics to Capture the Soil Resistome
Jo Handelsman, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Length: 34:23 [video ]
Panel Discussion
Panel Discussion: Challenges and Opportunities
Co-chairs: Doug Bartlett, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Rob Edwards, San Diego State University
Length: 49:08 [video]

Recent advances in microbiology, in culture-independent genomic analysis and in sequencing technology have established a solid foundation upon which to build a unique interdisciplinary community for the emerging subfield of metagenomics. Metagenomics 2006 provided invaluable opportunities to discuss and accelerate the implementation of metagenomic research.