The information science of microbial ecology.

The information science of microbial ecology.
Curr Opin Microbiol. 2016 May 13;31:209-216
Authors: Hahn AS, Konwar KM, Louca S, Hanson NW, Hallam SJ
Abstract
A revolution is unfolding in microbial ecology where petabytes of 'multi-omics' data are produced using next generation sequencing and mass spectrometry platforms. This cornucopia of biological information has enormous potential to reveal the hidden metabolic powers of microbial communities in natural and engineered ecosystems. However, to realize this potential, the development of new technologies and interpretative frameworks grounded in ecological design principles are needed to overcome computational and analytical bottlenecks. Here we explore the relationship between microbial ecology and information science in the era of cloud-based computation. We consider microorganisms as individual information processing units implementing a distributed metabolic algorithm and describe developments in ecoinformatics and ubiquitous computing with the potential to eliminate bottlenecks and empower knowledge creation and translation.
PMID: 27183115 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Current Opinion in Microbiology - May 12, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Hahn AS, Konwar KM, Louca S, Hanson NW, Hallam SJ Tags: Curr Opin Microbiol Source Type: research