TUKL-Treeline

High-throughput sequence data analyses and biostatistics

Abstract

Next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies such as Illumina-sequencing are lifting major limitations to molecular-based ecological studies of eukaryotic microbial diversity, but computational analyses of the resulting millions of short sequence amplicons (up to 10 giga bases for one sequence run on an Illumina-lane) remain a major bottleneck for these approaches.

The Ecology group takes advantage of NGS to analyze diversity patterns of microbial organisms in a variety of habitats, including the open ocean, coastal or high-salt environments  worldwide. The resulting data do not only contribute to the ongoing global initiative “Census of Microbial Diversity”, but also places these data into context of basic ecological questions. Such questions include for example to assess the effect of environmental change (climate change, pollution, exploitation of natural resources) on microbial diversity, ecosystem function(ing) and services.