Mapping Microbes

Step 3: Visualize: Map your microbes and compare with others

Lets say on a cold December day you characterized the microbes living on a cross-walk button near your apartment in Harvard Square (Cambridge, Mass) and you published your data online. The next spring, some curious person living across the Charles River in downtown Boston wonders whether the cross-walk button nearest her apartment would yield different results. Do crosswalk buttons only a few miles apart share similar microbiomes or do they differ? Do microbial communities living on a particular surface change like the weather over time?

Much like a weather map, a BioWeatherMap shows how conditions vary in different regions over time. Publishing your microbial data online will enable the possibility of visualizing the temporal and geographic variation of microbial communities living on surfaces around the world.

DIYbio and the PGP are working to bring BioWeatherMaps to home near you soon. Stay tuned! Sign-up here here if you want to be contacted when more information is available.

We are also grateful for the support of the George Church Lab at Harvard Medical School. The first mention of the term "bioweathermap" is from George in 2005 ( see this PDF, p.24).

Comments

[Rlangg]

I would need to tell them which part of the DNA to sequence?  Where are these intructions?  This is so interesting.

[jasonbobe]

The region of the DNA to sequence depends on the type of organism.  For bacteria, scientists typically look at the 16S gene.  Check out this site:

http://www.dnabarcodes.org/

[foobear]

wow, someday this will be a website, like the news or the weather. cool