Director: Brandon R. Briggs, PhD

Staff: Eric Henderson, BS

Characterization of microbial communities and isolates is a key element necessary to achieve the scientific objectives of the Center in Transformative Research in Metabolism. The Core provides the expertise, equipment, and software required for organismal, molecular, and bioinformatic analysis. In whole the core offers a comprehensive pipeline for characterization of microbial communities and isolates to inform testable hypothesis explaining host-microbiome symbiosis.  Services include advice on experimental design and sample collection to data analysis and bioinformatics. The core supports a unique combination of modules that researchers can plug into at any point along the pipeline or access the full pipeline to characterize either isolates or microbial communities. Key equipment maintained by the Core includes a chemostat and microbial bioreactor that allows users to set up experimental conditions similar to host guts and perturb the system to identify key microbial processes. An Illumina MiSeq and Nanopore MinION provide the sequencing power to analyze the molecular underpinnings. In collaboration with the INBRE Bioinformatics Core, the Microbiome Core provides expertise on bioinformatic algorithms needed for microbiome research.

Additional information about the AIMS Core may be found on their UAA based website.

To submit samples for analysis please use our submission form.

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