Unifying a portfolio of EOS activities

Mathematics and Informatics for Environmental ‘Omic Data Synthesis (‘Omics) TAP

Five phases of Delivery:Where are we

1. NERC Consultation.

2. Formation of the Advisory and Implementation Group (AIG).

3. Administering the Bioinformatics Fellowships.

4. Building the Environmental ‘Omics Network (EON).

5. Wrap up of programme

All of these goals will be achieved through the establishment of the Environmental ‘Omics synthesis (EOS) centre, as recommended by the NEOMICS strategy.

NEOMICS Consultation (2010/2011)

Establishing an effective AIG

Directorate:Management Team

Academic and Technology Specialists

Observers:Industry/

Government

Research Council Partners

AIG

Omics Discipline Hopping Grants

Tracey Timms-Wilson

Awards Made

Modelling proteomics data for investigating plant response to environmental stress.

Professor Steven Rushton, Newcastle University

Spatial ecological genomics of free-ranging Great tits.Professor Ben Sheldon, Oxford University

Implementing Metabolomics Analyses into Workflows: Towards Genome-Metabolome Large-Scale Data Fusion.

Professor Mark Viant, University of Birmingham

Exploiting sociogenomics datasets for understanding phenotypic plasticity.

Dr Seirian Sumner, University of Bristol

Efficient Biological Networks Discovery and AnalysisProfessor Leszek Gasieniec, University of Liverpool

NERC Independent Research Fellowships in Bioinformatics

Dawn Field

AIG input

• Science Quality must be primary criteria

• Need to leverage reputation of NERC fellowships

• Do not re-invent the wheel

• Balance science quality with delivering directed science program

Scientific Challenge Areas

“Applicants will be expected to develop science-driven, environmentally relevant, multi-disciplinary and computationally-based independent research agendas in bioinformatics using ‘omics technologies.”

“direct relevance to the NERC strategy and associated areas such as human health, global food security, agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and other aspects of sustainability”

Scientific Challenge Areas:...may included

• Understanding patterns of biodiversity, including ‘hidden’ or cryptic biodiversity.

• Understanding past evolutionary and ecological events to understand the present and build predictions about future response to changing environments.

• Understanding the relationship between genetic variation and response to the environment.

• Modelling complex biological interactions underlying the resilience of ecosystem services.

• Linking environmental ‘omics data to other large scale data sets and models.

• Informing the relationship between environment and human health.

• Advancing novel algorithms, data structures and ontologies.

It is recognised that to effectively address these strategic science challenges it will be necessary for Fellows to align with other Research Councils, Government Agencies and Departments, charities or industry. Applicants should identify these strategic alignments within their Case for Support.

The Environmental Omics Synthesis Centre (EOS): Synergies

Bringing together ideas, disciplines, people and organisations to harness ‘omics to advance Environmental Science.

Ensuring that we build an active research community working in this area over the next five years and beyond.

Establishing Bioinformatics as a discipline in its own right in environmental science.

Mainstreaming the use of sophisticated informatics approaches and developing new ones.

Promoting an interdisciplinary approach that facilitates integration of environmental biology into complex scientific problems.

Promoting a synthesis approach that makes use of existing data resources as well as generating new data to address complex environmental problems.

Building collaborations between environmental science and other areas of science (e.g. medical science, structural biology, computational science, etc.).

Growing the environmental ‘omics community in the UK and beyond.Successful applicants will be required to interact with EOS and attend annual conferences.

iEOS: International Environmental Omics Synthesis Conference

Peter Kille

Science program Cross-cuttingNERC Themes

• SESSION I. Archeaological Omics. Learning from the Past to inform the Future. Chair: Prof. Tom Meagher

• SESSION II. Ecological Omics . from Biodiversity workflows to Molecular Adaptation. Dr Claire Gachon

• SESSION III. Epigenetics. From Molecules to Phenotypes. Chair: Prof. Peter Kille

• SESSION IV. Evolutionary Omics. Phylogenetics and the Tree of Life. Chair: Dr Daniel Barker

• SESSION V. Integrated and systems Omics. Towards Environmental Systems Biology. Chair Prof. Mark Viant

• SESSION VI. Community Ecology. Community Profiling (Metagenomics and Metabarcoding) to Function. Chair Dr Mesude Bicak 

International speakers of the highest calibre

What is the Environment ‘Omics Synthesis centre – EOS?

Disciplines People

OrganisationsIdeas

Moore’s Law put to shame:Man to machine

2000 02 04 06 08 10

100,000

10,000

1,000

100

1.0

0.1

10

Moore’s Law – Cost of Computing

Cost ($) per Million Bases

Broad Institute

Ra

dio

nu

cle

otid

es

Flu

ore

sce

nce

Ca

pill

ary

MP

S

Sin

gle

Mo

lecu

le

Technology Overload

Illumina Highseq – 40 Gb/day

ABI SOLiD 5500xl – 30 Gb/day

Roche Flx Titanium – 2 Gb/day

£300-500K

Technology Overload

Illumina Highseq – 40 Gb/day

ABI SOLiD 5500xl – 30 Gb/day

Roche Flx Titanium – 2 Gb/day

£300-500K

Illumina MiSeq – 1 Gb/day

£130-70K

ABI SOLiD 5500 – 10 Gb/day

Roche GS – 0.1 Gb/day

New Horizons

Pacific Biosciences – PacBio RS

Ion Torrent– Personal Genome Machine Oxford Nanopore

Much more than ‘genomics’

To only glimpse the tree of life:the opportunities are endless

Professor Mark Blaxter (Edinburgh University)

Mathematics and Informatics for Environmental ‘Omic Data Synthesis (‘Omics) TAP