Background

• What's a microbiome and why are microbes important?
• The Metagenomics Revolution
• Towards an Australian Map of Environmental Microbial Communities

• Challenges when dealing with metagenomics data

The image shows a natural community of bacteria growing on a single grain of sand collected from intertidal sediment on a beach near Boston, USA in September 2008 and imaged using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Image courtesy of the Lewis Lab at Northeastern University. Image created by Anthony D'Onofrio, William H. Fowle, Eric J. Stewart and Kim Lewis. Source