Februray 7th 2008

Metagenomics and Next-Generation Sequencing Techniques

Guest presenter:
Thomas Keller,
Director of OHSU's Molecular Microbiology & Immunology (MMI) Core Faciltity

He joined the core in 1995 after running a similar facility at University of Wisconsin, Madison for five years.
Tom received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 1985 from University of California, San Francisco.
He will talk about "Next-Gen Sequencing techniques"

If you are not familiar with "old style" DNA sequencing, known as Sanger Sequencing, I suggest a quick look at a web page posted by Davidson College. http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Courses/Bio111/seq.html

For a quick "history" of these "Next-Gen" techniques and a quick overview upon which Tom will elaborate please read the following short pieces.
The Year in Sequencing
and
Primer: Sequencing - the Next Generation

Following the presentation:
We will briefly discuss a modest sized "metagenomics" project with practical ecological implications.

Cox-Foster et al., (2007) A Metagonimc Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder. Science 318:283-287.

We have to quickly take care of business:
Everyone must have selected a partner and picked a general topic so that we can organize our schedule. Specific papers will be chosen as soon as possible but not everybody needs to have theirs identified at this point.

Following that presentation and discussion, if there is time, we can watch part of a video about the Sorcer II Global Ocean Sequencing Project. Although this metagenomics project has used Sanger Sequencing techniques so far, I feel that Craig Venter, and this team, are a phenomenon worth knowing about.

I will spare you reading the scientific publications from the Sorcerer II project, though I encourage you to look through them.

Yooseph et al., (2007) The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Expanding the Universte of Protein Families. PLoS Biology 5:e16.
Rusch et al., (2007) The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Northwest Atlantic through Eastern Tropical Pacific. PLoS Biology 5:e77.
Venter et al., (2004) Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea. Science 304:66-74.