NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute said today that it is now accepting letters of intent from researchers seeking to use the genomics technologies available through its Community Sequencing Program (CSP).
JGI's sequencing program provides the scientific community with access to a range of high-throughput technologies for use in large-scale sequence-based genomic projects that focus on JGI's mission areas, including research into alternative fuels, global carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry.
These projects are expected to generate publicly-available data that will answer certain questions about the organisms or environments sequenced, and to be used more broadly by the DOE research community.
The CSP provides a number of core resources and capabilities, including de novo sequencing; resequencing for variation detection; metagenomics sequencing; RNA sequencing for genome annotation, reference gene sets, and gene counting; and pipeline analysis for the resulting datasets.
Through the program, JGI also has limited capacities to provide for third-generation single-molecule and single-cell DNA sequencing; fluorescent activated cell sorting; DNA/gene synthesis; custom genome analysis; and other efforts.
While the CSP will support any aspect of JGI's basic mission areas, around 50 percent of the capacity for this call will go to areas of specific emphasis.
One area of focus includes plant and plant microbe interactions, including resequencing or transcriptomic projects that study plant phenotypes related to drought, salt tolerance, nutrient use, biomass composition, yield, and other traits.
Another focus area includes microbial emission and capture of greenhouse gases, including studies of bacteria, fungi, and algae for use in carbon capture, nitrogen processing, or methane reduction from environmental sources.
JGI also will use the CSP program to focus on metagenomics research that studies microbes associated with biogeochemistry, bioenergy-related plant-microbe interactions, carbon/nitrogen cycling, carbon sequestration processes, and other similar areas.