Microbial community profiling workshop in UK

Mike Head left a comment about a workshop which looks interesting. Would loved to be there.

http://idrn.org/events/upcoming/microbial.php

AIM
The aim of such an event would be to bring together researchers interested in profiling whole bacterial communities using techniques such as metagenomics, (16s rDNA sequencing and whole bacterial DNA sequencing), T-RFLP, and other commercial applications.

OBJECTIVES
To allow interested researchers and clinicians to better understand the potential of such techniques and to identify the best method of profiling their bacterial community of choice. To provide researchers who wish to use such methods with an overview of the theory of these methods such that experimental design is possible. Use of methods will be illustrated with examples of their use in infection research

IMPORTANCE Such techniques are used in environmental microbiology and are now being used in projects such as the human microbiome projects to investigate the diversity human pathogens and commensals and to characterise the microbial profile of various niches and relate this to conditions such as GI and respiratory disease.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Alan Walker (Sanger, UK)
Geraint Rogers (Kings, UK)
Mike Cox (Imperial, UK)
Bill Cookson (Imperial, UK)
Nick Loman / Mark Pallen (Bham, UK)
Chris Quince (Glasgow, UK)
Luanne Hall-Stoodley (Southampton, UK)
Bill Keevil (Southampton, UK)
Nick Jakubovics (Newcastle, UK)

178 Microbial Reference Genomes Associated with the Human Body

Venter Institute Scientists, Along with Consortium Members of the NIH's Human Microbiome Project, Sequence 178 Microbial Reference Genomes Associated with the Human Body

Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute, a not-for-profit genomic research organization, have published (along with other members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Jumpstart Reference Strains Consortium), a catalog of 178 microbial reference genomes isolated from the human body.  Other members of the Consortium are: Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center, the Broad Institute, and the Genome Center at Washington University. The paper is being published in the May 21 issue of the journal Science. 
The human body is teeming with a variety of microbial species. This collective community is called the human microbiome. The role these microbes play in human health and disease is still relatively unknown but likely very important. The NIH Human Microbiome Project was launched in 2007, as part of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Common Fund’s Roadmap for Medical Research. It is a $157 million, five-year effort that will implement a series of increasingly complicated studies that reveal the interactive role of the microbiome in human health. 

Venter Institute Press Release 20th May