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More funding for our BeeBiome Data Portal!

We are delighted to announce that two of our members, Rodrigo Ortega-Polo and Marc Robinson-Rechavi, got their proposal accepted by Genome Alberta. Congratulation to both, and also all our members that contributed to the redaction of the proposal.

Rodrigo & Marc will lead a working group to help for the establishment of our data portal, which will allow analysis and sharing of information on the microorganisms and viruses associated with bees.

The outcome of the project will be greater accessibility to bee microbiome data and its use for new scientific discoveries and for translation efforts. This increased accessibility will benefit the scientific community, stakeholders and policy makers by enabling data-driven approaches to decision making regarding bee health.

See the announcement here: https://genomealberta.ca/genomics/genomics_blog_05062001.aspx

Success!!! Our consortium has just received funding from the Dr. Eva Crane Trust for the development of a new tool, the web-based BeeBiome Data Portal, a resource for scientists and the general public on bee-associated microbes/viruses. The objectives of this tool will be:

1. Inform about the diversity of bee-associated microbes and viruses and their impact on bee health.
2. Provide a standardized terminology and taxonomy of all known microbes by systematically cataloging them, indicating reference strains and reference sequences.
3. Provide a comprehensive catalogue of all currently available sequence datasets about bee-associated microbes and virus (including amplicon sequencing, RNAseq, shotgun metagenomics datasets) and link relevant metadata.
4. Provide a standardized procedure to upload new sequence datasets via an entry mask dedicated to bee microbiome datasets (i.e. standardized ontology and metadata to ensure transparency and allow for cross-study analysis).
5. Serve as an entry point for assessing data and offering simple tools for data mining and visualization.

This project, coordinated by Benjamin Dainat & Philipp Engel, will start soon in 2019.

Congratulations to everyone involved, and thanks to the Dr. Eva Crane Trust for funding this exciting project!

 

Bees have evolved durable relationships with a diverse set of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa. These microbial communities comprise beneficial and detrimental symbionts and their composition is likely a key determinant for the health status of the host. In addition, the immense diversity of bees in terms of lifestyle and geographic distribution make these animals ideal models to study various factors that influence the evolution of host-microbe interactions.

Bee-associated microorganisms include a diverse set of viruses,
bacteria, fungi, and protists, some of which are important pathogens
of bees. We collectively refer to the microbes associated
with bees as the ‘bee microbiome,’ regardless of whether these
symbionts engage in mutualistic, commensal, or parasitic relationships
with the host.