The collective microbiota (bacteria, archaea, protozoa, fungi, eukaryotes, viruses) of any given environment are collectively termed the microbiome. The development of high throughput sequencing technologies in the late twentieth century revealed a tremendous diversity of microbial taxa. These microbial communities exist in tightly maintained environmental conditions characterized by gradients of oxygen, water, and pH, creating multiple niches within any one location. Multi-omic approaches, including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, and metametabolomics, now provide powerful tools to dissect the plethora of complex interactions not only between individual organisms within microbiomes but also with their environment. Microbiomes are recognized as playing a pivotal role in biogeochemistry, energy, environment, climate change, food, health and disease processes. A deeper understanding of the structure and function of these communities will develop real world applications in human health and aid in the establishment of sustainable agricultural practices required for food production for the planet’s growing population, alongside the growing challenges of climate change. This area of research is transdisciplinary across the microbiologists and plant biologists within our department, and it extends to departments across the Norman campus and the OUHSC. Our faculty encompass an impressive expertise in cultivation, taxonomy, clinical microbiology, high throughput computational analysis and bioinformatics, proteomics, and metabolomics.
Microbiomes
