Exploring standards to advance microbial genomics
Microbes contribute to manifold human endeavours ranging from bioenergy to agriculture to medicine. Moreover, they make the Earth's biogeochemical cycles go round, a prerequisite for all life on the planet. Exceedingly numerous, they are also extremely diverse, encompassing most of Earth's total biodiversity. So it should come as no surprise to find that two-thirds of the nearly 5,000 genome projects reported in the Genomes OnLine Database (http://www.genomesonline.org) involve microbes. But far more could be done with microbial genomics, according to DOE JGI Genome Biology head Nikos Kyrpides, if researchers would embrace the world of possibilities that lie beyond the present anthropocentric focus and would also institute shared standards for genomic data collection and analysis...