William Mong Distinguished Lecture
by Professor James Tiedje
Jul 8, 2016
Professor James Tiedje, University Distinguished Professor, Director of the Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, gave a lecture on July 8, 2016 titled “Metagenomics: a crossroads of opportunity for environmental protection and management”.
Molecular methods, genomics and metagenomics have transformed our understanding of the microbial world, and can be applied to vexing environmental problems such as impacts of climate change on biogeochemical cycles, the ecology of antibiotic resistance genes, pathogen detection, bioreactor community performance and sustainable biofuel systems to name a few. Metagenomics is at the heart of new methods to assess the genetic complexity, system organization and functional capacity of microbial communities. Together these form what is now recognized as the microbiome; the microbial communities that live with and around us, and carry out many processes of environmental importance. Prof. Tiedje presented new approaches to assess and interrogate complex environmental community genomic data, and then used these and sister methods to provide insight into a few of the mentioned environmental problems including antibiotic resistance genes as pollutants and biofuel production systems.