Dr Levente Bodrossy¹, Claire Davies, Jason Everett, Beth Fulton, Trevor Hutton, Jodie van de Kamp, Anthony Richardson, Tyler Rohr

¹Csiro O&a

Genomics enables the cost-effective assessment of the entire breadth of marine plankton community in a single assay. The Australian Microbiome initiative (supported by IMOS, Bioplatforms Australia, Parks Australia and CSIRO) has analysed ~4000 pelagic samples from Australian marine waters and the Southern Ocean, spanning latitudes 0 – 62 °S and depths from surface to ~6,000m. While genomics data like these have a very strong potential to support marine ecosystem models, their uptake is slow. A workshop focusing on this issue has identified the compositional nature of the genomics data as the most important factor limiting uptake (besides a communication gap between the disciplines). The project combines genomics, flow cytometry and microscopic observations from the IMOS National Reference Stations to create and test a new approach to generate quantitative plankton observations from genomics.

Biography:

Lev Bodrossy is a microbial ecologist at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere in Hobart. Together with Mark Brown, he initiated the genomics work at the IMOS NRSs in 2012 that grew and morphed into the Marine Microbiome Initiative, led by Jodie van de Kamp and Andrew Bissett. Lev is interested in facilitating the uptake of genomics data by other science fields and end users.