Introducing the National Research Data Infrastructure for the Research of Microbiota (NFDI4Microbiota)
Creators: name: Paulmann, Carmen
name: Becker, Anke
name: Bork, Peer
name: Clavel, Thomas
name: Nunes da Rocha, Ulisses
name: Förstner, Konrad U.
name: Goesmann, Alexander
name: Götz, Barbara
name: Marz, Manja
name: Overmann, Jörg
name: Sauerland, Kristin D.
name: Sczyrba, Alexander
name: Stoye, Jens
name: McHardy, Alice
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: Poster presentation of Carmen Paulmann at the German Conference on Bioinformatics on September 6 -8 2022. 

Recent technological advances that allow e.g. high-throughput molecular characterization of microbial species and communities result in the generation of large data sets. However, the use and re-use of this data has failed to exploit its potential. As part of the German NFDI (National Research Data Infrastructure) network, NFDI4Microbiota aims to facilitate the digital transformation in the microbiological community (bacteriology, virology, protistology, mycology and parasitology). Thus, the mission of the consortium is to support the German microbiology community with access to data, analysis services, training, as well as (meta)data and workflow standards. A German microbial research network will be generated through training and community building activities, and by creating a cloud-based system that will make the storage, integration and analysis of microbial data consistent, reproducible, and accessible. Thereby, NFDI4Microbiota will promote the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) principles and Open Science.

The project work has started just recently, in October 2021. It consists of ten well-established partner institutions and is supported by five professional societies and more than 50 participants from the microbiology community. Several workshops and training events for the community already took place and more are planned for this year. Moreover, the consortium launched an ambassador program to connect with the participants, thereby helping to identify the needs of their local communities.  Fundamental to the aims of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium is the development and provision of the computational infrastructure and analytical workflows required to store, access, process, and interpret various microbiome-related data types. Here, NFDI4Microbiota will work on developing and implementing software and standardized workflows for users to analyse their own datasets (i.e. for quality control, data processing, statistical analyses, and visualizations of different data types and results). In close collaboration with international partners, we will continue our work on developing best practices for standardized workflow design and development, as well as for microbiome data processing. Building on community-derived benchmarking concepts developed e.g. in CAMI and ELIXIR, NFDI4Microbiota furthermore will provide benchmarking options and a representative collection of metagenome benchmark datasets, enabling users to assess software for computational microbiome research. All relevant information and specific services are made available via the new NFDI4Microbiota web portal. Eventually, NFDI4Microbiota helps the microbiological research community by providing technical solutions and a comprehensive training program. This combined approach of education and services will ensure that microbiological research in Germany is synergistic and efficient.