Welcome to the Microbial Earth Project

Map of type strains.

All interested in microbes and their genomes should check out The Microbial Earth Project.  It "is an international effort to generate a comprehensive catalog from genome sequences of all the archaeal and bacterial type strains. The name of the project comes from the recognition that Earth is a predominantly a microbial planet, and by effect in order to understand life on our planet, we need to understand how microbial life works."

There are some 10,000 described type strains of bacteria and archaea.  Not really a lot given that there are probably millions upon millions of species of bacteria and archaea.  But it is what we have available to us in terms of the formally described and accepted species for which there is an available cultured strain.

At this site you can do things like "Adopt a Type Strain" or view a cool "Map of the type strains".

The Steering Committee for the project is

• Jonathan Eisen (University of California, Davis)
• George Garrity (Names for Life, USA)
• Philip Hugenholtz (Australian Centre for Ecogenomics Research, Australia)
• Hans-Peter Klenk (DSMZ, Germany)
• Nikos C. Kyrpides (DOE-Joint Genome Institute, USA)
• William B. Whitman (University of Georgia)
• Tanja Woyke (DOE-Joint Genome Institute, USA)

Much of the real work being done by Nikos Kyrpides, George Garrity, and others though I am very pleased to be a member of the Steering Committee.   One of my key jobs will be to get the word out early and often.  Hence this post.