Publication
The Ecobiomics project: Advancing metagenomics assessment of soil health and freshwater quality in Canada
Publisher:
Elsevier BV
Date:
03-2020
DOI:
10.1016/J.SCITOTENV.2019.135906
Abstract: Transformative advances in metagenomics are providing an unprecedented ability to characterize the enormous ersity of microorganisms and invertebrates sustaining soil health and water quality. These advances are enabling a better recognition of the ecological linkages between soil and water, and the bio ersity exchanges between these two reservoirs. They are also providing new perspectives for understanding microorganisms and invertebrates as part of interacting communities (i.e. microbiomes and zoobiomes), and considering plants, animals, and humans as holobionts comprised of their own cells as well as erse microorganisms and invertebrates often acquired from soil and water. The Government of Canada's Genomics Research and Development Initiative (GRDI) launched the Ecobiomics Project to coordinate metagenomics capacity building across federal departments, and to apply metagenomics to better characterize microbial and invertebrate bio ersity for advancing environmental assessment, monitoring, and remediation activities. The Project has adopted standard methods for soil, water, and invertebrate s ling, collection and provenance of metadata, and nucleic acid extraction. High-throughput sequencing is located at a centralized sequencing facility. A centralized Bioinformatics Platform was established to enable a novel government-wide approach to harmonize metagenomics data collection, storage and bioinformatics analyses. Sixteen research projects were initiated under Soil Microbiome, Aquatic Microbiome, and Invertebrate Zoobiome Themes. Genomic observatories were established at long-term environmental monitoring sites for providing more comprehensive bio ersity reference points to assess environmental change.