Knight Rob

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Knight
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  • Preprint
    Current understanding of the human microbiome
    ( 2018-02-05) Gilbert, Jack A. ; Blaser, Martin J. ; Caporaso, J. Gregory ; Jansson, Janet K. ; Lynch, Susan V. ; Knight, Rob
    Our understanding of the link between the human microbiome and disease, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and autism, is rapidly expanding. Improvements in the throughput and accuracy of DNA sequencing of the genomes of microbial communities associated with human samples, complemented by analysis of transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes and immunomes, and mechanistic experiments in model systems, have vastly improved our ability to understand the structure and function of the microbiome in both diseased and healthy states. However, many challenges remain. In this Review, we focus on studies in humans to describe these challenges, and propose strategies that leverage existing knowledge to move rapidly from correlation to causation, and ultimately to translation.
  • Article
    Genomic Standards Consortium projects
    (Genomic Standards Consortium, 2014) Field, Dawn ; Sterk, Peter ; Kottmann, Renzo ; De Smet, Wim ; Amaral-Zettler, Linda A. ; Cochrane, Guy R. ; James, Cole R. ; Davies, Neil ; Dawyndt, Peter ; Garrity, George M. ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Glockner, Frank Oliver ; Hirschman, Lynette ; Klenk, Hans-Peter ; Knight, Rob ; Kyrpides, Nikos C. ; Meyer, Folker ; Karsch-Mizrachi, Ilene ; Morrison, Norman ; Robbins, Robert J. ; San Gil, Inigo ; Sansone, Susanna-Assunta ; Schriml, Lynn M. ; Tatusova, Tatiana ; Ussery, David W. ; Yilmaz, Pelin ; White, Owen ; Wooley, John ; Caporaso, J. Gregory
    The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) is an open-membership community working towards the development, implementation and harmonization of standards in the field of genomics. The mission of the GSC is to improve digital descriptions of genomes, metagenomes and gene marker sequences. The GSC started in late 2005 with the defined task of establishing what is now termed the “Minimum Information about any Sequence” (MIxS) standard [1,2]. As an outgrowth of the activities surrounding the creation and implementation of the MixS standard there are now 18 projects within the GSC [3]. These efforts cover an ever widening range of standardization activities. Given the growth of projects and to promote transparency, participation and adoption the GSC has developed a “GSC Project Description Template”. A complete set of GSC Project Descriptions and the template are available on the GSC website. The GSC has an open policy of participation and continues to welcome new efforts. Any projects that facilitate the standard descriptions and exchange of data are potential candidates for inclusion under the GSC umbrella. Areas that expand the scope of the GSC are encouraged. Through these collective activities we hope to help foster the growth of the ‘bioinformatics standards’ community. For more information on the GSC and its range of projects, please see http://gensc.org/.
  • Article
    MIxS-BE : a MIxS extension defining a minimum information standard for sequence data from the built environment
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2013-10-24) Glass, Elizabeth M. ; Dribinsky, Yekaterina ; Yilmaz, Pelin ; Levin, Hal ; Van Pelt, Robert ; Wendel, Doug ; Wilke, Andreas ; Eisen, Jonathan A. ; Huse, Susan M. ; Shipanova, Anna ; Sogin, Mitchell L. ; Stajich, Jason ; Knight, Rob ; Meyer, Folker ; Schriml, Lynn M.
    The need for metadata standards for microbe sampling in the built environment.
  • Article
    Satellite remote sensing data can be used to model marine microbial metabolite turnover
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2014-07-29) Larsen, Peter E. ; Scott, Nicole ; Post, Anton F. ; Field, Dawn ; Knight, Rob ; Hamada, Yuki ; Gilbert, Jack A.
    Sampling ecosystems, even at a local scale, at the temporal and spatial resolution necessary to capture natural variability in microbial communities are prohibitively expensive. We extrapolated marine surface microbial community structure and metabolic potential from 72 16S rRNA amplicon and 8 metagenomic observations using remotely sensed environmental parameters to create a system-scale model of marine microbial metabolism for 5904 grid cells (49 km2) in the Western English Chanel, across 3 years of weekly averages. Thirteen environmental variables predicted the relative abundance of 24 bacterial Orders and 1715 unique enzyme-encoding genes that encode turnover of 2893 metabolites. The genes’ predicted relative abundance was highly correlated (Pearson Correlation 0.72, P-value <10−6) with their observed relative abundance in sequenced metagenomes. Predictions of the relative turnover (synthesis or consumption) of CO2 were significantly correlated with observed surface CO2 fugacity. The spatial and temporal variation in the predicted relative abundances of genes coding for cyanase, carbon monoxide and malate dehydrogenase were investigated along with the predicted inter-annual variation in relative consumption or production of ~3000 metabolites forming six significant temporal clusters. These spatiotemporal distributions could possibly be explained by the co-occurrence of anaerobic and aerobic metabolisms associated with localized plankton blooms or sediment resuspension, which facilitate the presence of anaerobic micro-niches. This predictive model provides a general framework for focusing future sampling and experimental design to relate biogeochemical turnover to microbial ecology.
  • Article
    Tools for the microbiome : nano and beyond
    (American Chemical Society, 2015-12-22) Biteen, Julie S. ; Blainey, Paul C. ; Cardon, Zoe G. ; Chun, Miyoung ; Church, George M. ; Dorrestein, Pieter C. ; Fraser, Scott E. ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Jansson, Janet K. ; Knight, Rob ; Miller, Jeff F. ; Ozcan, Aydogan ; Prather, Kimberly A. ; Quake, Stephen R. ; Ruby, Edward G. ; Silver, Pamela A. ; Taha, Sharif ; van den Engh, Ger ; Weiss, Paul S. ; Wong, Gerard C. L. ; Wright, Aaron T. ; Young, Thomas D.
    The microbiome presents great opportunities for understanding and improving the world around us and elucidating the interactions that compose it. The microbiome also poses tremendous challenges for mapping and manipulating the entangled networks of interactions among myriad diverse organisms. Here, we describe the opportunities, technical needs, and potential approaches to address these challenges, based on recent and upcoming advances in measurement and control at the nanoscale and beyond. These technical needs will provide the basis for advancing the largely descriptive studies of the microbiome to the theoretical and mechanistic understandings that will underpin the discipline of microbiome engineering. We anticipate that the new tools and methods developed will also be more broadly useful in environmental monitoring, medicine, forensics, and other areas.
  • Article
    The Genomic Standards Consortium
    (Public Library of Science, 2011-06-21) Field, Dawn ; Amaral-Zettler, Linda A. ; Cochrane, Guy R. ; Cole, James R. ; Dawyndt, Peter ; Garrity, George M. ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Glockner, Frank Oliver ; Hirschman, Lynette ; Karsch-Mizrachi, Ilene ; Klenk, Hans-Peter ; Knight, Rob ; Kottmann, Renzo ; Kyrpides, Nikos C. ; Meyer, Folker ; San Gil, Inigo ; Sansone, Susanna-Assunta ; Schriml, Lynn M. ; Sterk, Peter ; Tatusova, Tatiana ; Ussery, David W. ; White, Owen ; Wooley, John
    A vast and rich body of information has grown up as a result of the world's enthusiasm for 'omics technologies. Finding ways to describe and make available this information that maximise its usefulness has become a major effort across the 'omics world. At the heart of this effort is the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC), an open-membership organization that drives community-based standardization activities, Here we provide a short history of the GSC, provide an overview of its range of current activities, and make a call for the scientific community to join forces to improve the quality and quantity of contextual information about our public collections of genomes, metagenomes, and marker gene sequences.
  • Article
    Toward a predictive understanding of Earth’s microbiomes to address 21st century challenges
    (American Society for Microbiology, 2016-05-13) Blaser, Martin J. ; Cardon, Zoe G. ; Cho, Mildred K. ; Dangl, Jeffery ; Donohue, Timothy J. ; Green, Jessica L. ; Knight, Rob ; Maxon, Mary E. ; Northen, Trent R. ; Pollard, Katherine ; Brodie, Eoin L.
    Microorganisms have shaped our planet and its inhabitants for over 3.5 billion years. Humankind has had a profound influence on the biosphere, manifested as global climate and land use changes, and extensive urbanization in response to a growing population. The challenges we face to supply food, energy, and clean water while maintaining and improving the health of our population and ecosystems are significant. Given the extensive influence of microorganisms across our biosphere, we propose that a coordinated, cross-disciplinary effort is required to understand, predict, and harness microbiome function. From the parallelization of gene function testing to precision manipulation of genes, communities, and model ecosystems and development of novel analytical and simulation approaches, we outline strategies to move microbiome research into an era of causality. These efforts will improve prediction of ecosystem response and enable the development of new, responsible, microbiome-based solutions to significant challenges of our time.
  • Preprint
    Minimum information about a marker gene sequence (MIMARKS) and minimum information about any (x) sequence (MIxS) specifications
    ( 2011-01-04) Yilmaz, Pelin ; Kottmann, Renzo ; Field, Dawn ; Knight, Rob ; Cole, James R. ; Amaral-Zettler, Linda A. ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Karsch-Mizrachi, Ilene ; Johnston, Anjanette ; Cochrane, Guy R. ; Vaughan, Robert ; Hunter, Christopher ; Park, Joonhong ; Morrison, Norman ; Rocca-Serra, Philippe ; Sterk, Peter ; Arumugam, Manimozhiyan ; Bailey, Mark ; Baumgartner, Laura ; Birren, Bruce W. ; Blaser, Martin J. ; Bonazzi, Vivien ; Booth, Tim ; Bork, Peer ; Bushman, Frederic D. ; Buttigieg, Pier Luigi ; Chain, Patrick S. G. ; Charlson, Emily ; Costello, Elizabeth K. ; Huot-Creasy, Heather ; Dawyndt, Peter ; DeSantis, Todd ; Fierer, Noah ; Fuhrman, Jed A. ; Gallery, Rachel E. ; Gevers, Dirk ; Gibbs, Richard A. ; San Gil, Inigo ; Gonzalez, Antonio ; Gordon, Jeffrey I. ; Guralnick, Robert P. ; Hankeln, Wolfgang ; Highlander, Sarah ; Hugenholtz, Philip ; Jansson, Janet K. ; Kau, Andrew L. ; Kelley, Scott T. ; Kennedy, Jerry ; Knights, Dan ; Koren, Omry ; Kuczynski, Justin ; Kyrpides, Nikos C. ; Larsen, Robert ; Lauber, Christian L. ; Legg, Teresa ; Ley, Ruth E. ; Lozupone, Catherine A. ; Ludwig, Wolfgang ; Lyons, Donna ; Maguire, Eamonn ; Methe, Barbara A. ; Meyer, Folker ; Muegge, Brian ; Nakielny, Sara ; Nelson, Karen E. ; Nemergut, Diana ; Neufeld, Josh D. ; Newbold, Lindsay K. ; Oliver, Anna E. ; Pace, Norman R. ; Palanisamy, Giriprakash ; Peplies, Jorg ; Petrosino, Joseph ; Proctor, Lita ; Pruesse, Elmar ; Quast, Christian ; Raes, Jeroen ; Ratnasingham, Sujeevan ; Ravel, Jacques ; Relman, David A. ; Assunta-Sansone, Susanna ; Schloss, Patrick D. ; Schriml, Lynn M. ; Sinha, Rohini ; Smith, Michelle I. ; Sodergren, Erica ; Spor, Ayme ; Stombaugh, Jesse ; Tiedje, James M. ; Ward, Doyle V. ; Weinstock, George M. ; Wendel, Doug ; White, Owen ; Whiteley, Andrew ; Wilke, Andreas ; Wortman, Jennifer R. ; Yatsunenko, Tanya ; Glockner, Frank Oliver
    Here we present a standard developed by the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) to describe marker gene sequences—the minimum information about a marker gene sequence (MIMARKS). We also introduce a system for describing the environment from which a biological sample originates. The “environmental packages” apply to any sequence whose origin is known and can therefore be used in combination with MIMARKS or other GSC checklists. Finally, to establish a unified standard for describing sequence data and to provide a single point of entry for the scientific community to access and learn about GSC checklists, we establish the minimum information about any (x) sequence (MIxS). Adoption of MIxS will enhance our ability to analyze natural genetic diversity across the Tree of Life as it is currently being documented by massive DNA sequencing efforts from myriad ecosystems in our ever-changing biosphere.
  • Article
    The genomic standards consortium : bringing standards to life for microbial ecology
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2011-04-07) Yilmaz, Pelin ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Knight, Rob ; Amaral-Zettler, Linda A. ; Karsch-Mizrachi, Ilene ; Cochrane, Guy R. ; Nakamura, Yasukazu ; Sansone, Susanna-Assunta ; Glockner, Frank Oliver ; Field, Dawn
    Interest in sampling of diverse environments, combined with advances in high-throughput sequencing, vastly accelerates the pace at which new genomes and metagenomes are generated. For example, as of January 2011, 12 500 user-generated metagenomes have been submitted to the public MG-RAST Annotation server (http://metagenomics. nmpdr.org; Meyer et al., 2008), 490% of which were produced using high-throughput sequencing methodologies. We have entered into an era of ‘mega-sequencing projects’ that include the Genomic Encyclopaedia of Bacteria and Archaea project (http://www.jgi.doe.gov/programs/GEBA), the Microbial Earth Project (http://genome.jgi-psf. org/programs/bacteria-archaea/MEP/index.jsf), the Human Microbiome Project (http://nihroadmap.nih. gov/hmp), the Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract consortium (http://www.metahit.eu), the Terragenome Initiative (http://www.terragenome. org), the Tara Oceans Expedition (http://oceans. taraexpeditions.org), the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON-http://www.neoninc.org), the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM-http://icomm.mbl.edu), Microbial Inventory Research Across Diverse Aquatic Long-Term Ecological Research Sites (http://amarallab.mbl. edu/mirada/mirada.html), the Earth Microbiome Project (http://www.earthmicrobiome.org) and other funded and unfunded projects, with many more visionary projects on the horizon.
  • Article
    Improved bacterial 16S rRNA gene (V4 and V4-5) and fungal internal transcribed spacer marker gene primers for microbial community surveys
    (American Society for Microbiology, 2015-12-22) Walters, William ; Hyde, Embriette R. ; Berg-Lyons, Donna ; Ackermann, Gail ; Humphrey, Greg ; Parada, Alma ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Jansson, Janet K. ; Caporaso, J. Gregory ; Fuhrman, Jed A. ; Apprill, Amy ; Knight, Rob
    Designing primers for PCR-based taxonomic surveys that amplify a broad range of phylotypes in varied community samples is a difficult challenge, and the comparability of data sets amplified with varied primers requires attention. Here, we examined the performance of modified 16S rRNA gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) primers for archaea/bacteria and fungi, respectively, with nonaquatic samples. We moved primer bar codes to the 5′ end, allowing for a range of different 3′ primer pairings, such as the 515f/926r primer pair, which amplifies variable regions 4 and 5 of the 16S rRNA gene. We additionally demonstrated that modifications to the 515f/806r (variable region 4) 16S primer pair, which improves detection of Thaumarchaeota and clade SAR11 in marine samples, do not degrade performance on taxa already amplified effectively by the original primer set. Alterations to the fungal ITS primers did result in differential but overall improved performance compared to the original primers. In both cases, the improved primers should be widely adopted for amplicon studies.