The 2012 meeting of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities organization continues in the shadow of Walt Disney World. The Monday sessions started off with a plenary talk from Shabaz Mohammed at the University of Utrecht. Mohammed outline the approach he developed to study the phosphoproteome using TiO2.
A scientific session on metagenomics highlighted how such an approach could be used to study a range of sample types. Carl Yeoman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is characterizing the microbiome of the gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts of wild primates. He has found that diet has a significant effect on the primate GI microbiome, and that the primate vaginal microbiome is highly species-specific. In that same session, Holly Bik from the University of California, Davis, discussed her studies of eukaryotic microbes from deep sea and shallow sediments. She is also examining the effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on eukaryotic microbes in the affected areas, and has found that prior to those areas becoming oiled, sediments contained mostly nematodes. After oil reached those areas, fungal communities became dominant, she said. An afternoon session also touched on an ongoing ABRF study of next-generation sequencing methods for metagenomics.