Integrated Microbial Biodiversity Accomplishments
- CIFAR members spearheaded a major workshop in Halifax to contribute to the Tree of Life Web Project, a massive, publicly accessible repository for all scientific knowledge about the diversity, evolutionary history and characteristics of every species and significant group of organisms on Earth, living and extinct. The Halifax workshop attracted microbial experts from Japan, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, the U.K., the U.S., and Canada.
- Many CIFAR members are pioneers in the field of metagenomics, which involves studying the DNA sequences of all viruses and microbes found in a single environment. They conducted the first comprehensive analysis of the metabolic processes occurring in microbial and viral communities in several major ecosystems. Analysis revealed that the viral communities serve as a repository for storing and sharing genes, and thereby influence global evolutionary and metabolic processes.
- Some of the microbes that program members discover have important capabilities that are useful for human health. One of these, a “defensive microbial symbiont” of insects that is very recent and rapidly spreading across North America, is a bacterium that helps protect its insect host against nasty worm parasites. The mechanism used by the bacterium to defend the insect could be used against other important worm parasites, such as the thread-like filarial worms that live inside insects and attack and infect humans.
- IMB Scholar Steven Hallam organized the CIFAR bigDATA Workshop in May 2010 at the University of British Columbia. The workshop brought together students and experts from universities, research institutions, and businesses across North America to explore problems and solutions in analyzing environmental sequence data. Major ideas discussed during the workshop included the benefits and challenges of computation and analysis, communication through meaningful data visualization, and using new frameworks for understanding biological complexity.
Click on the image below to read the complete bigDATA Workshop report.