Achievement

A two-day workshop (April 26-27, 2012) in systems biology was co-sponsored by MSU IGERT and DOE-Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNL) to integrate multiple -omics datasets focused on high-temperature chemosynthetic microbial communities. The workshop involved IGERT students and faculty, post-doctoral associates as well as PNL collaborators (total attendees=25). The main goal of the group session was to coordinate and integrate people and datasets including geochemical and isotope analysis, proteomic, transcriptomic and genomic efforts to understand microbial community interactions. Outcomes of the workshop included plans and approaches for utilizing metagenome assemblies to establish primary interactions occurring among predominant community members. The systems approach is consistent with our required IGERT course in Geobiological Systems (DGED 611).