About
Please join us for the 3rd Annual Argonne Soil Metagenomics Workshop on October 5-7, 2011!
The workshop will be held at the conference center at Indian Lakes Resort, just outside Chicago, IL, USA.
Microbial function in a changing world
Soil microbes play a critical role in terrestrial biogeochemical cycles that drive global climate. Relatively little is known, however, about microbial community dynamics in space and time owing to the overwhelming structural and functional complexity of such communities in soil. The 3rd Annual Argonne Soil Metagenomics Workshop will bring together a multidisciplinary group of scientists to tackle some of the challenges associated with linking microbial function to soil and ecosystem processes that impact Earth’s changing climate.
Recent advances in DNA sequencing technology have enabled access to staggering volumes of information about soil microbial communities. The challenge now lies in interpreting such data to develop a conceptual model of how microbes shape larger-scale processes. The goals for the 2011 workshop are to move “omics” approaches into ongoing, global change-relevant soil ecology work. Informed by topics that emerged in 2010, specific foci will include integrating ecological concepts, spatial and temporal structure of communities, plant-microbe interactions, and edaphic drivers of microbial function and feedbacks to climate. Further, all presenters will be urged to consider how their work transcends scales. At the same time, we aim to support continued dialogue to develop the practical aspects of these techniques, such as standards for sample preparation, merging “meta-” data with “omics-” data, making sense of large datasets, and soil-specific data interpretation.
The needs of this interdisciplinary community are ongoing, and this workshop will provide a venue for soil scientists, ecologists, computational scientists, and molecular microbiologists to discuss continuing challenges and share progress focused on the needs specific to soil metagenomics research.