With a $24.5 million grant from the Moore Foundation, UCSD researchers will build a computer system called CAMERA, the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis, to "decipher the genetic code of communities of microbial life in the world's oceans." Snip from today's press release:
The new resource will help scientists understand how microbes function in their natural ecosystems, enable studies on the effect humans are having on the environment, as well as permit insight into the evolution of life on Earth. The UCSD Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will lead the project in partnership with J. Craig Venter Institute (Venter Institute) in Rockville, MD, and UCSD's Center for Earth Observations and Applications (CEOA) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
"This prototype cyberinfrastructure will be used by scientists studying marine life and ecosystems to examine–in an unprecedented manner–the genomic complexities of natural communities of micro-organisms as they have evolved in their local environments," said UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. (…) Scientists will use CAMERA for metagenomics research–analyzing microbial genomic sequence data in the context of other microbial species, as well as in comparison to a variety of other "metadata" such as the chemical and physical conditions in which microbes are sampled.
More info likely to be availble soon on websites for the Venter Institute, CalIT2, San Diego Supercomputer Center, and CEOA (Thanks, Douglas Ramsey!)
