Summer course in Microbial Metagenomics

Summer course in Microbial Metagenomics directed by Drs. Thomas Schmidt and Jay Lennon at the Kellogg Biological Station (KBS), Michigan State University (MSU).

This hands-on inquiry-based course exposes participants to state-of-the-art genomic methods to address questions about the structure and function of microbial communities. The nucleic acid based data generated during the course are integrated with the expansive information from the KBS Long Term Ecological Research site (LTER), which ranges from greenhouse gas fluxes to metagenome databases. The ultimate goal of the course is to uncover relationships between changes in microbial communities and ecosystem functioning.  Morning lectures address pertinent ecological theories and principles underlying experiments that are conducted during the afternoon. The afternoon laboratory sessions focus on molecular and bioinformatic methods, including purification of DNA from environmental samples, PCR amplification, construction of clone libraries, sequence alignment, phylogenetic-based statistical analyses, quantitative PCR of functional genes, and mining of soil metagenomes. This is an intensive 2-week course modeled after the longer and internationally acclaimed MBL Microbial Diversity Course that Dr. Schmidt has directed.  Participants will arrive on June 13th and depart June 26th.  During this time, the course meets Monday through Friday from 9am-5pm. Housing and meals are available at KBS.  The course is open to individuals of all academic backgrounds, but admission to the class (MMG 490/MMG 890 Section 432) is by application only with an April 1, 2010 deadline. An electronic application can be accessed and submitted here https://kbsmsu.wufoo.com/forms/kbs-summer-course-application/.  Additional information about KBS summer courses can be found here http://www.kbs.msu.edu/education/summer-courses. Scholarship support is available.