Welcome - First Post

Welcome!

This blog represents my initial attempt at stimulating discussion and collaboration between researchers in the metagenomics community in Australia.

Whilst all are welcome it is primarily aimed at postgraduate students doing metagenomics projects so as to allow people to get in touch and help each other out in an informal environment.

Australia's unique habitats and biodiversity offer a great deal to the field of microbial metagenomics (metagenomics also offers a lot to Australia's unique habitats and biodiversity), but due to a limited degree of infrastructure and funding the field has yet to become a major force in Australia. Having said this, people are realizing the potential and doing metagenomics (largely it seems with international collaborators) so the time is ripe for taking this field to the next level in this country. I believe the first step is stimulating dialogue between researchers using metagenomics techniques in Australia and to create a network of people willing to discuss, share and contribute ideas as to how metagenomics should be done and how it can benefit and advance microbial ecology and medicine in Australia.

As to how this will work, consider it a work in progress. If you do wish to be able to post please e-mail me (jeff0103@flinders.edu.au) and I can give you access. I am assuming at first it will just be me rambling about my work and maybe suggesting some references for interested readers but hopefully other people will join and we can go from there.

Cheers

Tom

Thomas Jeffries

PhD. Candidate

School of Biological Sciences

Flinders University

Adelaide

Australia

PS: what is metagenomics? Essentially metagenomics refers to the sequence based analysis of whole uncultured microbial and viral communities. Sequencing the meta-genome (that's a lot of genomes) in an environment and analyzing them in clever ways can provide information on the taxonomy, metabolism and ecological structure of the community and shed light on the relationship between microbes and their environment. A good starting point for more information is here: http://camera.calit2.net/metagenomics/what-is-metagenomics.php