Microbial Genomics Group
The Microbial Genomics Group represents a range of activities from sequencing individual bacteria to population genomics studies of microbial species to analysis of complex metagenomic samples. The traditional area of sequencing an individual microbe, assembling its genome, and annotating the sequence to produce a gene list and some functional predictions has been greatly expanded by increased sequencing throughput. The major new area is metagenomics and the study of microbiomes: communities of microbes that colonize many sites in the human body. This group develops methods for describing these communities based on sequencing the microbes en masse as a mixture, as well as analyzing this data to determine the role of microbiomes in health and disease. In addition, now it is possible to perform the traditional genome analysis on hundreds of isolates of a particular species, compare the genomes to define the pan-genome and determine how genetic variation is distributed through the population and correlates with phenotype. The goal of all of these studies is to better understand the role of microbes in public health and human disease, with the aim of better prevention, diagnostics and therapeutics.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
| George Weinstock | The Genome Institute, Washington University School of Medicine | Send Email |
Activities
