University of Colorado, Boulder
To provide tools and a data archive for analyzing sequence data of microbial communities in the indoor environment
One of the objectives of the Foundation's Indoor Environment program is to improve the cohesiveness of the community and its ability to communicate internally and externally by developing data visualization and imaging techniques and repositories. This grant to the University of California, Boulder supports a joint project with the University of Chicago, the University of California, Riverside, and the Marine Biological Laboratory to develop MoBE DAC, a data analysis core for the Indoor Environment program. The overarching goal for this collaborative effort is to provide tools and a data archive for analyzing molecular sequence data and for visualizing ecological and functional similarities between microbial communities in the indoor environment. The team plans to integrate the functional capabilities of the websites of MG-RAST, VAMPS, QIIME, and the genome database, FungiDB, through a common database structure. This project will facilitate comparisons of molecular ecology data and contextual information across laboratories and study sites, providing a platform for accelerating publication of results and training of students for environmental microbiology laboratories.