Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing and microbiological techniques have facilitated the study of previously unculturable microbial communities. The in-situ sampling and subsequent analysis of whole community DNA (metagenomics) or mRNA (metatranscriptomics) provide insights into the taxonomy and metabolism of microbial communities, and into the complex relationships with their environment. In close collaboration with UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, we have focused on the analysis of data from eukaryotic phytoplankton from across the world's oceans, leading to insights into the relationship between temperature and metabolism in phytoplankton, with implications for global biogeochemical cycles [A1]. Our work involves developing and applying computational pipelines for the taxonomic, functional, and comparative analysis of large-scale data sets [1] and benchmarking methodologies for working with 'omics data [2].
References
- Toseland, Daines, S.J., Clark, J.R., Kirkham, A., Strauss J., Uhlig, C., Lenton, M., Valentin, K., Pearson, G.A., Moulton, V., Mock, T., The impact of temperature on marine phytoplankton resource allocation and metabolism. Nature Climate Change3.11 (2013): 979-984.
- Toseland, A., Moxon, S., Mock, T., Moulton, V., Metatranscriptomes from diverse microbial communities: assessment of data reduction techniques for rigorous annotation. BMC Genomics 15.1 (2014): 901.