Skip to main content

Volume 12 Supplement 1

Beyond the Genome 2011

  • Invited speaker presentation
  • Published:

Reconstructing microbial communities

Metagenomic studies have allowed an unprecedented view of the microbial communities that inhabit our world and our bodies. Deep sequencing data have already been generated from several environments, as well as from various human body sites. As more data are generated, we are beginning to understand the structure of our commensal microbial communities and how microbes affect our health. Analyzing the metagenomic data, however, poses significant computational challenges, because few software tools are available that can handle the volume and characteristics of the data being generated. In my talk, I will primarily focus on the challenges posed by metagenomic assembly and will outline recent research in my laboratory aimed at meeting these challenges. I will also describe some of the analyses that can be performed on the assembled data but would not be possible in read-based analyses.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pop, M. Reconstructing microbial communities. Genome Biol 12 (Suppl 1), I13 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2011-12-s1-i13

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2011-12-s1-i13

Keywords