The Microbial Genome Sequencing Project was launched in April 2004 soon after the inception of the Marine Microbiology Initiative. The effort began in response to the scientific community’s need to increase the number of whole genome sequences of ecologically relevant marine microorganisms, both to provide scaffolds for ongoing environmental metagenomic analyses and to foster ecogenomic comparative studies. To achieve the sequencing goals, the Marine Microbiology Initiative formed a committee of preeminent marine microbiologists who selected candidate microorganisms for sequencing based on five selection criteria:
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Open ocean and coastal bacterioplankton isolates from cultured marine clades abundant in 16S ribosomal RNA gene surveys
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Open ocean and coastal bacterioplankton isolates most closely related to uncultured marine clades abundant in 16S ribosomal RNA gene surveys
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Open ocean and coastal bacterioplankton isolates for “cluster sequencing” of ecologically relevant marine clades
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Bacterioplankton isolates representing broad physiological diversity (photoautotrophs, photoheterotrophs, nitrifiers, methanotrophs, etc.)
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Isolates from diverse environments and habitats (deep waters, more extreme temperatures, specialized habitats)
The project is coordinated through a grant to the J. Craig Venter Institute. Once genome sequences are completed, they are auto-annotated and deposited in
GenBank, the public federal DNA sequence database, and in
CAMERA, a DNA sequence repository and bioinformatics platform housed at UC San Diego. For further information, see the J.Craig Venter Institute's
Marine Microbial Genome Sequencing Project.
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