Computational Analysis of Metagenomes

Continuing improvements in the through-put and cost efficiency of next generation sequencing technologies are fueling a rapid increase in the number and scope of metagenomics projects, which aim at studying consortia of microbes by sequencing, in environments as diverse as soil, water, gut, ancient bones and the human biome. The first three computational challenges in metagenomics are: (1) Taxonomic analysis, who is out there? (2) Functional analysis, what are they doing? (3) How do different metagenomes compare and are their differences correlated to environmental differences? This talk will give an introduction to metagenomics and will discuss some of the methods that have be developed to address these three challenges. Metagenomics is a very growing field and much work needs to be done to support the analysis of metagenomic datasets.