The Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation's Marine Microbiology Initiative (MMI) aims to generate new knowledge about the composition, function, and ecological role of the microbial communities that serve as the basis of the ocean's food webs and that facilitate the flow of nitrogen, carbon, and energy in the ocean. Phage and viruses play a critical role in shaping microbial diversity, abundance and evolution and in this capacity have a significant impact on atmospheric composition and ecosystem function. In an effort to understand the ecology and evolution of marine phage and viruses and to explore the diversity and ecological roles of entire phage/viral communities through metagenomics, the Broad Institute has collaborated with MMI and research groups whose sequencing nominations were chosen by the Marine Phage, Virus, and Virome Selection Committee.
The Moore Phage/Virus project aims to sequence, assemble, and annotate approximately 123 diverse marine phage/virus genomes. The spread of genome sizes ranges from as small as ~20 kb to over 400 kb, with no specified maximum phage/viral genome size accepted into the pipeline. After passing the Broad Institute's quality control steps, genome samples have been sequenced, assembled and annotated using a newly developed protocol at the Broad Institute, all sequence reads have been provided to collaborating researchers for contig assembly and annotation. After a six month embargo, all sequences and associated metadata will be released publicly at the CAMERA sequence repository and analysis platform and at NCBI.
For further information, see the Broad Institute Marine Phage Sequencing Project. The sequenced genomes from this project are included in CAMERA as collections of phage/viral genomes.
